t one since leaving the running
stream. Near here I staid all night, for fear of Indians who I firmly
believe would have taken my scalp had a good opportunity offered. I
slept without a fire, and my supply of meat just obtained drove hunger
away.

In the morning I started down the canon which descended rapidly and had
a bed of sharp, volcanic, broken rock. I could sometimes see an Indian
track, and kept a sharp lookout at every turn, for fear of revenge on
account of the store of squashes which had been taken. I felt I was in
constant danger, but could do nothing else but go on and keep eyes open
trusting to circumstances to get out of any sudden emergency that might
arise.

As I recollect this was Christmas day and about dusk I came upon the
camp of one man with his wife and family, the Rev. J.W. Brier, Mrs.
Brier and two sons. I inquired for others of his party and he told me
they were somewhere ahead. When I arrived at his camp I found the
reverend gentleman very cooly delivering a lecture to his boys on
education. It seemed very strange to me to hear a solemn discourse on
the benefits of early education when, it seemed to me, starvation was
staring us all in the face, and the barren desolation all around gave
small promise of the need of any education higher than the natural
impulses of nature. None of us knew exactly where we were, nor when the
journey would be ended, nor when substantial relief would come.
Provisions were wasting away, and some had been reduced to the last
alternative of subsisting on the oxen alone. I slept by the fire that
night, without a blanket, as I had done on many nights before and after
they hitched up and drove on in the morning I searched the camp
carefully, finding some bacon rinds they had thrown away. As I chewed
these and could taste the rich grease they contained, I thought they
were the sweetest morsels I ever tasted.

Here on the north side of the canon were some rolling hills and some
small weak springs, the water of which when gathered together made a
small stream which ran a few yards down the canon before it lost itself
in the rocks and sand. On the side there stood what seemed to be one
half of a butte, with the perpendicular face toward the canon. Away on
the summit of the butte I saw an Indian, so far away he looked no taller
than my finger, and when he went out of sight I knew pretty well he was
the very fellow who grew the squashes. I thought it might be he, at any
r