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Georgetown August 1st 1850 Dear Emeline We arrived safe in the mines at noon today all well. We left Salt Lake June twenty-sixth. We had plenty of good grass and water until we got on the maryes [Marys] River about three hundred miles from Salt Lake, and for the next three hundred miles we could scarcely get grass enough too [to] keep the animals alive. The river bottom was all overflowed with water, and the grass all used up on the side we traveled so that we had to cross the river in a boat box [?] to get what little we had and made sloughs and cut the grass with a butcher knife a handful in a place just as we could find it. I have stood in the water and tolerated [?] mud knee deep until ten o'clock night after night and then lay down on the ground in my wet clothes untill [until] morning. Next we came to the marsh or meadow ten miles from the desert there is plenty of good grass at le[a]st ten thousand acres. We stayed there two days and made hay to feed crossing the dessert. We took the north road on the desert. That is the truckey [Truckee] River road. We started in at four o'clock in the afternoon and got through at nine o'clock the next morning. We had no dif[f]iculty in crossing. It is said to be for[t]y-five miles. We intended following the truckey [Truckee] Road in the mines but the