while their lips are parched with thirst, and their eyes and nostrils
become choked from the effects of the saline exhalations rising up on
all sides from the desert over which they are passing. And as for the
Great Salt Lake, the desolate shores of this inland sea have been, for
the most part, carefully avoided by both Indians and trappers, and no
living being has yet been found daring enough to venture far on the
bosom of its dark turbid waters; for a belief exists that a terrible
whirlpool agitates their surface, ready to swallow up everything that
may venture within the bounds of its dangerous influence.

Our cradles were finished on Monday, and the shanty on Saturday
afternoon. It includes a sort of outhouse for cooking, and the rude
palisades around are quite sufficient protection for the horses against
any attempts the Indians are likely to make to drive them off. As soon
as our building labours were over yesterday, we set to work digging and
washing, and were very successful. The country about here is of course
much more rugged than in the lower diggings. Grass is plentiful in the
valley, but the rocky heights are covered with a stinted vegetation,
offering no food to our horses. The soil, mineralogically considered,
does not seem to vary materially from that in the neighbourhood of
Weber's Creek. If anything, it is more impregnated with gold. On
Friday, Don Luis discovered a large rough lump in a canone about a mile
from the shanty; and the next evening a similar lump, though rather
smaller, was picked up by Bradley in one of his hunting excursions.

_August 8th_.--We have engaged the services of our friend the trapper
at the rate of fifteen dollars a-week, with an allowance of whisky
twice a-day. He will hunt for us, but will have nothing to do with gold
digging and washing. He has a tolerable contempt for dollars, or else
he would have demanded higher wages. A man who has spent nearly all his