Well, if any of you have had any experience in travelling toward a mountain you, as did we, probably under-estimated the distance. We left the trail at 3 o'clock and tramped until nearly sundown before we began to make the ascent, always keeping our eyes on that green spot. About an hour after dark we came into the bed of a dry creek, and believing that it would eventually lead us to water, we followed it up until about midnight, when we came to water in a ditch about two feet wide and a few inches deep. Ourselves and animals being nearly exhausted, we just laid down in that stream, and I guess each one came pretty near drinking his barrel of water. We pulled off the packs and let the animals go loose in the feed, which was very good, while we were soon stretched out and sound asleep. When we woke in the morning the sun was well up and sending down its scorching rays into our faces. We made some coffee, drank it and felt better. We stayed there until noon, as the animals were still getting good feed, and we--well, we were getting all the water we wanted. We filled our canteens with it, and after making necessary preparations started to strike the river again, which we could plainly see from our mountain perch, also slow moving trains, as they plod their weary way over the plain. We reached the river about sundown and as we looked against the western horizon, began to see quite distinctly the snow-capped range of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. They looked grand and formidable to us, knowing that we must climb up and over them before we could reach our journey's end. They held no terror for us, however, for we knew that we should suffer neither from heat nor thirst during our trail over their broad, friendly sides. For a couple of days we had been trying the experiment of camping during the day and travelling at night, but we soon got enough of that way of getting along. The traveling at night was all right, but to camp all day with a scorching sun overhead and a burning sand under our feet was more than we could endure, so we again worked by day and slept at night. There was no fuel along here except willows, and they were so green it was impossible to coax them into a blaze. We finally resorted to a willow crane, which we made by sticking a couple of willows into the sand, arching them over toward each other and tying them together, hanging our coffee-pot between them, underneath which we made a fire of dead grass tied in knots. For a long time we laid on the sand and fed that fire with knotted grass, but _boil_ the coffee would not.