Another instance happened a long time after this. I was getting short of provisions, and had got to do just so much work within a certain time. So I resolved to run two instruments. As we were then running sectional lines, I could take the variations at night. So I fixed another instrument and gave it into the hands of a young man by the name of Biddleman. I assigned to him his part of the line then, and set him at work within three miles of the camp. Returning to camp about two o'clock in the afternoon, to do some traverse work around a small lake, what was my astonishment, to see that Biddleman's party was already in camp. Upon asking him what it meant, he told me that upon running a random line, he stopped to correct the error at the half mile corner, and that his men on getting to the mile corner, instead of coming back and reporting the error as they should have done, started for camp. He, of course, followed on, as he could not do anything alone. I at once called his party of men, told them to get their chain and pins, put the stakes, pickaxe and shovel on the line animal, and follow me. This they did. When we got to the corner where Biddleman left off work, I set my instrument, gave them an object to run by, and sent them off. They went and returned to me. I then ran another mile north, set my instrument and started them east again on random. They went and I followed them to the half mile corner, to which place they returned. I said: "Boys, we will now go to camp. In future whether with me or Biddleman, you will continue at your work until you are directed to return." Had I allowed either of the above transactions to have passed unpunished, I might as well have started for the States, for all order would have been at an end. Sometimes we would see a small party of Indians at a short distance from us. I would step to my instrument, and turn the glass towards them. They would at once commence to scamper, throw sand, turn into all manner of shapes, lie down, roll over, thinking no doubt it was a gun or something that would destroy them. At one time, I attempted to cross from the sink of the Mohavè river to Providence, some sixty miles, expecting to find water at Washburn's well. This was a hole which I afterwards found dug down about ten feet in the white sand that covers this desert. On this sand not any thing grows, but musquit bush, which bears a bean that the Indians eat.