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Show 04 FROM FORT LARAMIE TO POET 8RIDGKR. obliged to fasten their handkerchiefs over their faces to enable them to see where they were going. This has beta the most disagreeable day's travel we have yet experienced; for the wind, in addition to its furious violence, was so. very hot and dry as to render 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 - annOya& ce; and I would ad* vise every one who contemplates a journey across these sapdy plains, to provide himself with several pairs before starting. They afffcrd 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 aqd forty- four miles from the ferry, and remained at this camp over Sunday/ . s 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. Tnirty- one head of dead cattle were passed on the roadside to- day, and on the bank of a small drain, where the efflorescence of alkalihe 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 accompanying 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 begiitning to fail qitfte sensibly. The day was cool, with a fresh breese from the north. Thermotneter at sundown, 52Q; and at 10 p. M. 44°. Monday > July 80.-- 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. Today we . crossed over to the Sweetwater River, 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 Bock. 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 |