THE
PIONEER TRAIL
BY
ALFRED LAMBOURNE
THE DESERET NEWS
Salt Lake City
1913
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Transcriber's Note
The cover image was created by the transcriber for the convenience of the reader, and is placed in the public domain.
BY
ALFRED LAMBOURNE
THE DESERET NEWS
Salt Lake City
1913
Copyright, 1913,
By Alfred Lambourne
Dedicated to the Memory of
MY FATHER.
“An Old Sketch-Book” and “The Old Journey,” the predecessors of “The Pioneer Trail,” are now out of print, and the volume here offered to the public in their stead is to fill a demand for the original works. In the present book there is much additional matter to the letterpress of the first editions and, indeed, the character of the work is somewhat changed, the work being more an epitome of human emotion rather than one descriptive of scenery. These statements, however, have rather too important a sound as applied to such a short narrative as makes up these pages. Since the issue of “The Old Journey,” the sketches from which it was illustrated have been scattered here and there, and the vignettes from the original plates are given in their place. An explanation seems necessary to [Pg 8] those who may purchase the book in its new form in anticipation of its being a duplicate of the former works.
I lie at the side of a mountain road. The mountain is steep, the road is edged with trees. There are the wild-cherry, evergreens, and clumps of ancient shrub-oak. The road is now unused; few pass over it, save it be the shepherds who take their flocks from the high pastures of one mountain range to those of another. What once had been ruts made by the wheels of wagons are now changed by rain and flood into deep-cut gullies. It is a place where, in the spring time, the air is fragrant from millions of snow-white blossoms, and where now on the branches of the cherry, hang clusters of crimson fruit. The piece of road is historic. At this, its steepest part, near “The Summit,” and where it is crossed by ledges of stone and littered with boulders and shale that once tore the iron from the cattle’s feet, I found an ox-shoe. The relic had lain here long. Down this road passed the Pioneers.
There is stillness around. Over “The Little [Pg 9] Mountain” arches a cloudless sky, the wide landscape is bathed in sunlight. But this place, now so quiet and deserted, may yet become the scene of animation. The broken road is to be a highway, preserved as a piece of “The Pioneer Trail.”
THE AUTHOR.
Some years ago the author of this book was enabled to gratify an ambition to record in artistic form something of the scenes and something of the incidents of the memorable pilgrimage, The Westward March, from the once borders of civilization to the Great American Desert—“An Old Sketch Book,” Boston. S. E. Cassino, 1892. His purpose was not to publish a guide-book to the plains and mountains, for which there has been no occasion within the present generation, but rather a summary, a poetic-prose narrative of a typical journey, as seen through the memory and devoid of commonplaces, the more salient features only looming through the past.
When the Jubilee Celebration of the strange [Pg 12] journey—for it is that, and those who made it that we are this year honoring and commemorating—was decided upon, it was suggested in consideration of the singular fitness of “An Old Sketch-Book” as a souvenir to be presented during the Jubilee to the Pioneers yet living, that letters were addressed to the Pioneer Jubilee Celebration Commission that speak for themselves. Many of the names appended to the letters were recognized as belonging to the honored band of Pioneer men and women, while the others were of those who think that in this Jubilee Year those who crossed the plains and mountains in ox-teams would appreciate the receiving, and their descendants the giving of a work of this character.
“An Old Sketch-Book,” however, was a large and costly volume of a limited edition, and hardly manageable for the present purpose. The author therefore decided to place the sketches and descriptive matter in the form now used, under the title of “The Old Journey.” The prompting to undertake the work was not merely [Pg 13] encouraging but was made almost a duty by the commendations of the original volume, and had there been no other result from his labors, the author would have felt fully repaid for them by the expressions of approbation from the press as well as from those who saw the birth of the State and who watched its growth to the present hour.
The author is one of those who “crossed the plains.” As the years have gone and time has not only cast a sort of glamor over the event, but has given also to men an opportunity to reflect seriously and in calmness and intelligence, that same Journey assumes greatness in our eyes, both in its inception and in its achievement. It finds a prominent place in the History of the West, and will ever stand forth among events. Indeed the world had heretofore seen nothing like it, and in the very nature of things its repetition is improbable, if not impossible. It must now be read; it cannot be experienced.
In presenting this edition there are no excuses to offer. The author has been true to nature and [Pg 14] to history, and the publishers have done their part in a manner that must excite wonder and commendation when one thinks of what has been achieved in the wilderness, the advance that has been made in the art of the printer within the few years that have elapsed since the sketches appearing in the book were made.
It hardly needs intuition to foretell success for this little volume.
BYRON GROO.
May, 1897.
The Start from Missouri River.
Nebraska Landscape with Prairie Fire.
Morning at Chimney Rock.
Camp at Scott’s Bluffs.
Laramie Peak from the Black Hills.
Ford of the Green River.
First Glimpse of the Valley.
Captain John D. Holladay.
THIS day, within the hour, I took from its place of concealment “An Old Sketch-Book.” It lies before me now, I turn its leaves and live once more a past experience. Well, well! How vividly this book brings to me again those stirring days! Why, these are days gone by this quarter, yes, nearer this half century! How unexpectedly we sometimes come upon the past—turn it up, as it were, from the mold of time as with the plow one might bring to light from out the earth some lost and forgotten thing. This book, with its buckskin covers, revivifies dead hours, makes me live again those times when life for me was new; or, if not exactly that, brings them back in memory [Pg 20] as reminders of times and conditions now passed away forever.
The book is a reminder, old, battered, dusty, yet truthful, of what an ox-team journey across the western plains and over the Rockies was in the years that are gone.
The book so long neglected, now so full of interest, received hard usage in those former days. Before it lay at rest so long, gathering dust and cobwebs about it, like a true pioneer it was made to rough it in this world. It learned to withstand the brunt of many a hard encounter. Master and book were companions on a long and toilsome journey.
Inside and out; yes, the leaves and the covers all tell tales. This buckskin was drenched many a time by the thunder-storms of Nebraska and Wyoming; by the sleet and snow that fell upon the mountains. Between these sheets of variously-toned gray paper, close to the binding, are little waves of red, gritty stuff, contributions, on some windy day, from the sand hills of the Platte Valley, or the Big Sandy Creek (the poetic [Pg 21] Glistening Gravel Water of the Indians), or from “The Three Crossings” of the Sweetwater, or the wearisome piece of road leading from Platte to Platte—North and South—over the ridge and down into Ash Hollow. One end of the book has been submerged in water, a reminiscence, no doubt, of the fording of either the Platte, the Sweetwater, the Big or Little Laramie or the Green River farther on. O, there are many emotions revived within me by a sight of the book; they crowd upon me thick and fast! These crisp, gray leaves of sage, where did they get between the leaves? It was, I believe, on one cool September night, at Quaking Asp Hollow. I remember that then great bonfires were blazing around our camp, and the red tongues of flames showed by their light, wild groups of dancers—the ox-punchers performing strange antics; a fantastic dancing supposed to be under the patronage of Terpsichore; or, at least, some more western muse; a something, as I recall it now, between that of our modern ball-room and the Apache Ghost-Dance.
[Pg 22] Remarkable that those sketches can suggest to me so much! Yet it is that which is unseen that fills me with amaze. Turning over the leaves it all comes back. “The Journey” is no longer a dream; it becomes again a reality; I go over the long, long plodding, the slow progress of seemingly endless days. Not only do I look upon the scenes which were transferred to the book, but, through sympathy, on others also that, for want of time, were left unsketched. Incidents of many kinds thrust their memories upon me. Sometimes the experiences recalled were pleasurable; sometimes they were sad. But mirthful or tragic, pathetic or terrible, I go over them again, and the twelve hundred miles, nay, the fifteen hundred, considering the circuitous route that we were compelled to follow, pass before me like a moving panorama. Prairies, hills, streams, mountains, canons, follow each other in quick succession—all the ever-changing prospect between the banks of the Missouri River and the Inland Sea.
How rapidly we have grown! What was once [Pg 23] but dreams of the future first changed to reality, and then sank away until now they are but dreams of the past. No more the long train of dust-covered wagons, drawn by the slow and patient oxen, winds across the level plains or passes through the deep defile. No more the Pony Express or the lumbering stage-coach bring the quickest word or forms the fastest transport between the inter-mountain region and “The States.” How hard it is to understand the briefness of time that has passed since this great interior country was practically a howling wilderness, inhabited by bands of savage Indians and penetrated only by intrepid trappers or hunters! As we are now whirled along over the Laramie Plains, the Humboldt Desert, or through the Echo or Weber Canons, reclining on luxuriously cushioned seats, and but a few hours away from the Atlantic or Pacific seaboards, we can scarcely realize it. Surely the locomotive plays a wondrous part in the destiny of modern nations. Without its aid the country through which we are about to pass might have become as was [Pg 24] surmised by Irving, the cradle of a race inimical to the higher civilization to the East and West. Now we behold it a land giving promise of future greatness, where peace, wealth and happiness shall go hand in hand, and where already it is well-nigh impossible for the youth of today to fully comprehend the struggles and privations of its pioneer fathers.
The sketches, the greater number, are roughly made. There was little time to loiter by the wayside. Some of them are hardly more than hasty outlines, filled in, perhaps, when the camping-ground was reached. Some show an impression dashed off of a morning or evening, or, sometimes, of a noonday. Once in a while there is a subject more carefully finished, telling of an early camp or of a half-day’s rest. Some are in white and black merely, others in color.
What a new delight it was to one young and city-bred, to mingle in the freedom of camp life such as we enjoyed near that spot. How sweet it was to pass the days and nights under the blue canopy of heaven! Three weeks we remained [Pg 25] there; three weeks elapsed ere our train was ready to start. There was nothing very beautiful, it may be, in the scenery bordering upon “The Mad Waters,” but it was wild and sylvan at the time, and we were excited by the prospect of those months of travel that lay before us.
Between the high bank on which our wagons stood and the main course where the Missouri’s waters flowed, was “The Slough.” There, under the high branches of primeval trees, the river back-waters lay clear and still; there the wild grape vine ran riot; there hung the green clusters of berries that would swell as we journeyed on, and that would be ripe ere we reached our journey’s end. There the young, and the old, too, resorted for their bath. Many the fair girl who made her toilet there, often, indeed, that some bright face was reflected in a silent pool, a nature’s mirror, while its owner arranged anew her disheveled hair. The daughters of dusky savages, of painted chiefs—the Tappas, the Pawnee or the Omaha—had, no doubt, used that place for the same purpose in other years. Little thought [Pg 26] they of the white-faced maidens from distant lands beyond the great seas, perhaps of which they never heard, who should some day usurp their place.
During our days of waiting ere we had started westward, often, indeed, our eyes were turned toward the sunset horizon. From there would come the train of wagons in which the greater number of emigrants would make “the journey.” Often there was a false alarm. Each waiting emigrant, impatient of delay, would take some far-off cloud of dust to be that made by the expected wagons. But often it was only bands of frontiersmen, Indians, or perhaps a band of antelope. Would the train never come? How long this wait! At length, well I remember the morning, the word was passed! It was the wagons for the emigrants. The half-cooked breakfast and the camp-fires were left deserted. Each and every one went forward to see the wagons that for so many weeks would be their homes. Some there were who had lover or relative who had preceded them the years before and [Pg 27] now their lover or relative returned for those whom they loved. All dust-covered and torn were the teamsters’ clothes. Some were bare-headed. Yes, they had raced on the road. Two captains, our own, John D. Holladay, and another equally eager, had made a wager. Each one was positive that he would reach the banks of the Missouri first. In order to gain the wager our captain had aroused his men at the hour of midnight, and in the darkness had forded the deep Elkhorn River, and continued the journey eastward while the members of the other company were enjoying their needed rest.
A daring deed! But those pioneers of the west knew no fear. They were in earnest, too. Captain and teamsters alike shared both the joy and the pride in the winning of the wager.
Then on the afternoon of the same day the other train arrived. O what a shouting and yelling then rent the air. Yet the rival captain and his teamsters took their defeat good naturedly. They had started eastward better equipped than was our captain, and yet the latter had won the [Pg 28] race. Of this achievement of course we were proud.
A supper and a ball were given by the losing company. And what a ball-room—the Wyoming Hotel. It was a long, low house of logs and the dance-room was lighted by a row of tallow candles, and the music was furnished by the teamsters from the west, and yet what a time of enjoyment it was! What a contrast between the refined young girls from across the seas, and those roughly clad men from the west. Yet in the future their lives were to be linked in one and their children in turn be builders of the western empire.
Well do I remember, the afternoon, when our captain, that was to be, came to our portion of the Wyoming camp and listed those who were to journey as Independents, of which my father was one. That was the first time that I had beheld a typical captain of the western plains. And still I remember his massive form, his keen eye, his commanding voice and gestures. But his true southern accent plainly told that he had [Pg 29] not long lived in the west, but was from the land of the sunny south.
There should be a sketch of “The Slough,” I remember such was made. Indeed, it should be the first in the book. But careless hands have torn it away. The first is one looking eastward over the river toward the Council Bluffs. For eastward lay the Missouri River. We saw the steamer Welcome, which had brought us up stream, the Red Wing, and other olden time boats passing occasionally up or down the stream. But westward the level horizon attracted our eyes and made us long for the time when we should start to follow the setting sun.
Persistently, and with eager curiosity, the guide-book was scanned. For weeks ahead we studied the meagre information of “The Route.” We learned the names, suggestively odd or quaintly poetic, and we pictured in the mind the places themselves to which they belonged. We formed conclusions to be realized later on or to be dispelled by the actualities. The imagination, heated to the utmost by traveler’s tales—half [Pg 30] true, half false—looked forward to a region of wonder and romance. Already I had met that “boss of the frontier,” the western tough, who had kindly offered with the help of his bowie-knife, to slit or cut off my youthful ears. I had looked upon the frontier log-cabin, half store, half bar, decorated with the skins of the beaver and the wolf, and seen the selling by the moccasined fur-traders of buffalo robes. Before us was the land of Kit Carson, we should pass through the domains of the Cheyenne, the Sioux, the Crow and the Ute. We would see the Bad Lands; the burial trees of the Arapahoe; the lands of the Medicine and the Scalp-Dance. In our path were the villages of the Prairie Dog, the home of the Coyote and the rattlesnake; of the antelope, of the buffalo, the big-horn and the grizzly bear. Prairie Creek, Loup Fork, Fort John, South Pass, Wind River Mountains—O many a name seized upon imagination and held it fast.
And the names of Chiefs—Mad Wolf, Spotted Eagle, Two Axe, Rain-in-the-Face—they were as from some unwritten western Iliad.
[Pg 31] But I return to the sketch-book. Indeed it has made imagination wander.
The second sketch in the book is a view near the Missouri River. It is looking westward and shows a Nebraska landscape with a prairie fire. The scene is, indeed, a very different one from what the place would present today. A great prairie fire is sweeping across the plain and the dense whirling mass of smoke, driven before the wind, and the principal feature of the sketch, overshadows with its darkness a far-reaching landscape of low, rolling hills, clumps of trees and a winding stream, in which, however, there is not a sign of human life visible. The stream is a small one, probably the Blue Creek, or it may be the Vermilion, or, perhaps, the Shell. Which one of these I have really forgotten. And the margin, too, is unmarked. Now that region is covered with villages and farms and the smoke is from the chimneys of homes where prosperity and modern comforts are to be found. The sketch shows a wilderness, so great is the change wrought since that day it was made.
[Pg 32] “The O’Fallen’s Bluffs.” The third sketch is a hasty one. The sky and the river—the slow-flowing Platte, are responsive to the light of a golden sunset. The brilliant rays come from behind the huge, square, sedimentary cliffs, and which throw a shadow across the foreground. The main interest in the scene, however, is not that given by nature, but in the presence of man. It shows our long train of wagons—how slightly sketched—coming down from the bluffs, and winding toward the radiance along the dusty road.
And so—we had made a start! We had unraveled, a few at least, of the mysteries attendant upon the management of cattle; we could yoke and unyoke; we knew the effects of “gee” and “haw,” and could then throw four yards of black-snake whip with a skill and force that made its buckskin “cracker” explode with a noise like the report of a pistol. We knew, with tolerable accuracy, the moment when to apply, to let off the brake, the degree of modulation in the voice that would enable the intelligent oxen to understand [Pg 33] just how much to swerve to the right or the left. We were fast becoming teamsters, “bull-whackers;” theory had given place to practical knowledge, and, moreover, we were not only becoming experts upon the road, but also in those many bits of untellable knowledge needed to make bearable the discomforts of camp-life.
Dearly we learned to love the Platte! Dearly we learned to love the wide and shallow stream. Even if the way was dreary at times, we forgot it when passing along the river banks. “Egypt, O Commander of the Faithful, is a compound of black earth and green plants, between a pulverized mountain and a red sand.” So wrote Amron, Conqueror of Egypt, to his master, the Khalif Omar. And so might then have been said of the Valley of the Platte. Day after day we trudged along, and day after day the red hills of sandstone looked down upon us, or the prairie, like the desert, stretched out its illimitable distance. The days grew into weeks, the weeks became a month, and still the cattle, freed from the yoke, hastened to slake their thirst at the [Pg 34] well-loved stream. During that month, surely, we ate, each one of us, the peck of dirt—if sand may be classed as dirt—which every man is said to eat in his life time. It filled our eyes, too, and our ears, our nostrils. It was in the food; it sprinkled the pan-cakes; it was in the syrup that we poured over them. Half suffocated were we by it, during some night-wind, as we lay beneath our wagons. O, ye sand hills of the Platte—indeed we have cause to remember.
To the Overland traveller of today, the Platte is almost unknown. But from the time we first discovered the stream, yellowed by the close of a July day, and overhung by ancient cottonwood trees, until we bade it farewell at Red Rocks, within view of Laramie Peak, it seemed, was, indeed, a friend. As on the edge of the Nile, the verdure on its banks was often the only greenness in all the landscape round.
“What possible enjoyment is there in the long and dreary ride over the yellow plains,” Rideing, in his “Scenery of the Pacific Railway,” asks that question. “The infinite space and air does not [Pg 35] redeem the dismal prospect of dried-up seas. The pleasures of the transcontinental journey,” he goes on to say, “may be divided into ten parts, five of which consist of anticipation, one of realization, and four of retrospect.” With us, at least, it was different. From the railway one is but a beholder of the scenery; but in “The Old Journey” we were partakers therein. We became acquainted with the individualities, as it were, of the way. And then how we crept from one oasis of verdure to another. In the simple scenic combines, too, of the river, rock and trees, what change! But the railway did not follow our devious course.
One there was in our company who, like Phil Robinson, of travel fame, remembered the principal places along the road by the game he had shot there. Here he had dropped a mallard or a red-head; there, upon that hillside he had made havoc among a covey of rock-partridge, in that grove secured the wild turkey, or, on the banks of that stream, he had brought down a deer, and on that plain had ridden down a buffalo. A good [Pg 36] way this, no doubt, to remember the leading features, and special places through which our journey lay; but, unlike my fellow traveller, I recall now all the good spots for bathing. O, what joy it was, after a half, or full day’s experience of dust and toil to plunge into the cooling, cleansing waters of spring or stream. O, the Platte! But I must not omit my pleasure in other waters. Now I see the waves of the Elkhorn, now those of the Big and the Little Laramie; and, now, through a fringe of long-leaved arrow-wood, the cold, deep waters of Horse Shoe Creek. One day as I bathed, Spotted Tail, the famous Sioux Chieftain, and his band of five hundred braves, passed along the banks of the Platte. Open mouth I stared at the wild cavalcade, and while wading ashore, I struck my foot against, as it proved to be upon examination, a great stone battleaxe. Perhaps it once belonged, at some remote period of time, to another great chief in that famed and haughty warrior’s ancestry.
“A Gathering Storm”—the unbroken prairies! [Pg 37] We are brought by this subject to grand phenomena. Heavens what piles of cloud, what solemn loneliness! The clouds—no wonder that the Indian of the plain has many a legend about them!
Magnificent! But this imperfect little sketch cannot reveal the truth, can only suggest. Nowhere are the clouds more wonderful than when over, never is solitude more impressive than in the open prairies.
The clouds, the clouds! Yes, through many a twilight hour, I watched, lying upon the tufted prairie as the camp-fires died away, the clouds. Weird was the hectic flushing, the glow of the [Pg 38] sheet lightning among the July and August cumuli. But these clouds in the sketch are filled with portent. Not only is the prairie darkened with the approach of night, but with the coming storm.
Here are two famous objects; famous, at least, in those days, not far apart, and following each other in the book—“The Court House,” and “The Chimney Rock.” Distinctly I remember the day on which we first sighted the latter—a pale blue shaft above the plain. We had just formed the last semi-circle of our noon corral and through its western opening was seen the Chimney, wavy through the haze that arose from the heated ground. It was my father who pointed it out to me. It afterwards seemed to us that the slow-going oxen would never reach it; or, rather, that they would never arrive at the point in the road opposite that natural curiosity; for the emigrant trail passed several miles to the northward of the low range of bluffs of which “the Chimney Rock” is a part. One evening several of our company tried to walk from our nearest camp to [Pg 39] the terraced hills that formed the Chimney’s base, but the distance proved too great. That was one of our first lessons in the deceptiveness of space—the distance to hills and mountains.
From the banks of Lawrence Creek, from where the sketch was made, the bluffs, and the Half-Way-Post, the name by which the Chimney is sometimes suggestively referred to, are most picturesque. Strings of wild ducks arose from the rushes of the creek side as our train approached.
“Scott’s Bluffs” make a very different picture from those of the O’Fallen’s. The sedimentary heights of the former, with their strong resemblance to walls and towers, are shown in the sketch rosy with the light of the rising sun. In the middle distance, in a little swale of the picture, is a train corralled, the still blue smoke rising in many a straight column from the morning camp-fires. In the foreground are sun-flowers, a buffalo-skull among them.
Ah! here is a sad, dark sketch—“Left by the Roadside.” A tall, rank growth, and a low, [Pg 40] half-sunken headboard are seen against the sky in which lingers yet a red flush of the twilight. Two or three stars shed their pale rays from afar, and one feels that the silence, is unbroken by even the faintest sigh of wind. But certainly there will come one soon, a long, shivering, almost moan-like sound, as the night wind begins to steal across the waste and gently stirs the prairie grass and flowers.
Yes, after those years it is the Human Comedy; it is the never-ending drama! It is the wonder of that which grows upon one. It is the desires, hopes, trials, pleasures, sorrows of the race! It is the remembered action that interests me in these sketches. The book is filled with the transcripts of once noted places, but my mind, as I look upon them, is filled with thoughts of men and women. It is those who passed among the scenes who are of interest now. I recall the Pioneers themselves. I think of them, filled with hope, yet anxious, eager to begin the new life that lay before them.
The action! The search for the Fountain of [Pg 41] Youth, the desire for knowledge, the thirst for gold, these have led men into the wilds; it has taken them to brave unknown dangers in unknown lands. Yes, these, the Propaganda and the love of Freedom, but neither is stronger than the desire for Religious Liberty. Ponce de Leon in the Land of Flowers; Lewis and Clark making their way along the Oregon, the Catholic Fathers, the gold-seekers of California, and the Puritans of New England—these are our examples. And like the latter were the Pioneers who preceded us along our way. And our company, too, such it was that led them. Near the frontier I had looked into a deserted cabin—it revealed the ending of a drama. He who would have found the magic waters, the home and the gold-seeker left behind them many a lonely grave. The Propagandist, the Lover of Freedom left their bones in many an unknown spot. And the Pioneers? They, too, must leave their dead. He who built that deserted cabin had met with failure,—death was the end. But the seekers of Religious Liberty? Surely they must have found the greater [Pg 42] consolation in the hour of trial; to them must have come more quickly the thought of peace.
Action! It is true; one might have become easily wearied of the monotonous trip. The shifting panorama might have become monotonous in its shifting. Monotonous, I mean, were it not for, I repeat the word—the action. The plains, the streams, the rocks, the hills, all became important because these led the way. Ever my thought is of the road.
Countless in numbers almost were the graves, on plain and mountain, those silent witnesses of death by the way. The mounds were to be seen in all imaginable places. Each day we passed them, singly or in groups, and sometimes, nay, often, one of our own company was left behind to swell the number. By the banks of streams, on grassy hillocks, in the sands, beneath groves of trees, or among piles of rock, the graves were made. We left the new mounds to be scorched by the sun, beaten upon by the tempests, or for beauty or desolation to gather around as it had about many of the older ones. Sometimes when [Pg 43] we camped the old graves would be directly alongside the wagons. I recall sitting by one that was thickly covered with grass and without a headboard while I ate my evening meal, and of sleeping by it at night. One remains in my mind as a very soothing little picture, a child’s grave; and it was screened around with a thicket of wild rose that leaned lovingly over it, while the mound itself was overgrown with bright, green moss. I fancied then that the parents of that child were they yet living, the mother, who, no doubt, had left that grave with such agony of heart, such blinding or tearless grief, would have liked, indeed, to have heard the sweet singing of the wild birds in the rose thicket, and have seen how daintily nature had decked that last bed of the loved one.
How painful were the circumstances attending the first burial in our train. A woman died one evening, we were about ten days out, just as the moon had risen over the prairies, and swiftly the tidings spread through the camp. Next morning, it was the Sabbath Day, she was buried, laid [Pg 44] to rest on a low, grassy hill top near the banks of a stream. Never can I forget the grief of her children as the body of their mother was lowered into the ground. I can hear their cries yet, those cries that they gave, as they were led away, and their wagon departed with the rest. A network of stakes was placed across the grave to keep away the robber wolves; a short, short sermon was preached, a hymn was then sung, accompanied by the plaintive wailing of a clarinet, and prayer made to the services a solemn close.
That first death made a sad impression upon us. But after a while the burials from our company had become so frequent, that they lost much of their saddening power; or, rather, we refused to retain so deeply the sadness, throwing it off in self defense.
The outline which follows brings up a different train of thought—“Camp material abandoned after an attack by Indians.” The ground is littered with all sorts of indescribable things. Panic is evident in the reckless tossing away of every kind of articles; anything to lighten the loads, [Pg 45] so that the fear-struck emigrants could hurry forward. This was the train immediately preceding ours, and a couple of days later we passed one of those prairie letters—an ox-shoulder blade or skull—on which was written:
“Captain Chipman’s train passed here
August 14th, 1866.
8 deaths,
90 head of cattle driven away by the Indians.
Great scare in camp.”
Apropos of alarms from Indians there is a rapidly executed subject, from memory the next day, that brings back a night of peril and sorrow. It was on the western slope of the Black Hills, and there were four wagons of us belated from the general train. We were the last five on the right-wing, and the right-wing was the latter half of the train that night, so, practically, we were alone. There was a dead woman in the wagon next to ours, and to hear the weeping and sobbing of her little children, in the dark beside [Pg 46] the corpse, was heart chilling. The poor husband trudged along on foot hurrying his single yoke of footsore cattle. Still we were far behind; liable at any moment to be cut-off by the prowling Sioux. That was a night to remember.
Here are two scenes among the Black Hills themselves, one is a very suggestive sketch showing rocks, timber-clad bluffs, and ragged peaks with the wagons of our train coming down a deep declivity into a dry torrent bed. Wild clouds are coming over the peaks threatening a stormy night. It appears that the wagons must topple over, end over end, so abrupt is the descent they are making. In the second sketch, made on the evening of the following day, the train is seen winding like a serpent over the hills. In the middle distance is a valley, partly obscured by mists, and beyond it Laramie Peak, purple against the sunset clouds and sky.
The night drives were among the most trying experiences upon the Overland Journey. Usually they were made necessary to us from the drying up of some spring or stream where we had [Pg 47] expected to make our evening camp, and the consequent lack of water for the people as well as cattle, so that we must move forward. Our worst drive of this kind was to reach the La Prelle River after leaving Fort Laramie, Saint John’s, on the night which followed the making of the first of the two sketches just mentioned. Wildly the lightnings glared, their livid tongues licked the ground beside us. The road was deluged in the downpour of rain; and what with the sudden flashes of light, the crashing of thunder, the poor cattle were quite panic-stricken. It was hard work to make the poor brutes face the storm. Yet, after all, their sagacity was greater than ours. Several times we would have driven them over the edge of a precipice had not their keener senses warned them back. We would have shuddered, so our Captain afterwards told us, could we have seen where the tracks of our wagon wheels were made that night.
Yes, to the emigrant company of those days, the drying up of a stream was often of serious import. Water enough might have been carried [Pg 48] to quench the thirst of human beings, but what of the many cattle? The ox that suffers too much from thirst becomes a dangerous animal. Let him scent in the distance the coveted water, and who shall curb his strength? How nearly we met with disaster from this same cause. Almost useless were the brakes; how fiercely the thirst tortured animals strained at their yokes. It was a pitiful sight, and as we approached the broken, boulder-strewn edge of the stream, our position was somewhat dangerous. No less dangerous was the task of removing the yokes from the impatient creatures, and of unloosing the chains.
I try to recall my diary, for I did keep a diary. I did not find it among the old relics where was hidden the sketch-book, and the chances are that long since it has been destroyed, perhaps fed to the flames. In spite of slightness it must have contained many an interesting fact about “The Journey.” But I cannot recall a word. The events which gave rise to its entries grow fresh in my mind, but the wording of the matter itself [Pg 49] is gone. I know it contained the data which would give the exact number of hours in which we were upon the road, and that I would like to know. I remember writing about Scott’s Bluffs, and how they received their name. One fancied that he could see the wounded trapper, abandoned and dying alone, and wondered if he crawled down from the bluffs, and along the way we were travelling. And which was the spot, too, where, at last, his bones were found. There was something, too, about the gathering of buffalo chips, and the seeking of firewood. On the latter quest, what lonely spots we did visit! One comes to my mind at this moment. How weirdly the wind choired in the ancient cedars, and how very old appeared the boulders with their mottling of lichens, and with what a dismal yelp a ragged coyote leaped from his lair and scampered down a rock-strewn gully! It was tantalizing at times to keep to the road. How could one resist the temptation to throw off restraint, and, putting all prudence aside, wander or go galloping on horseback away over hill and [Pg 50] through dale? What if the redman did lie in the path? He could be a brother. O, but to be like the Indian; to live wild and free, to be “iron-jointed, supple-sinewed, to hurl our lances in the sun!”
This, of course, was on those days when, having taken “the winds and sunshine into our veins,” we felt stirred within us the instincts of primal man. At other times we were sober-minded enough. The romance of being out in the wilds was terribly chilled by an inclement sky. A few days of drizzling rain tried the most ardent spirit. Then it was that the disagreeableness of the time made the true metal of the emigrant show itself. Whatever traits of character he possessed—selfishness, senseless fault-finding, or those rare qualities of kindness, cheerful content, and ready helpfulness—all come out. In Mark Tapley’s own phrase, it was all very well to “come out strong” when by the warm glow of the flames or when moving along with the bright blue sky above us, but it was quite another task to remain cheerful when the incessant rain made impossible [Pg 51] even the smallest or most sheltered of camp-fires, and one crept into his bed upon the ground with wet clothes and with flesh chilled to the bone, without even the solace of a cup of hot tea or coffee.
Hardly less trying were the days of dust-storms. What misery it was when the wind blew from the front and the whole cloud of dust raised by over three hundred yoke of cattle, and the motion of sixty-five wagons drove in our faces! How intolerably our eyes and our nostrils burned, and how quickly our ears were filled with the flying sand or alkali!
I should like to read once more, those diary entries. Was there anything written, I wonder, about those silhouettes upon the hills? What did it tell, if anything, about the alarm that was spread through our Company? Had we—the unlearned—known more about the ways of the Indian we would have realized that they—those shadows—were no Sioux. Yet it was disturbing to the unknowing to see those figures, those mysteriously moving horsemen of the night. [Pg 52] Thank heaven! It was but our own scouting herdsmen. But for once, to those assembled within the corral centre, O, how too long seemed the hymn, and even the prayer! How impatient we were to know the truth.
In “The Cedar Bluffs” the wagons that are sketched corralled are not our own. They comprised a small freight train, and right glad would they have been to, and most likely they did, creep along, as it were, in our wake. There were no women or children in that train, its members were all of the daring “freighter.” These were men willing to meet with any danger. Perhaps there might be among them men inexperienced, but they must have possessed intrepid hearts. Rough of the rough, but daring they certainly were. Woe to that little band if later they met the Sioux. It would mean, for them, annihilation. What rude pranks the Indian did sometimes play! The Sioux or Cheyenne, he would take bales of bright stuffs which he sometimes found in the freighters’ wagons, fasten one end of it to his pony and let the hundred yards [Pg 53] unravel and flaunt on the winds as wildly he dashed across the plain. There was a brutally comic side to the character of the western Indian.
A brutal side! Yes, and there was often a comic side to the white man’s fear. Well, indeed, a friend of mine has told it. Twelve young men comprised a company; two wagons and six yoke of oxen made up their outfit. That certainly was taking their risks in those perilous times! Yet they were unmolested. Once, indeed, they thought themselves at the mercy of the Sioux; as truly, in another way they were. Death and the scalping-knife appeared their lot. But it was all a hoax. What had been taken for the painted savage was but a party of whites with blankets over their heads to keep away the rain. Taking into consideration the really dangerous position of the little band, there was a tragic-farcical touch in their list of arms. My friend’s sole means of defense was a butcher-knife some six inches long.
But in a later adventure, so he told me, the farcical part was left out. That was an experience [Pg 54] in which, if the tragedy was also wanting, there was a most severe test upon his nerves. He had left the camp, taking a fowling piece with him, and he wandered along a stream. He had just taken sight upon a skein of wild fowl, and was about to fire, when suddenly a band of Indians came from behind a bank, and in another instant the shot would have been among them. But luckily he had not pulled the trigger. However his attitude, the pointed gun made him an object of suspicion. The Indians were upon the war-path, but not with the whites just then. My friend was surrounded, and he must explain to the satisfaction of the savages who he was, and why he was there. He was finally released, however, upon proof that he was from a camp of whites near by. But all the same it was an ordeal to stand surrounded by those painted savages, scalps dangling from their pony saddles. And it was one that the actor therein would not have cared to repeat.
It did produce upon one a disturbing sensation; that knowledge, I mean, of how often the eyes of [Pg 55] ambushed Indians might be fixed upon one. And the wild animals, too! From the distance they watched. Herds of buffalo, perhaps, or of deer, looked upon our moving train from the plateau tops. Beyond the flaming yellow sun-flowers, amid the bright red of the rocky hills, the Sioux was often concealed. His face was painted of the same gaudy colors, and he looked with blood lust upon us. We knew not when this might be; yet that it was always possible gave a sort of aspect of menace to the bluffs and hills along the way.
Many a time had Captain Holladay with his natural caution gained from experience; his sagacity and knowledge, given a timely warning. The girls must not be led too far by their passion for the gathering of flowers. How often had the desire to possess some especially beautiful or brilliant, some alluring bunch of desert bloom tempted them beyond the lines of safety. Especially true was this among the Black Hills and the mountain ranges, too, beyond them. There was danger, also, in the going for water, the dipping [Pg 56] places were often at quite a distance from the camp. How terrible an example was that which occurred in one of the trains which crossed the Hills the year before our own. It was on the banks of the La Bonte River. A band of five Sioux suddenly dashed out from amid a clump of trees on the river bank, and carried away, beyond all hope of rescue, one of two girls who had rashly gone too far down the stream. The train remained at the river for a period of three days, the Indians were pursued for many miles, but it was all in vain. The young husband never saw his young wife again. One of the young women was slightly in advance of the other, and those few steps made this difference, that one was lost, the other saved. And the young woman who escaped was the writer’s sister.
Something of all the passions; something of all the passions—joy, love, hope, fear, and the others, too, must have been recorded in the pages of that diary. Or, rather, there should have been had the youthful writer of those pages put down upon them what he once actually looked upon, [Pg 57] as now he recalls them mentally. They must have told, too, how a foe even stronger than the Sioux, one not to be gainsaid, took away a sister at last. We took the oaken wagon seats to make her little coffin. Did it tell how we laid her away to rest; after those days of suffering, when she was carried by turns in our arms, to save her what pain we could; did it tell, then, how she was laid beneath the cottonwoods, where ripple the waters of the Laramie, and how the soil was hardly replaced in the grave ere we must depart? Did it tell of the wild night of storm and darkness, through which later we passed? The remainder of “The Journey” was for us, darkened by that ever-remembered tragedy.
Love, upon “The Journey”—O it was sure to come! Where will not love follow, where is it not to be found? Coquettishly the sun-bonnet may be worn; coquettishly the sun-flower may be placed at the waist, or the cactus bloom amid the dark-brown hair. By what strange and circuitous routes are lovers brought to meet! Through what strange and unforseen circumstances does [Pg 58] love begin! In our Company were there not those maidens who could still walk coquettishly and with grace, although it was their truthful boast that their feet had measured each mile of the lengthened way? Were there not those in whose red cheeks the prairie sun kissed English blood? The man from the west, why should he not learn to love that beauty from Albion’s Isle?
How delightful when danger did not lie in ambush, to walk, arm locked in arm, far ahead of the leading wagon; how delightful to sit amid the flowers and to feel the solitude of the boundless prairie! Yet love is a danger that lurks everywhere. To linger, ever so short a distance behind the train was a grave offense. Each member of the Company knew this rule, they knew it was a rule that must not be broken. Of course one need not make a capture as did that savage brave; one need not, whirling by upon his desert horse, stoop sideways and lift to his side a screaming and unwilling bride. Nor did one care to imitate that enamored chieftain of the Cheyennes. Should one make an offer of a [Pg 59] hundred ponies? Yet, if the Captain, upon his steed, like a Knight of old, should be found with a pretty girl riding beside him, what an example for others to follow! One there was in our Company, a youth, who had returned from the west, passing over the road again to find his father’s grave. He had come, too, to meet his mother and sister by the Missouri’s banks. Fate had willed, however, that the father’s grave should not be found; two years had elapsed since it had been made, and nature, with storm and floods had hidden it away, and so the one who slept there, sleeps there still, and the mountain winds, the thunder, and the voice of the passing stream, still make his requiem. On that eastward trip our Captain had learned to love this youth. And on the westward trip he learned to love even more the sister. For she it was who later became our Captain’s wife. But why repeat the romance?
Life, Romance, Death—indeed they were busy in our little world! The space between the two semi-circles of wagons made a wide division; it was like the two sides of a street, each wagon a [Pg 60] dwelling. One could hardly believe that in such a company, isolated from all the rest of mankind, such a separation could exist. Yet such a separation existed between “the wings.” At times the members of the one side hardly knew what was happening among those of the other. But there were certain events, of course, that would form the link. As we proceed upon our way what changes come! I mean into the lives and hearts of many. But come there new joy, or come there new sorrow, the Pioneer must live the pioneer’s life. There were always the labor, the privations, a certain kind of pleasure. There was left but little time in which to brood. Except, it may be, in the silent watches of the night. There was something remarkable, too, about the manner in which the cattle became imbued with the spirit of their driver. What individuality, for instance, there was among the cattle themselves, our own four yoke, I mean, it was modified by the driver. Tex and Mex, Spot and Jeff, how easy to distinguish their characters from that of either Tom and Jerry, or Lep and Dick. And yet as a body [Pg 61] how quickly they reflected the mental condition of the one who drove them. Be he calm, be he dejected or peevish, and the cattle knew it at once.
Here is a suggestion of a sometimes unpleasant duty—“The Night-Guard.” His was a trust in which anxiety and danger were often combined. The picket on duty at the front of war is scarcely more important to the safety of the troops than was the Night-Guard to our Company. In those days of lawlessness in red man and white, constant vigil had to be kept. On the faithful performance of the Night-Guard’s duty our safety depended. If we were not attacked, then the cattle might be driven away, and we might be left stranded, as it were, in the wilderness. Alone with his thoughts, this important one at his post, had ample opportunity for careful reflection. The youth of the writer released him from the duty of guard, and his father suffered from an accident—a foot partly crushed by one of the oxen—but as owners of cattle, as “Independents,” we must do a share and a double task fell to the lot of an [Pg 62] older brother. We had seen the disaster which came upon the Company preceding ours, and at Deer Creek we had also seen heaps of red and yet smoking embers, all that remained of the station there, and of the surrounding cabins. We knew that the Indians who had done both the acts of driving away the cattle and applying the torch, were, in all likelihood, watching upon the road for us. Our Captain never allowed an inexperienced man to occupy too important a post, but the “tenderfoot” could serve as aid.
We, like ships that pass on the sea, sometimes spoke a returned. No gloomy recital of disappointment could turn us back. The Golden West was our goal, and those who returned were but, to us, the too timid ones. In truth, has not the dream of the Pioneer been fully realized? Those men and women who endured so much? Did they not gain, enmass, the victory? And those who fell by the way—they were as those who perish in battle, but who leave the fruits of their devotion and success to others. Those young men who put their shoulders to the wheels, when [Pg 63] our wagon might have otherwise become fast in the quicksands of the Platte, and those older men and women, too, that I looked upon as they trudged toward the West with the dogged determination of age, all made possible the future commonwealth. They ate of the fruit that was raised from the soil, their sons and daughters inherited the land.
Men who now count their wealth by hundreds of thousands, some by the millions of dollars, can remember their vain strivings when poor and on night-guard to look into the future; to see some faint glimpses of what Providence held in store for them in the Westward, Ho!
Three subjects that follow are by the Sweetwater River. In one the Rattlesnake Hills are shown dim in the summer haze; in the second is the Rock Independence, and in the third is the noted “Devil’s Gate,” with its reflection in a pool of the stream. What a real blessing, though perhaps in disguise, is often enforced attention; enforced activity! Upon “The Journey” such it was. O, it was a balm to many an aching heart! [Pg 64] A blessing the swiftly-changing scenes, the labor, the unavoidable routine of camp-life! Those whose trials were so great; those whose grief was so intense; those who were so quickly compelled to leave the new-made graves of their dead; yes, even these must take their part. There was no escape. It was a fiat—“thou shalt.” The very aged, the sick would lift themselves up in their beds to look upon some famous place. The Rock Independence, The Devil’s Gate—was not the writer propped up with pillows to look out, through the opening of the covers at the wagon front, upon them? Those places we had thought of, spoken of, for three months past—there they were. Many looked at them through tear-dimmed, or sick-weary eyes. The apathy that sometimes comes upon the traveller when he has reached some famous or hoped-for place, is well understood. But sometimes these climaxes are too strong even for that to conquer. The burial-tree of the Sioux; the first band of Indian braves; the buckskin dressed, the beaded, the dusky beauty of the wild, they made a claim. Yes, as I [Pg 65] said, even the heart-stricken must look around, must take an interest, even if languid or disliking, in the passing world. There was perhaps a cruel kindness in this fact. All were compelled to hear the music, the singing, the laughing, the dancing, that followed, be the Company never so weary, after many a long day’s travel. This all could hear as well as the hymn, the prayer. A sudden shout—“antelope!” “buffalo!” would rouse the most dejected. Weariness, grief, found many a strange yet wholesome tonic.
These questions occur to me while I write: Had the emigrants remained at home, would more of them have lived, would more of them have died? I mean, would they have longer lived, have later died? Ah, where comes not life’s tragedy? Come or go, remain—the end is still the same!
“An Exhausted Ox.” This was a sight that was not infrequent. When, upon the road, the strength of an ox gave out, when it could go no further, and tottered or fell, wearied beyond endurance, beside its mate, it was a matter of no [Pg 66] small import. It meant, perhaps, the loss of the yoke, of their use, I mean, for it was hard to remate an ox upon the road. Yet, at times, it must be done. A plug of tobacco, bound between two slices of bacon, such was the medicine that was administered to the ailing ox. It was a kill or a cure; sometimes it was the one, sometimes it was the other. Lep and Dick, the “wheelers” to our leading wagon, were the largest cattle in the entire train. And Dick, especially, was big, and he, at our very last camping-ground, laid down and died. But it was from the eating of wild parsley. But, in few cases, there was hardship, distress inflicted upon the emigrant by the loss of cattle. I have already instanced one case, that of the unfortunate man, whose wife died at night upon the slopes of the Black Hills.
I am here reminded to mention another fact. It was really quite a disclosure to see the changing appearance of the train. Not alone as it changed from week to week, becoming more and more travel marked, but also as it changed in appearance, in order, I mean, from hour to hour, [Pg 67] as we moved upon the road. In making the daily start—morn or noonday—the wagons would take their place in the line with an almost mathematical accuracy. The noses of each leading yoke of cattle would nearly touch the end-board of the wagon preceding them. But soon this order was broken. Such an incident as that related in the former paragraph, or if not the actual happening, then the weakened pulling force caused by some happening of the day or week before, was the cause. And, of course, this became the more pronounced amid the mountains than upon the plains. To keep this train compact under the circumstances was one of the chief labors of the Captain and his aids.
Here is a wide gap in the locale of the sketches.
It is the result of a mountain fever. What a gloriously majestic outline the peaks of the Wind River Mountains make, and especially from that spot, the High Springs, in the South Pass! Delightsome days were ours as we moved slowly forward through that broad and famous highway, with that towering range of mountains all the [Pg 68] while seeming to gaze down upon us! Joyfully we burst into song:
We made there, in the South Pass, if I count correctly, our two hundredth camp-fire. There, indeed, with our view, were the mountains; there, among those gray and storm-worn boulders of granite, welled forth the waters—those that flowed not to be lost in the Atlantic, but in the Pacific. That dividing line, that mighty ridge was the “Backbone of the Continent.” Indeed, with our first descent, and we were with the West. Pacific Creek would be our next camping spot, and westward its waters would run. From either of these great peaks, the Snowy or Fremont’s, how near we might see to the place of our destination. From these summits might we not discern other summits; mountains farther to the west; the ranges whose bases were near to the Inland Sea? Afar away it was over the [Pg 69] heights and vales, and yet it brought a message—“You are near the place of rest.”
“A Buffalo Herd.” This sketch could well have preceded several, instead of following, the one that it does. By the Sweetwater and along the reaches of the Platte, there we sighted buffalo. And in Ash Hollow, too, and by La Foche, or the East Boise River, we had seen the shaggy creatures. Here, across a wind-swept level, between two mountain slopes, the buffalo were changing pasture, moving leisurely toward the south. They knew when would come the storms; they knew where better they should be met. Each eye-witness has told, verbally or in print, how a distant herd of buffalo appears. They resemble a grove of low, thick-set trees or bushes. On a distant plain or along a hillside, their rounded forms might be easily mistaken, were it not for the moving, for clustered, sun-browned shrub-oak. Ash Hollow was once a familiar resort for the now rare animal. A traveller once saw there a herd which could scarcely have numbered less than fifty to sixty thousand. So vast were once [Pg 70] the herds in the Valley of the Upper Platte, that it would sometimes take several days for one of them to pass a given point. Woe to the small party of emigrants that happened to be in their track—I mean a herd of frightened buffaloes. Annihilation was their fate. The herd that we now looked upon was not so great, yet it was large enough to resemble a moving wood. Slow at first, then with a headlong rush, and then, thank heaven! the herd dashed in another direction than ours.
Helter skelter, maddened by fear, with nostrils distended, with set and glaring eyes, blind as their wild fellows, scarcely less dangerous, was a stampede of cattle. No longer the patient, submissive creatures, whose pace seemed ever too slow to our eager desires, but stupid beasts, full of fury, dashing, they knew, they cared not, where. A stampede of yoked and hitched cattle was one of the most thrilling episodes of our Journey. What was the cause of the stampede I cannot recall, but its terror I will not forget. What a screaming came from my younger brothers, [Pg 71] huddled in the wagon, and I may add with truth, the delighted laughter of a baby sister. What a moment was that in which the racing cattle headed towards a steep, overhanging bank of the Platte! It was the climax to many a nightmare for many a year thereafter.
And while, through this misplaced subject—“The Buffalo Herd”—I go backward, as it were, on our journey, I might refer to a sketch that is partly torn away from the book. From what remains of the leaf I gather that the drawing which once covered it when entire, was “The Passing of the Mail-Coach.” On the slopes of Long Bluff there lay a wreck. It was the skeleton, as one might call it, what remained of a coach, that had been stopped by the Sioux. The leather was cut from its sides, by the Indians who had killed the driver and driven away the horses; and the ribs of wood and iron stuck up from the sand and gravel that had been washed around it. But this one in the sketch was not a coach that told of a tragedy, but one that went speeding by our camp, leaving a cloud of dust. In our hearts [Pg 72] were regrets that we could not speed as fast. “The Man on the Box” was important in his day. He was an autocrat of the plains. When he brought the coach to its destination, that was if he happened to be on what was called “the last drive,” he would draw on his tight-fitting, high-heeled boots; he would wear his richly-embroidered gloves; he would be the hero at “the Hall,” the swell at “The Dance.”
For us was it not tantalizing to know how quickly, compared with our slow progress, that coach would reach “The End?” Somewhere, probably ere we reached the mountains, we would meet that coach returning. The Jehu who drove it would come to recognize our Company as he passed us by. The guard of soldiers would know us, and he and they would pass, repass the train before us, and also the one that followed. Yes, we followed the original trail of the Pioneers but, of course, there had been changes. The Pony Express was a thing of the past, and soon the stage-coach would be. But this latter change was not yet. There were [Pg 73] rumors, too, surveyors had been seen near the Missouri’s banks. Anon, and the iron-steed would course the plains; it would find a path through the mighty hills. But this, too, was not yet. O, we were in a wilderness, true! No need for us to see the wreck of the mail-coach, the burned station, or the dead Pony Express, arrow-slain, the pouches gone, the letters that would be so long waited for, scattered to the many winds. No need of this, for us to know the dangers we had passed, or to make us rejoice that we had arrived in safety thus far.
Who would blame us for our times of merriment? Who shall wonder at the time of rejoicing that followed on our arrival at Pacific Creek? Of whether our biggest jubilation was at Chimney Rock, or whether it was there, our first camping place on the Western Slope, I fail to be sure. But this I know, whether it were at the one or at the other, the facts about it are the same. Blankets were stretched between two wagons, a sheet was hung, there was a shadow pantomime, declamations were given, songs were sung. O, it [Pg 74] was indeed a time of gaiety! When the evening meal was over and the call of the sweet-toned clarinet assembled all in the open corral, then what times! Men and women, the young, and the old ones, too, danced the hours away. Who would have thought there had been such a hard day’s journey? Forgotten were the fatigues that had been; and those that were to come. It was such hours as these that atoned for those that had been wearisome, for those that were sad.
That clarinet—what an important part it held! It voiced the general feeling of the train. Be the company sad or merry, like a voice it spoke. Merrily, on the banks of the Missouri it sounded at the moment of starting, mournfully it spoke as each one who fell by the wayside was laid to his rest.
I seem to hear it once more as when it awoke us, too, for the last start near the Journey’s end. [Pg 75] Its remembered strains bring back the scent of prairie flowers and the mountain sage.
Here is the “Ford of the Green River.” This reviewing has been lengthy, but we near its close. This ford of the river is not where the railway crosses it at the present time, but farther up the stream, where in the distance, to the north-east, the jagged summit of the Wind River Mountains were again in view, and where on the river banks are groups of cottonwood trees and thickets of wild raspberry and rose, and the air is aromatic with the exhalations of wild thyme. It is a stirring scene, for the water was both deep and swift and the fording not accomplished without considerable labor and risk. A half-day’s rest on the banks of the Green River, as well as the attractiveness of the place itself, makes the scene of that sketch remembered with pleasure.
Small need to tell how expectancy grew upon us as the number of miles ahead became less and less. Even those who had at last apparently grown apathetic and walked silently along, or sat questionless in the wagons, began to again manifest [Pg 76] the same eager interest which had marked the days of our starting out. Wake up! wake up! wake up! Fun and frolic must sometimes take the place of sentiment and sobriety, and so one who was ever brimming over with both, could not wait the poetic summons of the clarionet. Beating together two old tin pans he frisked around the corral, rousing with the unseemly noise all laggards and slug-a-beds.
“Cliffs of Echo Canon.” This brings us within the borders of Utah. We had climbed from Green River to Cache Cave, we looked upon the one range of hills, the one only, that divided us from our destination. Clear shone the September sun, as our long train moved slowly under the conglomerate cliffs; slowly, for half of the cattle were footsore, and all very weary. Several hours were consumed in passing through the wild defile, and night was falling ere the mouth of the canon was reached. Later, as the camp-fires were blazing, the full moon illuminated the fantastic scene.
Who of all those who traversed Echo Canon in [Pg 77] an ox-train will forget the shouting, the cracking of whips, the wild halloes, and the pistol-shots that resounded along the line, or the echoes, all confused by the multitude of sounds, and passing through each other like the concentric rings on a still pond when we throw in a handful of pebbles, flying from cliff to cliff, and away up in the shaggy ravine and seeming to come back at last from the sky.
No wonder the place recalls Tennyson’s song, but, it must be told, there were none of “the horns of Elfland faintly blowing” about the wild hilarity of sounds which were sent back from the cliffs that day.
The last sketch in the book is “A Glimpse of [Pg 78] the Valley.” Not one in our company but what felt the heart swell with joy as the sight of fields and orchards, in the latter of which hung ripened fruit, burst upon our sight. Danger and fatigues were all forgotten. The stubborn, interminable miles were conquered, “The Journey” was at an end.
Transcriber's Note
A Table of Contents has been added by the transcriber for the convenience of the reader.
Variations in spelling are preserved as printed, e.g. unforseen, traveler, traveller, enmass, canon.
Hyphenation has been made consistent.
Minor punctuation errors have been repaired.
The following amendments have been made:
Page 50—sushine amended to sunshine—... having taken “the winds and sunshine into our veins,” ...
Page 73 included the phrase 'Of whether our higgest jubilation.' This is likely a printer error for either biggest or highest. On the assumption that a b/h typesetting error would be more likely, higgest has been amended to biggest.
Illustrations have been moved where necessary so that they are not in the middle of a paragraph.
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