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Show 232 TEAVELS AND ADVENTUEES IN THE FAE WEST. mile on the other side, and found a spring of good water. We met encamped here, Colonel Reese's train, from San Bernandino, bound for Great Salt Lake City. They were in a most distressed state. They had lost a great many of their animals on the desert, and were unable to proceed with the whole expedition. Their wagons were loaded with necessaries and merchandise for the settlements]" they had to send to Cedar City for fresh animals to enable them to continue. I purchased a small quantity of sugar and tea from them, for which I paid a high price-fifty cents per lb. for brown sugar. We gave our animals a good rest, and started for" the Jornada by a new cut off, discovered by Col. Reese. We travelled over most uncomfortable roads, the soil, instead of sand as heretofore, is an impalpable white powder, very much like pulverized limestone, sown with large rocks; my eyes, although protected with a vail and goggles, suffered very much the whole way. The old road was south south east, this cut off led south south west. It is said, by this route, forty miles of travel is saved, and you escape the salt and bitter springs. The country is an extensive barren waste, we continued on it until midnight, without finding a blade of grass. We camped until four o'clock, A. M. June 1st.-We started at day dawn, and have, by our calculation, travelled over forty miles. The snow capped mountains, observed on the 30th, as bearing S. S. W. now bear directly north. At thi-ee o'clock, we camped at a spring, at the foot of a range of high hills of pudding-stone. |