These dry lake beds deceived them many times.

They seemed as if containing plenty of water, and off the men would go to explore.
They usually found the distance to them about three times as far as they at first supposed, and when at last they reached them they found no water, but a dry, shining bed, smooth as glass, but just clay, hard as a rock.

Most of these dry lakes showed no outlet, nor any inlet for that matter, though at some period in the past they must have been full of water.

Nothing grew in the shape of vegetables or plants except a small, stunted, bitter brush.
Away to the west and north there was much broken country, the mountain ranges higher and rougher and more barren, and from almost every sightly elevation there appeared one or more of these dry lake beds.

One night after about three days of travel the whole of the train of twenty seven wagons was camped along the bank of one of these lakes, this one with a very little water in it not more than one fourth or one half an inch in depth, and yet spread out to the width of a mile or more.