But here was a real Italian lake, a lake as blue as the skies above us.

We feasted our eyes and our very souls upon it.
Bailey and the guide shot some wild turkeys, and as we had already eaten all the mutton we had along, the ragout of turkey made by the soldier-cook for our supper tasted better to us tired and hungry travellers, perhaps, than a canvasback at Delmonico's tastes to the weary lounger or the over-worked financier.
In the course of the day, we had passed a sort of sign-board, with the rudely written inscription, "Camp Starvation," and we had heard from Mr.Bailey the story of the tragic misfortunes at this very place of the well-known Hitchcock family of Arizona.

The road was lined with dry bones, and skulls of oxen, white and bleached in the sun, lying on the bare rocks.

Indeed, at every stage of the road we had seen evidences of hard travel, exhausted cattle, anxious teamsters, hunger and thirst, despair, starvation, and death.
However, Stoneman's Lake remains a joy in the memory, and far and away the most beautiful spot I ever saw in Arizona.

But unless the approaches to it are made easier, tourists will never gaze upon it.
In the distance we saw the "divide," over which we must pass in order to reach Camp Verde, which was to be our first stopping place, and we looked joyfully towards the next day's march, which we expected would bring us there.
We thought the worst was over and, before retiring to our tents for the night, we walked over to the edge of the high mesa and, in the gathering shadows of twilight, looked down into the depths of that beautiful lake, knowing that probably we should never see it again.
And indeed, in all the years I spent in Arizona afterward, I never even heard of the lake again.
I wonder now, did it really exist or was it an illusion, a dream, or the mirage which appears to the desert traveller, to satisfy him and lure him on, to quiet his imagination, and to save his senses from utter extinction?
In the morning the camp was all astir for an early move.