358 JAMES O'MEARA
They were beset by hostile Indians nearly every day; and while upon the desert, they endured sufferings which can be adequately imagined only by the emigrants and others who have since similarly suffered frequent attacks by hostile In- dians, hunger, thirst, and the difficulty of subsisting their animals or themselves.
They were compelled at last to abandon the mission on which they were bent, to save themselves from perishing on the desert, and to strike for the mountain ridges to the north- ward.
They reached Mary's River, and there the Shoshones troubled them, pilfering their traps and game by day, and endangering their camps as they slept.
The killing of one of these thieving Indians caused such hostile conduct on the part of his tribe that the party were forced to leave that region and push their way across the mountains into California.
The Great Salt Lake expedition was a woeful failure ; but on that terrible journey into California Walker traced the Humboldt to the sink of the river, discovered Carson Lake, and also the lake and river which still bear his name, viewed Mono Lake from a distance, and crossed the Sierra chain not far from the headwaters of the Merced into the valley of the San Joaquin.
On the night of the extraordinary spectacle in the heavens of the "shooting stars," November 12, 1833, Walker and his party camped on the banks of the Toulumne River, and he was roused from his sleep in the dark of the early morning, by the comrade who shared his blankets, to look at what the terrified trapper exclaimed was "the d dest shooting-match that ever was seen !"
From the San Joaquin Valley he crossed the coast range to Monterey, and there wintered, much to the demoralization of his men.
Early in the spring of 1834 he started to rejoin Bonneville at the appointed rendezvous on Bear River, and there found
