, Crows, Snakes, and Utahs. With the Cheyennes war had been
waged by the United States for more than two years, which interfered
seriously with the expedition; for, during the month of June, a
war-party from that tribe intercepted and dispersed the herd of
beef-cattle intended for the use of the army.

The natural characteristics of the entire route are as unpromising as
those of its inhabitants. At the distance of about two hundred miles
from the Missouri frontier the soil becomes so pervaded by sand, that
only scientific agriculture can render it available. Along the Platte
there is no fuel. Not a tree is visible, except the thin fringe of
cottonwoods on the margin of the river, all of which upon the south
bank, where the road runs, were hewed down and burned at every
convenient camp, during the great California emigration. When the Rocky
Mountains are entered, the only vegetation found is bunch-grass, so
called because it grows in tufts,--and the _artemisia_, or wild sage, an
odorous shrub, which sometimes attains the magnitude of a tree, with a
fibrous trunk as thick as a man's thigh, but is ordinarily a bush
about two feet in height. The bunch-grass, grown at such an elevation,
possesses extraordinary nutritive properties, even in midwinter. About
the middle of January a new growth is developed underneath the snow,
forcing off the old dry blade that ripened and shed its seed the
previous summer. From Fort Kearney to Fort Laramie, almost the only
fuel to be obtained is the dung of buffalo and oxen, called, in the
vocabulary of the region, "chips,"--the _argal_ of the Tartar deserts.
Among the mountains the sage is the chief material of the traveller's
fire. It burns with a lively, ruddy flame, and gives out an intense
heat. In the settlements of Utah all the wood consumed is hauled from
the canons, which are usually lined with pines, firs, and cedars, while
the broadsides of the mountains are nothing but terraces of volcanic
rock. The price of wood in Salt Lake City is from twelve to twenty
dollars a cord.

From this brief review of the natural features of the country, some idea
may be formed of the intensity of the religious enthusiasm which has
induced fifty thousand Mormon converts to traverse it, many of them on
foot and trundling handcarts, to seek a home among the valleys of
Utah, in a region hardly more propitious; and some idea, also, of the
difficulties which were to attend the march of the army.

During