The Anatomy of Thirst 

Twenty-six miles southwest of Lovelock, Nevada, the Humboldt river vanishes into the earth.  From there, emigrants faced a 40-mile trek across an alkali desert, a journey of about 3-4 days.  It took me 40 minutes in an air-conditioned SUV, while eating a pint of organic blueberries....

Illustration by J. Goldsborough Bruff, emigrant, 1849

Symptoms of extreme thirst and dehydration:

Sunken eyes, pale flacid skin, dry heaves, spitting bile, painfully swollen tongue, kidney malfunction resulting in extreme burning in kidneys and urethra, brain rupture, hallucinations, death.

"The thermometer indicates 140....I look out over an arid, burning waste....the whole atmosphere glows like an oven."  Niles Searls, June 22, 1849

"Here I saw a number of ox teams of five or six pairs each, lying down in their yokes, -- some of them dead, some of them with their swollen tongues lying extended out into the dust, and moaning and groaning as pitifully as one of our own kind, -- unable to avoid the almost perpendicular rays of the sun now beating upon this spot with a fury almost indescribable."  Carlisle Abbott, 1850  

"The cattle and horses were so famished for water, that it was with great difficulty that we kept them from rushing into the boiling water...one ox belonging to another company got loose and went to a well to drink, slipped and fell and was scalded so badly that the hair all dropped off."  Elizabeth Drusilla Robinson Smith, 1849

"I wish California had sunk into the ocean before I had ever heard of it...that desert has played hell with us...Abandoned wagons, dead cattle, and articles of every description lay strewed along the road between that time and dark; that is, for the next 16 miles I counted 163 head of dead stock -- oxen, mules and horses -- 65 wagons, some of them entire, others more or less demolished, about 70 ox chains, yokes, harness, trunks, axes, and all minor things I did not count, and these only while riding along the road."  James Wilkins, September 9-12, 1849  

"As soon as an ox dies, he bloats as full as the skin will hold, and sometimes it bursts, and his legs stick straight out and he smells horrible....When they are nearly decayed there is frequently three or four bushels of maggots about the carcass."   William Swain, July 20, 1849

"For many weeks we had been accustomed to see property abandoned and animals dead or dying.  But those scenes were here doubled and trebled.  Horses, mules, and oxen, suffering from heat, thirst, and starvation, staggered along until they fell and died on every rod of the way.  Both sides of the road for miles were lined with dead animals and abandoned wagons...The owners had left everything, except what provisions they could carry on their backs, and hurried on to save themselves."  Margaret Frink, 1850