I do not remember that this was really a break; indeed it seems to me that it was nothing but a watering depot in the midst of the stretch of sixty-eight miles.

If my memory serves me, there was no well or spring at this place, but the water was hauled there by mule and ox teams from the further side of the desert.

There was a stage station there.

It was forty-five miles from the beginning of the desert, and twenty-three from the end of it.
We plowed and dragged and groped along, the whole live-long night, and at the end of this uncomfortable twelve hours we finished the forty-five-mile part of the desert and got to the stage station where the imported water was.

The sun was just rising.