"_October 1st._--This month, please God, will see us through. The animals, I am sure, will not survive another. As for ourselves, we have but few provisions. The season, too, is getting late; and if we are out much longer, I fear we shall suffer greatly from cold. Already a blanket and a buffalo-robe are little enough covering for the nights. My buffalo-robe, which I spread over the blanket, is always frozen quite stiff.... Yesterday I met with a disaster, which distresses me exceedingly; I broke my pipe, and am able neither to repair nor to replace it. Julius has one, the fumes of which we are compelled to share. If this should go, (and it is already in four pieces, and bound up like a mummy,) I tremble to think of the consequences. In all our troubles the pipe is the one and only consolation. _4th._--Oh, how cold it was this morning, and how cold it was in the night! I could not sleep for the cold, and yet I dreaded the approach of daylight, and the tugging at the frozen ropes which it entailed.... Our poor beasts actually cringed when the saddle touched the great raws on their backs; the frost had made them so painful.... It seems as if this sort of life were to last for ever. Day follows day, without the slightest change." Things got worse and worse. One after the other, the animals perished. By-and-by Mr Coke found himself a-foot. They had nothing to eat but salt meat and salmon, and little enough of that. "Yesterday I tightened my belt to the last hole; we are becoming more and more attenuated; and the waist of my gigantic companion is almost as delicate as that of a woman." At last, on the 12th October, in rags, and with two mules alone remaining out of their once numerous team, but still of good courage and in reviving spirits, Mr Coke and Julius reached the Dalles, an American military post in Oregon, where they found Fred, who had arrived two days before them, and received a kind welcome and good treatment from the officers of the garrison.