they found a letter from Hastings, who had gone
before, saymg that between this point and the
next water were two days and nights of hard driving ;
so they rested the next day and refreshed themselves.
Cutting grass for the cattle, and laying in a supply
of water for the two days' desert, the Great Salt
Lake plain they called it, at daylight on the morning
of September 9th they broke camp.
It was a dangerous thing to do, to cast themselves, their wives and little ones, their cattle and all their belongings, into an unknown desert where they had been assured that with no mishaps, and by straight and hard driving, there were two days between them and water; but there was now no help for it. The result proved most disastrous. The third day, at noon, Eddy and some others, with their cattle, suc- ceeded in reaching a spring seventy-five miles distant from the last wells, but they were obliged to leave their wagons twenty miles behind. About dark Reed came up, and stated that the rest of the wagons were forty miles behind, and that the fainting cattle were being urged forward to the water by the drivers. Reed and Eddy immediately started back, the latter with a bucket of water, which he carried five miles for a prostrate ox. Reed met his cattle with their drivers ten miles back, and went on to assist the Donners ; but Reed's cattle all died before they reached water. It was not until the evenino; of the 15th that all ar- rived in camp, having left many of their wagons scat- tered along the track, and half their animals dead.
Affairs now began to look serious. Some families were completely ruined; dread forebodings began to arise in the minds of all. With the ill-fated desert behind them they could not retreat ; before them the way was dark and uncertain. The surviving cattle were exhausted, and the woodwork of the wagons shrank in the dry air until the spokes rattled in the wheels, and the tires seemed ready to fall off. Tak- ing the cows and all loose animals, feeble and dis-
