The next day's march ended at Rock Creek, and although the traveling was quite as hard for beasts and men, we made twenty-four miles, urged to most severe exertions because our store of food was being consumed rapidly. I knew we could not hope to find game and therefore we must go hungry until arriving at the trading post on the Snake River known as Fort Boise, while the animals would have great difficulty in finding grass. The country was stripped as bare of green as though a fire had passed over it, and many were the distressing tales I could have told of emigrants who had perished miserably by starvation while trying to make this portion of the long journey. We left Rock Creek a full hour before daylight, urging the famished beasts at their best pace while we ourselves strove not to think of food lest the hunger which beset us should become more keen. Not until forty-two miles had been traversed did I give the word to encamp, and it was full time, for I question if we could have held on half an hour longer. NEARLY EXHAUSTED Then we had arrived at Salmon Falls Creek. It was nearly nine o'clock in the evening when we came to a halt, and during the last half hour of the march we had been more nearly asleep than awake. At this camp we found a scanty crop of grass, but no food for ourselves, and when, weary to the verge of exhaustion, we crept under such shelters as had been put up hurriedly in the darkness, it was with the knowledge that sleep would come quickly, enabling us to forget, even for a short time, our great needs. From this point the next camping place would be on the bank of the Snake River, at what is known as the first crossing, twenty-five miles away, and then we had before us a journey of seventy-three miles to the Boise River, after which we must march forty-eight miles farther in order to gain Fort Boise, where food could be had. One hundred forty-six miles stretched out ahead of us before it would be possible to satisfy our hunger, and this distance could not be covered in less than three days. Our animals were so nearly worn out with severe work and lack of food that it did not seem possible we could advance another ten miles, and yet all that long distance must be traversed unless we gave up the struggle, leaving our bones to bleach on the trail, as many another had done before us. Now and again we came upon ghastly evidences of death, in wrecks of wagons and tokens of human beings who had perished by starvation. Perhaps it was well we saw those things, since they forced our people to struggle all the harder. [Illustration]