That spring, our firm, under the name of Russell, Majors & Waddell, obtained a new contract from the United States Government to carry Government freight to Utah for the years 1858-59. That year the Government ordered an immense lot of freight, aggregating 16,000,000 pounds, most of which had to be taken to Utah. We had to increase the transportation from three or four hundred wagons and teams we had previously owned to 3,500 wagons and teams, and it required more than forty thousand oxen to draw the supplies; we also employed over four thousand men and about one thousand mules. Our greatest drawback that year was occasioned by floods and heavy rains upon the plains, which made our trains move tardily in the outset. We succeeded admirably, however, considering the vast amount of material we had to get together and organize, which we could not have done had we not had so many years' experience, previous to this great event, in the freighting enterprise; and especially was this so with me, for I had had, previous to this, a great many years' experience in handling men and teams, even before I crossed the plains ten years before. We succeeded this year in carrying everything to the army in Utah, fifty miles south of Salt Lake City, to Camp Floyd, the headquarters of Sidney Johnston's command, a distance of 1,250 miles. After unloading the wagons at Camp Floyd, they were taken to Salt Lake City and placed as near as they could stand to each other in the suburbs of the city, and covered many acres of ground, where they remained for one year or more, when our agent sold them to the Mormon authorities for $10 apiece, they having cost us at the manufacturers' $150 to $175 apiece. The Mormons used the iron about them for the manufacture of nails. The oxen we sent to Skull Valley and other valleys near Camp Floyd, known to be good winter quarters for cattle and mules. During the year 1859, while our teams were at Camp Floyd we selected 3,500 head as suitable to drive to California and put on the market, and they were driven to Ruby Valley, in Nevada, where it was intended they should remain, that being considered a favorable winter locality; and in the spring of 1860 they were to be driven to California, the intention being to let them graze on the wild oats and clover in the valleys of the Sacramento, and convert them into beef-cattle when fully ready for the market. A very few days after the herders reached the valley with them, which was late in November, a snow-storm set in and continued more or less severe, at intervals, until it covered the ground to such a depth that it was impossible for the cattle to get a particle of subsistence, and in less than forty days after the animals were turned out in the valley they were lying in great heaps frozen and starved to death. Only 200 out of the 3,500 survived the storm. They were worth at the time they were turned into the valley about $150,000, as they were a very superior and select lot of oxen.