64 FROM FORT LARAMIE TO FORT BRIDGER. 



obliged to fasten their handkerchiefs over their faces to enable 

 them to see where they were going. This has been the most dis- 

 agreeable day's travel we have yet experienced ; for the wind, in 

 addition to its furious violence, was so very hot and dry as to ren- 

 der respiration, from the great rarefaction, quite difficult. The 

 throat and fauces became dry, the lips clammy and parched, and 

 the eyes much inflamed from the drifting dust. A pair of green 

 goggles partially remedied this latter annoyance ; and I would ad- 

 vise every one who contemplates a journey across these sandy 

 plains, to provide himself with several pairs before starting. They 

 afford great relief from the incessant glare of a bright sun, to 

 which he may make up his mind to be constantly exposed during 

 the whole of his weary route. With all our efforts, owing to these 

 opposing causes, our day's march was only eighteen miles, and we 

 encamped on the head of a spring, one hundred and sixty-four 

 miles from Fort Laramie and forty-four miles from the ferry, 

 and remained at this camp over Sunday. 



The country, all the way from the crossing of the Platte, is a 

 dry, sterile, and dreary desert. The artemisia constitutes nearly 

 the whole growth, and what little grass had come up has been 

 completely eaten off by the hundred thousand animals that have 

 passed before us. Thirty-one head of dead cattle were passed on 

 the roadside to-day, and on the bank of a small drain, where the 

 efflorescence of alkaline matter was very abundant and rendered 

 the water nauseously offensive, nine oxen lay dead in one heap. 

 They had been poisoned, doubtless, by the water. Our accompany- 

 ing friends occupied a portion of Sunday in selecting such articles 

 as they could best spare, and threw them away to lighten their 

 load, their animals beginning to fail quite sensibly. The day was 

 cool, with a fresh breeze from the north. Thermometer at sun- 

 down, 52° ; and at 10 P. M. 44°. 



Monday^ July 30. — Ther. at sunrise, 29°. Morning very cold. 

 Ice, half an inch thick, had formed during the night in the water- 

 buckets, and a faint white-frost was visible on the ground. To- 

 day we crossed over to the Sweetwater Kiver, descending into its 

 valley by the side of a small tributary, whose course was nearly 

 south, and encamped on the left bank of this beautiful little stream, 

 a mile below Independence Rock. The river is about seventy feet 

 wide, from six to eighteen inches in depth, with a uniform and 

 tolerably rapid current of clear, transparent water. 



In the valley of the tributary opposite our noon halt, some 



