Mr.Moody had said it was 500 miles to San Francisco, and 150 miles further to the mines, so that after the hard travel of a year we were still a long way off from the place we started for.
We could not see any way to make a living here.

There was no land cultivated, not a fence, nothing to require labor of any kind.

The valley was rich enough and produced great crops of grass, and the cattle and horses we had seen grazing seemed to be about all the use they put it to.

It looked as if the people must live principally on meat.

I thought if we could manage to get a little provision together, such as flour and beans, that I could pack there on the mule, and I was pretty sure I could find game that would be better meat than we had lived on during the last two months on the desert.
We looked around to see if we could find something to do to earn a little for a start, but were not successful.