for us children, and the Indians did not seem to object to our fun at their expense. The fish which the Indians brought no doubt were very acceptable to the emigrants, as I do not remember having any before, except at Bear River, where the men caught an abundance of very large trout.
These Indians were Snakes and Shoshone, and our visit with them had been pleasant and entertaining. But in getting away from this place we had a narrow escape. We had to follow the "Devil's Backbone," and it may have been a mile or more; it is a very narrow ridge with a gorge a thousand feet deep on the left hand and a sheer preciipce on the right down to Snake River, which looked as though it might he a mile or more away. Indeed, it was so far away that it looked like a ribbon not more than four inches wide. The danger was so great that no one rode in the wagons. As I walked behind a wagon I would often look into the gorge on the left and then down to the river on the right, and as I remember it now, at many places there was not a foot to spare for the wagon wheels between the bottomless gorge on the left and the precipice down to the river on the right. It is said in the Bible, "Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life." "But wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat." But this Devil's Backbone was worse than either, for it was both narrow and crooked, and it was hard to tell what it might lead to. But we passed it in safety, and again were slowly tramping along over a broad and level expanse of sage brush and greasewood.
One afternoon somewhere in that level country, when there were only father's three wagons in the party—I think there had been a dispersion and confusion of tongues soon after passing the Devil's Backbone, and father had pulled out, preferring to face the dangers of the wilderness alone, to civil warfare—off in an easterly direction we could see horsemen coming towards us. When we first saw them, the ponies did not look larger than grasshoppers, and there were only a few of them visible, but directly more appeared in sight, and the numbers continued to increase until the plain was swarming with them. They approached us at a gallop and gathered into a hoard as they came nearer. They did not whoop nor gesti-
