After they had separated, Fremont found that his Delawares had taken a fancy to the Indian's bow and arrows, and carried them off. They carried them willingly back, when they were reminded that they had exposed the poor fellow to almost certain starvation by depriving him, in the beginning of winter, of his only means of subsistence, which it would require months to replace. One day the party had reached one of the lakes lying along the foot of the Sierra Nevada, which was their appointed rendezvous with their friends, and where, at this season, the scattered Indians of the neighborhood were gathering, to fish. Turning a point on the lake shore, a party of Indians, some twelve or fourteen in number, came abruptly in view. They were advancing along in Indian file, one following the other, their heads bent forward, with eyes fixed on the ground. As the two parties met, the Indians did not turn their heads or raise their eyes from the ground, but passed silently along. The whites, habituated to the chances of savage life, and always uncertain whether they should find friends or foes in those they met, fell readily into their humor, and they too passed on their way without word or halt. It was a strange meeting: two parties of such different races and different countries, coming abruptly upon each other, with every occasion to excite curiosity and provoke question, pass in a desert without a word of inquiry or a single remark on either side, or without any show of hostility. Walker's party joined Fremont at the appointed rendezvous, at the point where Walker's river discharges itself into the lake, but it was now mid-winter, they were out of provisions--and there was no guide. The heavy snows might be daily expected to block up the passes in the great Sierra, if they had not already fallen, and with all their experience it was considered too hazardous to attempt the passage with the _materiel_ of a whole party; it was arranged therefore that Walker should continue with the main party southward along the Sierra, and enter the valley of the San Joaquin by some one of the low passes at its head, where there is rarely or never snow. Fremont undertook, with a few men, to cross directly westward over the Sierra Nevada to Sutter's Fort, with the view of obtaining there the necessary supplies of horses and beef cattle with which to rejoin his party. After some days' travel, leaving the Mercedes River, they had entered among the foothills of the mountains, and were journeying through a beautiful country of undulating upland, openly timbered with oaks, principally evergreen, and watered with small streams.