There we passed the winter in a kind of honourable captivity.

An attempt to escape would have been the signal of our death, or, at least, of a harsh captivity.
We were surrounded by vast sandy deserts, inhabited, by the Clubs (Piuses), a cruel race of people, some of them cannibals.

Indeed, I may as well here observe that most of the tribes inhabiting the Colorado are men-eaters, even including the Arrapahoes, on certain occasions.

Once we fell in with a deserted camp of Clubmen, and there we found the remains of about twenty bodies, the bones of which had been picked with apparently as much relish as the wings of a pheasant would have been by a European epicure.

This winter passed gloomily enough, and no wonder.
Except a few beautiful groves, found here and there, like the oases in the sands of the Sahara, the whole country is horribly broken and barren.