or Steamboat Springs on Bear River, had much to do with this determination. From the Fort, where we were hospitably entertained, to the bluff and road beyond the Port Neuf was about five miles. The water of the Snake and the Port Neuf had but recently overflowed the valley between the two, and left it a miry quicksand morass, almost impossible of passing. It took us three days of hard labor and strenuous efforts to reach the bluffs. The heavily-loaded wagon of the nincompoop and the virago was almost constantly mired. We had little to do with him, but with her it was a constant conflict. At last we got her wagon to the river. He was on the highlands with the loose stock. The river for twenty feet or more was from seven to ten feet in depth. With a true team and a proper wagon this space could be safely passed. Her team, however, consisting of a horse and a mule, when they reached deep water made a lunge, then balked. The wagon filled with water and the current turned it over. She had insisted on driving and on having the little girl with her in the wagon. When it went over quite a number of us young men, who had been working nearly all day in our drawers and undershirts, plunged into the stream, and as we passed over the cover of the sinking wagon seized it and stripped it from its bows. Close beside me the little girl popped up; I seized her, and with a few strokes took her to shore, with no damage done her save a good wetting. It was a question, for a short time, whether the virago would drown the young men who were trying to save her, or they would succeed in their efforts. I went to their assistance and we brought her to the shore, but she needed the doctor's assistance. She had in ballast more water than was necessary, and by a rolling process was forced to give it up. Their team having been safely extricated--the wagon and its contents on shore, and soon transported to highlands, we found among their contents a large demijohn of first class brandy, to all appearances never opened, probably because the Snake country had not been reached; and as the dominant owner of said brandy was suffering from the too free use of water, we all drank to the toast, with a delicate courtesy, for her speedy delivery. Oblivious of the fearful danger of microbes, each tipped the demijohn at an angle and for a duration of time suited to the occasion. This spiritual passage having become historic, we hitched up our teams and journeyed onward to a creek about two miles distant, where we camped for the night. Next morning we bade a sorrowful adieu to the sweet, and much-loved and sprightly daughter of our train and our whilom companions, and resumed our journey down the left bank of the Snake River. This road led us over a desolate and treeless plain of sage-brush and grease-wood. The sun, at times, sent down its rays with scorching power. The alkaline dust, betimes rolled up in suffocating volumes. The pleasures of the chase were at an end.