Chapter III: Across the Waters (2)

I am now going to take you to the prairies, to show you the very beginning of our settlement. Having fixed on the northwestern portion of our prairie for our future residence and farm, the first act was building a cabin, about two hundred yards from the spot where the house is to stand. This cabin is built of round straight logs, about a foot in diameter, lying upon each other, and notched in at the corners, forming a room eighteen feet long by sixteen; the intervals between the logs "chunked," that is, filled in with slips of wood; and "mudded," that is, daubed with a plaster of mud: a spacious chimney, built also of logs, stands like a bastion at one end: the roof is well covered with four hundred "clap boards" of cleft oak, very much like the pales used in England for fencing parks. A hole is cut through the side, called, very properly, the "door (the through)," for which there is a "shutter," made also of cleft oak, and hung on wooden hinges. All this has been executed by contract, and well executed, for twenty dollars. I have since added ten dollars to the cost, for the luxury of a floor and ceiling of sawn boards, and it is now a comfortable habitation.

We arrived in the evening, our horses heavily laden with our guns, and provisions, and cooking utensils, and blankets, not forgetting the all-important ax. This was immediately put in requisition, and we soon kindled a famous fire, before which we spread our pallets, and, after a hearty supper, soon forgot that besides ourselves, our horses and our dogs, the wild animals of the forest were the only inhabitants of our wide domain. Our cabin stands at the edge of the prairie, just within the wood, so as to be concealed from the view until you are at the very door. Thirty paces to the east the prospect opens from a commanding eminence over the prairie, which extends four miles to the south and southeast, and over the woods beyond to a great distance; whilst the high timber behind, and on each side, to the west, north, and east, forms a sheltered cove about five hundred yards in width. It is about the middle of this cove, two hundred and fifty yards from the wood each way, but open to the south, that we propose building our house.

Well, having thus established myself as a resident proprietor, in the morning my boy and I (our friend having left us) sallied forth in quest of neighbors, having heard of two new settlements at no great distance. Our first visit was to Mr. Emberson, who had just established himself in a cabin similar to our own, at the edge of a small prairie two miles north-west of us. We found him a respectable young man, more farmer than hunter, surrounded by a numerous family, and making the most of a rainy day by mending the shoes of his household. We then proceeded to Mr. Woodland's, about the same distance southwest: he is an inhabitant of longer standing, for he arrived in April, Mr. E. in August. He has since built for us a second cabin, connected with the first by a covered roof or porch, which is very convenient, forming together a commodious dwelling....

There are no very good mill-seats on the streams in our neighborhood, but our prairie affords a most eligible site for a windmill; we are therefore going to erect one immediately: the materials are in great forwardness, and we hope to have it in order to grind the fruits of the ensuing harvest.

Two brothers, and the wife of one of them, started from the village of Puttenham, close to our old Wanborough, and have made their way out to us: they are carpenters, and are now very usefully employed in preparing the scantlings for the mill, and other purposes. You may suppose how cordially we received these good people. They landed at Philadelphia, not knowing where on this vast continent they should find us: from thence they were directed to Pittsburg, a wearisome journey over the mountains of more than 300 miles; at Pittsburgh they bought a little boat for six or seven dollars, and came gently down the Ohio, 1,200 miles, to Shawneetown; from thence they proceeded on foot till they found us....

By the first of March I hope to have two plows at work, and may possibly put in 100 acres of corn this spring. Early in May, I think, we shall be all settled in a convenient temporary dwelling, formed of a range of cabins of ten rooms, until we can accomplish our purpose of building a more substantial house.

KENTUCKY PIONEER LIFE

BY GILBERT IMLAY

_My Dear Friend_,

In some of my first letters I gave you an account of the first settlement of this country. The perturbed state of that period, and the savage state of the country, which was one entire wilderness, made the objects of the first emigrants that of security and sustenance, which produced the scheme of several families living together in what were called Stations.

As the country gained strength the Stations began to break up and their inhabitants to spread themselves and settle upon their estates. But the embarrassment they were in for most of the conveniences of life, did not admit of their building any other houses but those of logs and of opening fields in the most expeditious way for planting the Indian corn; the only grain which was cultivated at that time.

The log house is very soon erected, and in consequence of the friendly disposition which exists among those hospitable people, every neighbor flew to the assistance of each other upon occasions of emergencies.

The next object was to open land to cultivation. The fertility of the soil amply repays the laborer for his toil; for if the large trees are not very numerous, and a large proportion of them sugar maple, it is very likely that from this imperfect cultivation, that the ground will yield from 50 to 60 bushels of corn to the acre. The second crop will be more ample; and as the shade is removed by cutting the timber away, a great part of the land will produce from seventy to one hundred bushels of corn from an acre.

The cattle and hogs will find sufficient food in the woods. The horses want no provender the greater part of the year except cane and wild clover. The garden with little attention, produces him all the culinary roots and vegetables necessary for his table.

In three or four years his flock of cattle and sheep will prove sufficient to supply him with both beef and mutton. By the fourth year, provided he is industrious, he may have his plantation in sufficient good order to build a better house.

Such has been the progress of the settlement of this country, from dirty Stations or forts, that it has expanded into fertile fields, blushing orchards, pleasant gardens, neat and commodious houses, mining villages and trading towns.

A taste for the decorum of the table was soon cultivated; the pleasures of gardening were considered not only as useful but amusing. These improvements in the comforts of living and manners awakened a sense of ambition to instruct their youth in useful and accomplished arts.

The distance from Philadelphia by land is between seven and eight hundred miles, and upwards of five hundred from Richmond. The roads and accommodations are tolerably good to the borders of the wilderness; through which it is hardly possible for a carriage to pass, great part of the way being over high and steep hills, upon the banks of rivers and along defiles which in some places seem to threaten you at every step with danger.

The wilderness which was formerly two hundred miles through without a single habitation, is reduced from the settlement of Powel's Valley to nearly one half that distance; and it is to be expected that in a few years more the remainder of the distance will afford settlements for the accommodation of people traveling that route.

Upon the arrival of emigrants in the country they generally take a view of that part which it is their object to settle in and according to their circumstances fix upon such a situation as may appear eligible for their business. The greater proportion are husbandmen.

(From A Topographical Description of the Western Territory of America, by Gilbert Imlay, New York, 1793.)

A PIONEER BOYHOOD

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WEST IN THE FORTIES

BY JAMES BURTON POND

In the autumn of 1843 I was four years old and living in a log house in the town of Hector, Tompkins (now Schuyler) County, New York. One of my earliest recollections is of a conversation between my father and mother regarding the expected visit of an uncle and his family, who were coming to bid us good-by before moving to Illinois. My uncle had the "Illinois fever"; he had just returned from a "land-looking" in Illinois, where he had preëmpted a new farm. I remember listening to my uncle's glowing description of the new country out in the far West beyond the Great Lakes, where he was going to make a new home. When he had gone my father talked constantly of Illinois, and the neighbors said he had Illinois fever.

We passed the long winter in our log house adjoining my grandfather's farm. All the clothing and bedding people had in those days was home-made, and every household had its loom. In our home, in the single room on the first floor were father's and mother's bed, the trundle-bed, where four of us children slept (lying crosswise), the loom, the spinning-wheel for wool and tow, the flax-wheel, the swifts, reeling-bars, and the quill-wheel, besides the table and chairs. We had two rooms in the attic, one a spare room and the other for the hired help. Frequently during the long evenings my grandmother and other neighbors would come in with their knitting and their tow-cards, and either knit or card tow or heckle flax, talking about Illinois, where my uncle had gone. That mysterious word was unfathomable to me. It was finally decided that we should go there too, and all our furniture, with bedding, spinning-wheels, loom, and crockery, was packed up, and on Monday morning, March 20, 1844, we started for the new country. At Ithaca our goods were put on board a canal-boat, and the next morning I awoke to find myself on Cayuga Lake, in tow of a steamer. For days we traveled slowly on the Erie Canal, with no memorable incidents except an occasional "low bridge," one of which swept our provision-chest nearly the length of the deck.

One evening my uncle, he of the Illinois fever, met us with his horses and farm-wagon. Father hired another team, and we started for my uncle's new home near Libertyville, Lake County, Illinois, where we arrived the following morning. The house was a log hut with one room and an attic. We found my aunt sick with fever and ague. She was wrapped in thick shawls and blankets, sitting by the fireplace, and shaking like a leaf. Before supper was over, mother had a chill and a shake which lasted nearly half the night. The next day it rained hard, and we all had chills, and my father and uncle went to town, two miles, for some medicine. They returned with a large bundle of thoroughwort weed, or boneset, a tea made from which was the order of the day. It was very bitter, and I used to feel more like taking the consequences of the ague than the remedy.

It was too late for father to secure a farm during that first summer in Illinois, and he obtained work in the blacksmith's shop in Libertyville, hiring two rooms for his family in the frame court-house, a half-finished building on a high spot of ground. It was neither plastered nor sided, only rough boards being nailed on the frame, and when it rained and the wind blew we might as well have been out of doors. Here our first summer and winter in Illinois were spent.

As father had a shake every other day, he could work only half the time, and we were very poor. The ague was in the entire family, my sister and I invariably shaking at the same hour every alternate day, and my mother's and father's shakes coming at about the same time. I have known the whole family to shake together; nor did the neighbors escape. There were few comfortable homes and few well people. Boneset tea was a fixture on every stove fireplace. When my morning to shake arrived, I used to lie down on the floor behind the cook-stove and almost hug the old salamander, even on the warmest summer days, my sister on the opposite side, my younger brothers snuggling up close to me, and my mother sitting as near the fire as she could get, all of us with our teeth chattering together.

So the long, dreary, rainy, ague summer passed away, to be followed by a wet and open winter. Father's scanty earnings were our only support, and my uncle and his family, who were on a new farm two miles away, were even poorer; for my father occasionally had a few dollars in money, while uncle had nothing but what a farm of "new breaking" produced the first year, and with no market for even the slightest product. My aunt, who was broken down and discouraged, would occasionally walk the two miles to see us, and my mother and she would talk about the false hopes and glittering inducements that had led their husbands to become victims to the Illinois fever.

The spring came early, and father rented a farm with ten acres already plowed and a log house, about three miles east of the village, and there we moved. He had the use of a yoke of oxen, farm-utensils, one cow, seed-grain, and he was to work the farm for half of all it could be made to produce. He filled in odd moments by splitting rails and fencing the ten acres with a seven-railstaked and ridered fence.

The farm was in the heavy woods near the shores of Lake Michigan. A stream of water ran through a deep gully near the house, and there father caught an abundance of fish, while there was plenty of game in the woods. One day he came in and said he had found a deer-lick, and that night he prepared a bundle of hickory bark for a torchlight, and with that and his rifle he left us for the night, and came in early in the morning with a deer. It was the first venison I had ever eaten, and the best. My father's gun supplied our table with venison, wild duck, and squirrel in abundance. Mother, who had brought a collection of garden seeds from the East, managed the garden, and we had corn, beans, cucumbers, and pease, while tomatoes we raised as ornamental plants and called "love-apples." They were then considered poisonous, and it was some years later before we found out that they were a wholesome table delicacy.

We spent only one summer in this place, and then my father rented a farm on the prairie, in the township of Brooklyn, Lake County, about five miles west of Little Fort (now Waukegan, Illinois), and we went there early in the autumn of 1845. It was a happy day for my mother when we moved from our ague-stricken gully, for she prophesied that out on the prairie, where there was pure air, we might possibly escape fever and ague. Only two years before, mother had come from a refined home in western New York, and she had been shut up in these dreary woods in a log house all summer, living on game and boneset tea.

We were up early, and started at sunrise for the eight-mile ride to our new home. Father had come the day before with two teams and a hired man. The chickens had been caught and put into coops that were fastened on the rear end of the wagon, the "garden sauce" was gathered, and two pigs were put into one of the packing-boxes originally brought from the East. The new home was another log house, but a good one, built of hewn logs, and a story and a half high. The owner had built a tavern and was not going to work his farm any longer, so he rented it to father and kept his tavern across the way.

The minister from Little Fort called, and arrangements were made for a church home, and we used to drive five miles every Sunday to "meeting." There was a school for the children, and surrounded as we were by intelligent and thrifty neighbors, my mother began to wear a cheerful look. At this time the family consisted of six children, of whom I was the second, and the eldest son.

Here father began to utilize me, and I saved him many steps; for he seemed to have something for me to do all the time, both when he was at work and when he was resting. On Mondays I was allowed to stay about the place and help mother, pounding clothes, tending baby, and bringing wood and water. I was able to carry only about a third of the pail of water, but my young legs were expected to make frequent journeys to and from the spring, which was over in the cow-pasture, about thirty rods from the house. It was protected from encroachment of cattle and hogs by a three-cornered rail fence, which I had to climb and lift my pail over every time I went for water.

My brother Homer was my constant companion, and he used to help me with my work. Once I had lifted him over the fence to dip up water for me, when he lost his balance, and fell into the spring. The water was about up to his chin, and very cold. He screamed, and mother ran to help him out, dripping with water and dreadfully frightened. We got into the house as father came in to dinner. I was so sorry and frightened over what had happened that I was already severely punished; but father began to scold, and then decided to give me a whipping. He went out to the pasture near the spring and cut some willow switches, and after giving me a severe talking to, began laying the switches on my back and legs. I feared my father ever afterward. Nothing that I could do to please him was left undone, but it was always through fear.

EMIGRANTS.

We lived on a public thoroughfare where hundreds, and I may say thousands, passed on their way to take up new homes in Wisconsin, then the extreme outskirt of civilization in the Northwest. There was not a day in which several wagon-loads of emigrants did not pass our door, and the road was a cloud of dust as far as one could see over the level prairie country. The usual emigrant wagon contained an entire family, with all its earthly possessions, and in some of them families had lived for many weeks. Occasionally a length of stovepipe protruded through the canvas cover, and it was known that this wagon belonged to an aristocratic family, such a one usually having two wagons, one being used as a living-room. Nearly every family had from one to four cows, a coop of chickens attached to the tail-gate, from two to five pigs traveling under the wagon, and occasionally a drove of sheep and a loose colt near by. There was sometimes a rich caravan, or association of families, which had entered a large tract of land and was moving in a body, with horse-teams, droves of cattle, and horses.

As we lived near the road, people usually stopped at our house, either for a drink of fresh spring-water (a scarcity in those days), or to purchase milk, butter, garden-stuff, or anything that we could spare. These were the pioneers of Wisconsin, and were mostly from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. They were the second generation of pioneers of their native States. In asking where they were from we generally asked, "What are you?" If from New York, it was "Empire State"; if from Pennsylvania, "Keystones"; if from Ohio, "Buckeyes." Many more Illinois pioneers moved on to Wisconsin in those days than remained, owing to the dread of fever and ague. In this endless train of "movers" it was not uncommon for my mother to meet people whose families she had known in western New York.

THE LAND-LOOKER.

The land-looker was as much an occupant of the road as the emigrant. He was the advance-picket who had preceded on foot every family that passed, and had located his quarter-section, built his preëmption shanty, and inhabited it three days, which allowed him to hold it one year, while he could return for his family. These men were passing daily, winter and summer, and the tavern near us was crowded nightly with them and with emigrants. Our house, too, was a shelter for many. Father saw the enterprising home-seekers daily, and heard the accounts of those who were returning from their prospective homes after having located; and their glowing descriptions of the country, the climate, and its freedom from ague, gave him the "Wisconsin fever." Mother, however, looked distrustfully on the favorable reports brought back daily, and she pitied the people moving north.

Father had provided a fair living for his large family--sumptuous, indeed, compared with that of our first year in the West. We had friends and neighbors and schools. The owner of the farm wished my father to hire it for two years more, but father would argue that this was his chance to get a home, and here was an opportunity for his boys; he could make nothing on rented land, and he had only been able to keep his family alive for three years. Mother said: "Supposing we do preëmpt, it is only for a year or two, and then the land must be entered and paid for at one dollar and twenty-five cents an acre. Where is the money coming from?" Father told her that many of the emigrants who had no money got friends or speculators to furnish it for half the land. Mother was not enthusiastic, but she finally consented to go if father could get his sister in Connecticut to enter the land for him when due, and to hold it in her name until father could, at some future time, pay for it.

My aunt consented to this, and in February there came a letter from her inclosing a draft for one hundred dollars, with which to buy a yoke of oxen and a wagon with which to work the farm.

So my father was fitted out as a land-looker, and mother worked all day and all night to make his knapsack.

Father had been gone three weeks when a letter came telling us that he had located a farm in the town of Alto, the southwest-corner township in Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin; that it had a log house on it, twelve by fourteen, which he had bought; that ten acres had already been broken by the man of whom he had bought the claim, and that he would return at once with his wagon and oxen for the family.

In March, 1847, we started for the new home.

We were soon in the long line of dust, making our proportion of what we had been accustomed to see for two years. I was to help drive the cows and pigs. Whoever has attempted to drive a hog knows the discouragements with which I met. Whoever has never attempted it can never know. It seemed that if we had wanted them to go the other way it would have been all right. They scattered in different directions several times, and some of them succeeded in getting back home. My chagrin was increased by passing or meeting other emigrant boys whose pigs and cattle kept quietly near the wagons and walked gently along.

It took all day to go about six miles. We stopped overnight near a farm-house, and father, after getting the cattle and pigs in the barn, built a fire by the roadside and prepared our supper. He made tea, and with the cold chicken and bread and butter which mother had given us for the journey, we fared sumptuously. Father brought an armful of hay from the barn near by, and with plenty of coverlets he made up a bed under the wagon, where we slept soundly. This was my first camping out.

At Fort Atkinson we met the first band of Indians I had ever seen. There was a chief and three or four young buck Indians, as many squaws, and a number of children, all of the Black Hawk tribe. They were on ponies, riding in single file into the town as we were going out. I was so frightened that I cried, and as the chief kept putting his hand to his mouth, saying, "Bread--hungry--bread--hungry," father gave him a loaf of bread. It was not enough, but it was all father would let him have. Homer and I were in favor of giving him everything we had if he would only move on.

After leaving Watertown we came out on what is known as rolling prairie--for miles in every direction a green, wavy sheet of land. No ornamental gardener could make so lovely and charming a lawn, gently rolling, and sloping just enough to relieve the monotony of the flatness of the long stretches of prairie and openings we had passed through. Father told us that these great prairies would always be pasture-land for herds of cattle, as the farmers could not live where there was no timber. To-day the finest farms I know of in America are on these great prairie-lands, but at that time the prospectors avoided such claims and preëmpted only the quarter-sections skirting the prairies, where the oak openings supplied timber for log houses, fences, and fuel.

Trails were now branching in every direction, and after five days of this travel it seemed as though we had been wandering for months without a home. That day we had started at sunrise, resting for three hours at noon, the usual custom at that time. It was ten o'clock when we reached our home.

We were in another log cabin, twelve by fourteen feet square, with hewn log floor, one door, and one window containing the sash with its four panes of glass which father had brought on his journey.

We boys slept in the low garret, climbing a ladder to go to bed. Owing to the exhaustion and excitement of the night before, we were allowed to rest undisturbed, and the sun was well up and shining through the chink-holes in our garret when we awoke. Father had gone with the team to a spring a mile west for a barrel of water. There was no water on our claim, and we were obliged to haul it on a "crotch," a vehicle built from the crotch of a tree, about six by eight inches thick and six feet long, on which a cross-rail is laid, where a barrel can be fastened. The oxen were hitched to it, and they dragged it to and from the spring.

Two beds were fitted across one side of the single downstairs room in our cabin, and father had to shorten the rails of one bedstead to get it into place. Under it was the trundle-bed on which the babies slept, and when this was pulled out, and with the cook-stove, table, four chairs, wood-box, and the ladder in place, there was very little spare room. By father's order, the lower round of the ladder was always my seat.

THE FIRST SCHOOL AT ALTO.

There were neighbors from a half mile to three and five miles away, and they called and offered their assistance to contribute to our comfort. It was found that there were seventeen children within a radius of five miles, and the subject of starting a school was discussed.

The school-house was a log shanty six logs high, with holes for a window and a door, which had been removed and were now a part of Mr. Boardman's new house. Trees were cut down and the trunks split open and holes bored in the ends of each half of the log; legs were put in, and then they were hewed as smooth as an ax could make them, and placed on the ground for benches. Four of these "puncheon" benches were made, and at half-past nine the teacher took her place on a chair, which had been brought especially for her, and called the school to order.

The first thing to do was to get an idea of what books the pupils had. Mother had sent all her children had ever owned, and so had others, and there were Cobb's Spelling-book, Dayball's Arithmetic, Parley's Geography, McGuffey's Reader, Saunders's Spelling-book, Ray's Arithmetic, Spencer's Spelling-book, Adams's Arithmetic, and Saunders's Reader, gathered from all parts of America. There were no duplicates. The school opened with a prayer by Mr. Wilbur.

We were not long in wearing a well-beaten path between our house and the school, which for a number of years was a thoroughfare for pedestrians.

My chief duty after school was to hunt up the cows and drive them home in time for milking, and I came to know every foot of country within a radius of ten miles. No boy's country life can be complete without having hunted cows. "Old Red" wore the bell. Every neighbor in the country had a bell-cow and a cow-bell, and my friend Matt Wood and I always arranged that our cattle should herd together, and they were invariably driven to the same range in the morning. Each of us boys owned dogs, and we knew not only every cow-bell, but every woodchuck-hole and every gopher-hole, and many a time, I fear, father used to milk after dark because our dog had found a deep gopher-hole, and that gopher must be had, milk or no milk, supper or no supper.

The first summer father planted and raised two acres of potatoes, with some cabbages, onions, beets, carrots, and five acres of corn, and he succeeded in splitting rails and putting a fence around ten acres of land. I was trained to all branches of usefulness on a new farm. Once in two weeks I went for the mail to the nearest village, eleven miles away, often returning to tell father that there was a letter in the office with sixpence postage to pay. In those days there was no compulsory prepayment on letters, and it was sometimes months before a turn of any kind would bring the money to get the letter out of the post-office. The New York _Weekly Tribune_ was always a member of our family, and our copy was read by everybody in the settlement. For three years I walked to the village every week for that paper. We children had to listen to my father read it every Sunday afternoon, as it was wicked to play out of doors, and we had only morning church to attend.

A PIONEER CHRISTMAS.

Father came home from Milwaukee at Christmas-time, bringing the flour of a few bushels of wheat, a pair of shoes for my brother and me, a new pair of boots for himself, and some unbleached muslin. Weren't we happy! It was a day of rejoicing. I remember father's going to the woodpile and in a few moments cutting a pile of wood, which gave us the first hot fire of the season. That afternoon mother made bread, and we had salt, pepper, tea, and fresh meat, for father had bought a quarter of beef.

A NEW LIFE.

We lived in Alto until 1853, and then the farm was abandoned, and my parents, with all the children except myself, moved to the neighboring city of Fond du Lac, where father could work by the day and earn enough to support the family. I was left to work for a neighbor; but I grew so homesick after a lonely Sabbath in a household where there were no children and it was considered wrong to take a walk on Sunday afternoon, that on Monday I took my other shirt from the clothes-line and started for Fond du Lac. I knew the stage-driver, and he gave me a lift.

As we approached the city the driver made me get down, and he told me to follow the sidewalk along the main street until I came to a foundry, next to which was father's house. I followed close behind the stage, keeping in the middle of the road. Soon I found myself in the city, where there were houses and stores on each side of the street, and board walks for pedestrians. I feared to walk on the sidewalks, for I was barefooted, and my feet were muddy and the sidewalks very clean. The people seemed to be dressed up as if for Sunday, and all the boys wore shoes, which excited my pity, for I knew how hot their poor feet must be.

As I groped my way along Main Street I noticed a sign that stretched nearly across the entire building over three stores. In large wooden letters, at least six feet long, were the words "Darling's block." It was the largest building I had ever seen, three stories high, and I ventured to step on to the sidewalk; and while gazing in awe upon the mighty structure my attention was attracted by a noise inside. I walked in and found myself in a printing-office.

As I was taking in the wonderful scene the pressman spoke to me in a gruff voice, asking me what I wanted. "Nothing," I said, trembling, and starting for the door. "Don't you want to learn the trade?" he shouted. "The editor wants an apprentice."

Just then the editor appeared in the doorway of his sanctum. He was a pleasant-faced man, and he asked me in a kindly tone whose boy I was and where I belonged.

"Why, your father is one of my subscribers. I want an apprentice to learn the printer's trade. I can give you twenty-five dollars for the first year, thirty for the second, and fifty dollars and the carrier's address for the third year, with your board and washing."

"All right." In less time than it takes to write it I was behind the press, and in five minutes I was covered with printer's ink from head to foot.

My pioneer days were over.

"THE PLAINS ACROSS"

BY NOAH BROOKS

During the ten years immediately following the discovery of gold in California, the main-traveled road across the continent was what was known as the Platte River route. Starting from Council Bluffs, Iowa, a town then famous as the "jumping-off place" for California emigrants, the adventurers crossed the Missouri by a rope ferry and clambered up a steep, slippery bank to the site of the modern city of Omaha. The only building of any considerable dimensions in the early fifties was a large, unpainted, barn-like structure, which, we were proudly told, was to be the capitol of the Territory of Nebraska, the Territorial organization of which was authorized by Congress in 1854.

The trail from the Rocky Mountains to Salt Lake valley grew more and more difficult as we approached the rocky fastnesses of the Wahsatch range of mountains, that defends the land of the Latter-Day Saints on its eastern border. Leaving the valley and skirting the northern end of Great Salt Lake, the route followed the general course of the Humboldt, crossed the dreadful desert which takes its name from the river, and we finally caught sight once more of civilization in Honey Lake valley, at the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada. Here the trail began a toilsome ascent of the gigantic mountain wall, and scaling the roof of the world, as it seemed to us, slid down into the valley of the Sacramento through the wooded ridges of the Plumas mining region.

The average cost of a journey to California in those days did not greatly vary whether one took the water route by the way of Cape Horn or the land route by the trail just described. In either case the emigrants usually clubbed together, and the cost per man was therefore considerably reduced. A party of overland emigrants, supplied with a team of horses or oxen,--preferably the latter,--and numbering four or five men, were expected to invest about five hundred dollars for their outfit. This included the cost of provisions, clothing, tent, wagon, and animals, and a small sum of ready money for emergencies by the way. The necessaries of life were few and simple. The commissariat was slender, and included flour, dried beans, coffee, bacon, or "side-meat," and a few small stores--sugar, salt, baking-powder, and the like. In those days the art of canning goods had not been invented, and the only article in that category was the indispensable yeast-powder, without which bread was impossible. The earliest emigrants experimented with hard bread, but soft bread, baked fresh every day, was found more economical and portable, as well as more palatable.

But, after all, beans and coffee were the mainstay of each well-seasoned and well-equipped party. In our own experience, good luck (more than good management) furnished us with enough of these two necessaries of life to last us from the Missouri to the Pacific. The coffee, it should be explained, was bought in its green state, and was browned and ground as occasion required. That variety of pork product known as side-meat was a boneless slab from the side of a mast-fed porker, salted and smoked. In western Iowa and Missouri we usually found this meat corded up in piles after it had been cured. Corn-meal, that beloved staff of life on the Western frontier, was an unprofitable addition to the stores of the emigrant. It was not "filling," and its nutriment was out of all proportion to its bulk. Hot flour bread, made into the form of biscuits, and dipped in the "dope," or gravy, made by mixing flour and water with the grease extracted from the fried bacon, was our mainstay.

Does the imagination of the epicure revolt at the suggestion of so rude a dish? To hundreds of thousands of weary emigrants, trudging their way across the continent, spending their days and nights in the open air and breathing an atmosphere bright with ozone, even ruder viands than this were as nectar and ambrosia.

The evolution of cooks, teamsters, woodsmen, and herders from the raw materials of a party of emigrants was one of the interesting features of life on the Great Plains. Here was a little company made up of a variety of experiences and aptitudes. Each man's best faculty in a novel service must be discovered. At the outset, none knew who should drive the oxen, who should do the cooking, or whose ingenuity would be taxed to mend broken wagon or tattered clothing. Gradually, and not altogether without grumbling and objection, each man filled his own proper place. No matter if the members of the party were college-bred, society men, farmers' sons, or ex-salesmen; each man found his legitimate vocation after a while. The severest critic of another's work was eventually charged with the labor which he had all along declared was not rightly performed by others. By the time the journey was fairly undertaken, the company was manned in every section as completely as if each worker had been assigned to his place in a council of the Fates. It was just and fit that he who had steadily derided the cooking of every other should show the others how cooking should be done; and common consent gave to the best manager of cattle the arduous post of driver. There was no place for drones, of course, for this was a strenuous life. Before the continent had been crossed the master spirits had asserted themselves. It was an evolution of the fittest.

I have said that these assignments to duty were not accomplished without grumbling and objection. Indeed, the division of labor in a party of emigrants was a prolific cause of quarrel. In our own little company of five there were occasional angry debates while the various burdens were being adjusted, but no outbreak ever occurred. We saw not a little fighting in the camps of others who sometimes jogged along the trail in our company, and these bloody fisticuffs were invariably the outcome of disputes over divisions of labor.

It should not be understood that the length of time required to traverse the distance between the Missouri and the Sacramento was wholly consumed in traveling. Nobody appeared to be in a feverish haste to finish the journey; and it was necessary to make occasional stops on the trail, where conditions were favorable, for the purpose of resting and refitting. A pleasant camping-place, with wood, water, and grass in plenty, was an invitation to halt and take a rest. This was called a "lay-by," and the halt sometimes lasted several days, during which wagon-tires were reset, ox-yokes repaired, clothes mended, and a general clean-up of the entire outfit completed preparatory to another long and uninterrupted drive toward the setting sun. If the stage of the journey immediately before us was an unusually difficult one, the stop was longer and the overhauling more thorough.

A day's march averaged about twenty miles; an uncommonly good day with favorable conditions would give us twenty-five miles. The distances from camping-place to camping-place were usually well known to all wayfarers. By some subtle agency, information (and sometimes misinformation) was disseminated along the trail before us and behind us, and we generally knew what sort of camping-place we should find each night, and how far it was from the place of the morning start. So, when we halted for the night, we knew pretty accurately how many miles we had covered in that day's tramp.

Of course riding was out of the question. We had one horse, but he was reserved for emergencies, and nobody but a shirk would think of crawling into the wagon, loaded down as it was with the necessaries of life, unless sickness made it impossible for him to walk. In this way we may be said to have walked all the way from the Missouri to the Sacramento. Much walking makes the human leg a mere affair of skin, bone, and sinew. We used to say that our legs were like chair-posts. But then the exercise was "good for the health." Nobody was ever ill.

Grass, wood, and water were three necessities of life on the trail. But these were sometimes very difficult to find. Usually one or two of the party went on ahead of the rest and looked out a suitable camping-place where those essentials could be found. Fuel was sometimes absolutely unobtainable, possibly a few dry weeds and stalks being the only combustible thing to be found.

Emigrants who were dependent upon open fires for cooking were often in very hard case. We were fortunate in the possession of a small sheet-iron camp-stove, for the heating of which a small amount of fuel was sufficient. This handy little apparatus was lashed to the rear end of the wagon when on the trail, and when it was in use, every sort of our simple cookery could be carried on by it with most satisfactory results. When we were obliged to camp for the night on wet ground after a rain, the flat-bottomed camp-stove, well heated and light, was moved from place to place inside the tent until the surface on which we must make our bed was fairly dry. Sometimes, however, we camped down on the damp ground; and sometimes, before we learned the trick of digging a ditch around the tent when signs of rain appeared, we woke to find ourselves lying in puddles of water. In such a case it was better to lie in the water that had been slightly warmed by the heat of one's body than to turn over into a colder stream on the other side. These experiences were novel and interesting; nobody ever suffered seriously from them.

In the matter of the necessaries of life, we had times of plenty and times of scarcity. There were places where our cattle were knee-deep in wild, succulent grasses, and there were times when they had nothing but the coarse and wilted sheaves of grass carried along the trail from the last camp. Flour, coffee, and bacon never failed us; and there were times when we had more fresh meat than we could eat. In the buffalo country, of course, we had the wholesome beef of that then multitudinous animal in every possible variety. In the Rocky Mountain region, antelope, prairie-dogs, black-tail deer, jack-rabbits, and occasionally sage-hens gave us an enjoyable change from our staple diet of bacon and bread. The antelope were very wild and timid, and no one thought of chasing them; they were brought down by stratagem. A bright-colored handkerchief fastened to a ramrod stuck into the ground was a lure which no antelope could resist. A small drove of these inquisitive creatures would circle distantly round and round the strange flag: but ever drawing nearer, sometimes pausing as if to discuss among themselves what that thing could possibly be, they would certainly come at last within gunshot of the patient hunter lying flat on the ground; a rifle-ball would bring down one of the herd, and the rest would disappear as if the earth had swallowed them.

In the heart of the buffalo country the buffaloes were an insufferable nuisance. Vast herds were moving across our trail from south to north, trampling the moist and grassy soil into a black paste, and so polluting the streams and springs that drinking-water was often difficult to obtain. The vastness of some of these droves was most impressive, in spite of the calamitous ruin they left behind them. As far as the eye could reach, the surface of the earth was a heaving mass of animal life; the ground seemed to be covered with a brown mantle of fur. As we advanced along the trail, the droves would quietly separate to our right and left, leaving a lane along which we traveled with herds on each side of us. From an eminence, looking backward and forward, one could see that we were completely hemmed in before and behind; and the space left for us by the buffalo moved along with us. They never in the least incommoded us by any hostile action; all they asked, apparently, was to be let alone.

The buffalo is not the clumsy animal he looks in captivity or in pictures. It is a fleet horse that can overtake him; and to see him drop into a wallow while on a keen run, roll over and over two or three times, and skip to his feet and away with his comrades with the nimbleness of a kitten, is a sight to be remembered.

Although we traveled a part of the time through what was known as a hostile Indian country, we were never molested by the red men. Friendly Indians came into our camps to beg, to pilfer, or to sell buckskins and moccasins. Before us and behind us were several attacks upon caravans, the victims usually being few in number and unprepared for a skirmish. But while we were in the region deemed dangerous from Indians we massed in with other companies of emigrants, so that we were seldom less than one hundred and fifty strong; a regular watch was kept by night, and the wagons were parked in a circle which could be used as a defense in case of an attack.

In the course of weeks, the camp, wherever it might be pitched, took on the semblance of a home. The tent was our house; the rude cooking-and eating-apparatus and the comfortable bedding were our household furniture, and the live stock about us was our movable property. Except in the most trying and difficult straits, evening found us busy with household cares and amusements. Our neighbors were changeable, it is true, but we often found new and pleasant acquaintances, and sometimes old friends from whom we had been separated for weeks would trundle up and camp near us.

One of the famous landmarks to which we had looked forward with great interest was the Devil's Gate of the Rockies, through which we passed before beginning the climb of the backbone of the continent. It was a far more impressive spectacle than the pass. The gate is double, and through one of its tall, black portals murmurs the Sweetwater on its way to join the North Platte. The trail lies through the other fissure, trail and stream being only a few hundred rods apart.

Two days from Fort Bridger we entered Echo Cañon, one of the most delightful spots which I remember on the long, long trail. The cañon is about twenty miles long, and could be readily traversed in a single day; but we loitered through it, so that we were more than two days in its charmed fastnesses. On each side of the route the cliffs tower to a great height, marked with columnar formations and clouded with red, white, yellow, and drab, like some ancient wall of brick and stone. The crests of these towers are crowded with verdure, and here and there are trees and vines that line the cañon and climb upward to the flying buttresses of the rocky walls. A delicious stream of water crosses and recrosses the trail; and while we were in the cañon, grass and fuel were abundant. To make our comfort complete, great quantities of wild berries hung invitingly from the bushes by the sides of the way. Silvery rivulets fell from the walls of the cañon, and wild vines and flowers in great variety bloomed against the buttresses and donjon-keeps of the formations through which we threaded our way.

Crossing the Weber, we entered one more cañon, and suddenly, one afternoon, emerging from the mouth of Emigrant Cañon, we looked down upon one of the fairest scenes on which the eye of man has ever gazed--the Great Salt Lake valley. It was like a jewel set in the heart of the continent. Deep below us, stretching north and south, was the level floor of the valley. Far to the westward rose a wall of mountains, purple, pink, and blue in the distance. Nearer sparkled the azure waters of the Great Salt Lake.

The route from the city of the Saints lay around the northern end of the lake, but, in order to reach the road to Bear River, we were obliged to cross a few fenced fields, and this involved long parleys with surly owners. We passed through a string of small towns on our way up to the main-traveled trail, the last of these being Box Elder, now known as Brigham City. Box Elder was a settlement of about three hundred people, and boasted a post-office, a blacksmith's shop, a trading-post, and a brewery. At this last-named establishment we bought some fresh yeast, which served us a good turn in breadmaking for many a day thereafter. We bought new flour in Salt Lake City at a fair price, having skimped ourselves on that article for some time on account of the exorbitant cost of it at the trading-posts on the trail. At Fort Bridger, flour was thirty-five dollars a barrel, and bacon was one dollar a pound.

We were now approaching the edge of the Great Desert, which, stretching from the Bitter Root Mountains, in northern Idaho, to the southern boundary of Arizona, interposed for many years a barrier that was supposed to be impassable to the hardy emigrant. Now came long night marches and dreary days spent in traversing a region intolerable with dust, heat, rocky trails, and sideling hills.

The last day's drive in the desert was the hardest of all. Twenty miles lay between us and the Honey Lake valley. It was to be traveled in the night; and as the numerous trains and caravans swept down into the plain from the point of rocks on which I was sitting, waiting for our wagons to come up, it was pathetic to note the intentness with which this multitude of home-seekers and gold-seekers set their faces westward. There was no haste, no fussy anxiety, but the vast multitude of men, women, and children who had left all behind them to look for a new life in an unknown land trooped silently down into the desert waste. The setting sun bathed the plain in golden radiance, and eastward the rocky pinnacles of the ranges through which we had toiled were glorified with purple, gold, and crimson. It was a sight to be remembered--as beautiful as a dream, hiding a wilderness as cruel as death.