If, However, No Water Were Found, They And Perhaps We Could Never Return. My Reader Must Not Confound A Hundred Miles' Walk In This Region With The Same Distance In Any Other.

The greatest walker that ever stepped would find more than his match here.

In the first place the feet sink in the loose and sandy soil, in the second it is densely covered with the hideous porcupine; to avoid the constant prickings from this the walker is compelled to raise his feet to an unnatural height; and another hideous vegetation, which I call sage-bush, obstructs even more, although it does not pain so much as the irritans. Again, the ground being hot enough to burn the soles off one's boots, with the thermometer at something like 180 degrees in the sun, and the choking from thirst at every movement of the body, is enough to make any one pause before he foolishly gets himself into such a predicament. Discretion in such a case is by far the better part of valour - for valour wasted upon burning sands to no purpose is like love's labour lost.

Close about in all directions, except north, were broken masses of hills, and we decided to search among them for a new point of departure. We re-saddled our horses, and searched those nearest, that is to say easterly; but no water was found, nor any place that could hold it for an hour after it fell from the sky. Then we went north-west, to a bare-looking hill, and others with pines ornamenting their tops; but after travelling and searching all day, and the horses doing forty-six miles, we had to camp again without water.

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