Here was where Rogers and I had cooked and eaten our meat
of crow, quail and hawk, pretty hard food, but then, the blessed water!
There it danced and jumped over the rocks singing the merriest song one
ever heard, as it said--Drink, drink ye thirsty ones your fill--the
happiest sweetest music to the poor starved, thirsty souls, wasted down
almost to haggard skeletons. O! if some poet of wildest imagination
could only place himself in the position of those poor tired travelers
to whom water in thick muddy pools had been a blessing, who had eagerly
drank the fluid even when so salt and bitter us to be repulsive, and now
to see the clear, pure liquid, distilled from the crystal snow,
abundant, free, filled with life and health--and write it in words--the
song of that joyous brook and set it to the music that it made as it
echoed in gentle waves from the rocks and lofty walls, and with the
gentle accompaniment of rustling trees--a soft singing hush, telling of
rest, and peace, and happiness.
New life seemed to come to the dear women. "O! What a beautiful stream!"
say they, and they dip in a tin cup and drink, then watch in dreaming
admiration the water as it goes hurrying down; then dip and drink again,
and again watch the jolly rollicking brook as if it were the most
entertaining thing in the whole wide earth. "Why can't such a stream as
that run out of the great Snow Mountain in the dry Death Valley?" say
they--"so we could get water on the way.
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