ate.

I now turned back to meet the teams and found them seven or eight miles
up the canon, and although it was a down grade the oxen were barely able
to walk slowly with their loads which were light, as wagons were almost
empty except the women and children. When night came on it seemed to be
cloudy and we could hear the cries of the wild geese passing east. We
regarded this as a very good sign and no doubt Owen's Lake, which we
expected to pass on this route, was not very far off. Around in those
small hills and damp places was some coarse grass and other growths, but
those who had gone before devoured the best, so our oxen had a hard time
to get anything to eat.

Next morning I shouldered my gun and followed down the canon keeping the
wagon road, and when half a mile down, at the sink of the sickly stream,
I killed a wild goose. This had undoubtedly been attracted here the
night before by the light of our camp fire. When I got near the lower
end of the canon, there was a cliff on the north or right hand side
which was perpendicular or perhaps a little overhanging, and at the base
a cave which had the appearance of being continuously occupied by
Indians. As I went on down I saw a very strange looking track upon the
ground. There were hand and foot prints as if a human being had crawled
upon all fours. As this track reached the valley where the sand had been
clean swept by the wind, the tracks became more plain, and the sand had
been blown into small hills not over three or four feet high. I followed
the track till it led to the top of one of these small hills where a
small well-like hole had been dug and in this excavation was a kind of
Indian mummy curled up like a dog. He was not dead for I could see him
move as he breathed, but his skin looked very much like the surface of a
well dried venison ham. I should think by his looks he must be 200 or
300 years old, indeed he might be Adam's brother and not look any older
than he did. He was evidently crippled. A climate which would preserve
for many days or weeks the carcass of an ox so that an eatable round
stake could be cut from it, might perhaps preserve a live man for a
longer period than would be believed.

I took a good long look at the wild creature and during all the time he
never moved a muscle, though he must have known some one was in the well
looking down at him. He was probably practicing on one of the directions
for a successful political career looking w