We thought we could fight to the death over a water hole if we could only secure a little of the precious fluid.

No one who has ever felt the extreme of thirst can imagine the distress, the dispair, which it brings.

I can find no words, no way to express it so others can understand.
The moon gave us so much light that we decided we would start on our course, and get as far as we could before the hot sun came out, and so we went on slowly and carefully in the partial darkness, the only hope left to us being that our strength would hold out till we could get to the shining snow on the great mountain before us.

We reached the foot of the range we were descending about sunrise.

There was here a wide wash from the snow mountain, down which some water had sometime run after a big storm, and had divided into little rivulets only reaching out a little way before they had sunk into the sand.
We had no idea we could now find any water till we at least got very near the snow, and as the best way to reach it we turned up the wash although the course was nearly to the north.