270 JOURNAL OF E. WILLARD SMITH
but three or four miles a day, on account of the depth of snow. By this time many of us were on foot and were obliged to go before and break the way for the horses.
Our provisions were being exhausted, we were obliged to eat the horses as they died. In this way we lived fifteen days, eating a few dogs in the meantime. In a few days we were all on foot. We suffered greatly from want of wood. There was no timber to be seen on our route. We were obliged to burn a shrub called sage, a species of wormwood, which one could only obtain in quantities sufficient to keep up a fire for an hour in the evening. We obtained no water except by melting snow.
During this time we had some very severe storms of wind and snow. Often one or two of the lodges were thrown down in the night. We were now obliged to make a scaffold of some trees which we found, and leave our beaver skins on it, with all the furs we had collected. It was made sufficiently high to prevent the bears from reaching it. We were unable to carry them farther, as so few horses remained. All had died except two ? and they were so weak as to be almost unable to drag the tents.
On the 23rd our hunters killed a buffalo which was very poor, the meat, however, was very pleasant to us, after having lived so long on poor horse meat.
On the 24th the hunters killed three fat buffalo, which was the first fat meat we had seen for twenty days. All ate a large quantity of the raw tallow, having been rendered voracious by our wretched food and near approach to starvation. On the afternoon of this day we encamped on the North Fork of the River Platte, which here runs through a small valley sur- rounded by mountains. At this place there was scarcely any snow to be seen, and the weather is quite warm. We were still one hundred and fifty miles from the trading fort. This valley was filled with herds of buffalo.
After remaining here four days, three of us started on the 29th of February to go to the fort for horses. We traveled until noon the first day without finding any snow. In the
