With such dreams of comfort, they awoke to realize more fully the terrors of their dry and swollen throats, the discomfort of empty stomachs.

Water and food were the great riches of life to them then.

Had piles of twenty-dollars pieces been on the one hand and a bucket of cold water on the other there is no doubt of the choice that would have been made.
Seven or eight miles from this place were two branches to the trail.

One led into the mountains toward the snow, and the other still bore southerly.

They could see that some other party who had no oxen to drive had taken the more northerly route, which seemed to lead more directly in the direction of the mines of California.