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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44987 ***
+
+             THE
+        PIONEER TRAIL
+
+              BY
+       ALFRED LAMBOURNE
+
+
+         [Decoration]
+
+
+       THE DESERET NEWS
+        Salt Lake City
+             1913
+
+
+       Copyright, 1913,
+     By Alfred Lambourne
+
+
+
+
+  Dedicated to the Memory of
+          MY FATHER.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+    Preface                                        7
+    From Preface to Pioneer Jubilee Edition       11
+    Plates                                        17
+    The Pioneer Trail                             19
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+"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 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 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.
+
+
+
+
+FROM PREFACE TO PIONEER JUBILEE EDITION.
+
+
+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 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 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 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.
+
+
+
+
+    "Far in the West there lies a desert land, where the mountains
+    Lift, through perpetual snows, their lofty and luminous summits.
+    Where the gorge, like a gate way,
+    Opens a passage wide to the wheels of the emigrant's wagon."
+
+
+
+
+PLATES.
+
+
+    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.
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: CAPTAIN JOHN D. HOLLADAY.]
+
+
+
+
+THE PIONEER TRAIL.
+
+
+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 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 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.
+
+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.
+
+  [Illustration: _The Start from Missouri River._]
+
+How rapidly we have grown! What was once 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
+
+  [Illustration: _Nebraska Landscape, with Prairie Fire._]
+
+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.
+
+"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 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 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 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 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! 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!
+
+    "Gloomy and dark art thou, O chief of the mighty Omahas;
+    Gloomy and dark as the driving cloud whose name thou hast taken."
+
+    "Billowy bays of grasses ever rolling in shadow and sunshine."
+
+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 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 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.
+
+  [Illustration: _Morning at Chimney Rock._]
+
+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, 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 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 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
+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 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, 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 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.
+
+  [Illustration: _Camp at Scott's Bluffs._]
+
+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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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.
+
+  [Illustration: _Laramie Peak from the Black Hills._]
+
+It did produce upon one a disturbing sensation; that knowledge, I
+mean, of how often the eyes of 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 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, 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 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
+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 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 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 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 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.
+
+  [Illustration: _Ford of the Green River._]
+
+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! 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 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 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, 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 while seeming
+to gaze down upon us! Joyfully we burst into song:
+
+    "All hail ye snow-capped mountains!
+    Golden sunbeams smile."
+
+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 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 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, 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.
+
+  [Illustration: _First Glimpse of the Valley._]
+
+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 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
+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 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.
+
+  [Music]
+
+I seem to hear it once more as when it awoke us, too, for the last
+start near the Journey's end. 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 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 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.
+
+    "O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
+    And thinner, clearer, farther going!
+
+    Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying;
+    Blow, bugle, answer echoes, dying, dying, dying."
+
+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 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.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Pioneer Trail, by Alfred Lambourne
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44987 ***