Striking my stick on the bottom it seemed solid as a rock, and breaking off a small projecting point I found it to be solid rock salt.

As the teams rolled along they scarcely roiled the water.

It looked to me as if the whole valley which might be a hundred miles long might have been a solid bed of rock salt.

Before we reached this water there were many solid blocks of salt lying around covered with a little dirt on the top.
The second night we found a good spring of fresh water coming out from the bottom of the snow peak almost over our heads.

The small flow from it spread out over the sand and sank in a very short distance and there was some quite good grass growing around.
This was a temporary relief, but brought us face to face with stranger difficulties and a more hopeless outlook.
There was no possible way to cross this high steep range of mountains anywhere to the north and the Jayhawkers had abandoned their wagons and burned them, and we could no longer follow on the trail they made.