Through the country we have thus briefly described, Carson and his men had trapped taking some small game, intending to return late in the season when the cold of this high altitude, with the sun low, was becoming terribly severe, while the grass was dead, and the birds of passage had all departed. Their prospects were cheerless and unpromising, nor were they at all improved after they left the Humboldt; for their route lay through an artemisia desert, varied only by an occasional little valley, where springs of water in the early season had induced the growth of grass. On reaching Goose Creek, they found it frozen, so that there was no possibility of finding even roots, to satisfy their hunger. Though to-day this is the trail of California emigration, with plenty of grass, for a great portion of the way, in its season; now all was desolate, and inured as they were to hardship, Carson's men had never before suffered so much from hunger, nor did their animals fare much better. Capt. McCoy had taken with him all not needed by Carson's party, because he could give them food, and it was fortunate for them he had adopted this course. The magnificent mountain scenery on the route could scarcely excite admiration or remark from this company of hungry, toil-worn men; even that unique exhibition of nature's improvised ideality, done in stone--pyramid circle--with its pagodas, temples, obelisks, and altars, within a curiously wrought rock wall, they only wished were the _adobe_ walls and houses of Fort Hall. However, nothing daunted by the dreary prospect before them, they here bled their horses, and drank the precious draught, well knowing they were taking the wind from the sails upon which they must rely to waft them into port, if they ever reached it. The next day, they were meditating the slaughter of one of their horses, when a party of Snake Indians fortunately came in sight. They had been out on the war trail, and returning, had little food, but Carson managed to purchase a fat horse, which they killed at once, and thus managed to live luxuriously till they reached the fort, able now to walk and give the horses the advantage of their diet. Epicureans of civilization, when the squeamishness of an appetite, perverted by too delicate fare, is invited to such a repast, may rest assured that they know not the satisfaction such fare afforded to Kit Carson and his party. Horse beef was sweeter food to these starving men, than epicures had ever tasted. After recruiting for a few days at the fort, and learning that there were large herds of the game, which they gloried most in hunting, the buffalo, near by, Carson and his party started for the stream on which they could be found, and were not long in discovering a large herd of fine fat buffalo. Stretching lines on which to hang the strips, they killed, and dressed, and cut; and soon had dried all the meat their animals could carry, when they returned to the fort.