It was an exceedingly strenuous journey. Hunger, fatigue, thirst, hot winds, sand storms, dangers from poisonous insects and wild animals, were some of the difficulties they had to contend with.
Among the afflictions mentioned in the record of Nephi is the necessity of eating "raw meat." Just why the meat could not have been roasted does not appear. But there must have been some pressing reason for not making fires regularly, since the Mosaic law forbids the eating of blood and, particularly in the partaking of the Pascal lamb, the eating of raw flesh, lest they should consume blood with it. 1
It may be that it was necessary for them not to betray their presence by smoke from fires, even although the country was only sparsely settled. At all events, they subsisted on raw food and thrived on it, by the blessing of God.