If,
however, no water were found, they and perhaps we could never return.
My reader must not confound a hundred miles' walk in this region with
the same distance in any other. The greatest walker that ever stepped
would find more than his match here. In the first place the feet sink
in the loose and sandy soil, in the second it is densely covered with
the hideous porcupine; to avoid the constant prickings from this the
walker is compelled to raise his feet to an unnatural height; and
another hideous vegetation, which I call sage-bush, obstructs even
more, although it does not pain so much as the irritans. Again, the
ground being hot enough to burn the soles off one's boots, with the
thermometer at something like 180 degrees in the sun, and the choking
from thirst at every movement of the body, is enough to make any one
pause before he foolishly gets himself into such a predicament.
Discretion in such a case is by far the better part of valour--for
valour wasted upon burning sands to no purpose is like love's labour
lost.
Close about in all directions, except north, were broken masses of
hills, and we decided to search among them for a new point of
departure. We re-saddled our horses, and searched those nearest, that
is to say easterly; but no water was found, nor any place that could
hold it for an hour after it fell from the sky.
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