"We thought that was a desert!" exclaimed the immigrant bitterly. "My God! Quite a lot turned back at Laramie. They were scared by the cholera that broke out, scared by the stories of the desert, scared by the Indians. They went back. I suppose they're well and hearty--and kicking themselves every gold report that goes back east." The bright anticipations, the joy of the life, the romance of the journey all faded before the grim reality. The monotony of the plains, the barrenness of the desert, the toil of the mountains, the terrible heat, the dust, the rains, the sickness, the tragedy of deaths had flattened all buoyancy, and left in its stead only a sullen, dogged determination. "There was lots of quarrelling, of course," said our narrator. "Everybody was on edge. There were fights, that we had to settle somehow, and bad feeling." They had several minor skirmishes with Indians, lost from their party by disease, suffered considerable hardships and infinite toil. "We thought we'd had a hard time," said our friend wonderingly. "Lord!" At the very start of the journey they had begun to realize that they were overloaded, and had commenced to throw away superfluous goods. Several units of the party had even to abandon some of their wagons. "We chucked everything we thought we could get along without. I know we spent all one day frying out bacon to get the grease before we threw it away. We used the grease for our axles." They reached the head of the Humboldt. Until this point they had kept together, but now demoralization began. They had been told at Salt Lake City that they had but four hundred miles to go to Sacramento. Now they discovered that at the Humboldt they had still more than that distance to travel; and that before them lay the worst desert of all. "Mind you," said our friend, "we had been travelling desperately. Our cattle had died one by one; and we had doubled up with our teams. We had starved for water until our beasts were ready to drop and our own tongues had swollen in our mouths, and were scared--_scared_, I tell you--scared!" He moistened his lips slowly, and went on. "Sometimes we took two or three hours to go a mile, relaying back and forth. We were down to a fine point. It wasn't a question of keeping our property any more; it was a case of saving our lives. We'd abandoned a good half of our wagons already. When we got to the Humboldt and learned from a mountain man going the other way that the great desert was still before us, and when we had made a day or two's journey down the river toward the Sink, I tell you we lost our nerve--and our sense." He ruminated a few moments in silence. "My God! man!" he cried. "That trail! From about halfway down the river the carcasses of horses and oxen were so thick that I believe if they'd been laid in the road instead of alongside you could have walked the whole way without setting foot to ground!"