Crossing the Plains, Days of '57

G THE

River on May 17, 1857. Our objective

en women and sixteen minors; the eldest of the party forty-nine, the most youthful, a boy two months old the day we started. Most of these were persons who had resid

ty yoke of oxen, fifty head of extra steers and

of the wagons were without brakes, seats or springs. The axles were of wood, which, in case of their breaki

ock for which was a hickory sapling, as long as the lash, and on the extremity of the lash was a strip of buckskin, for a "cracker," which, when snapped by a practiced driver, produced a sound like the report of a pistol. The purpos

in those days as a "prairie schooner;" and a string of them, drawn out in single file in the daily travel, was a "train." Trains following one another along the sam

l supplies, and whatever else we could carry to meet the probable necessities and the possible casualties of the journey; with the view of traveling tediously but patiently o

table articles almost all of tin. Those who attempted to carry the more friable articles, owing to the thumps and falls to which these were subjected, found themselves short in supply of ute

to do without them, excepting in cases of inclement weather, of whi

which the annual emigrants started from the settlement borders along the Missouri River was April 15th to May 1st. The Spring of 1857 was late,

e was the nucleus of a first settlement of white people on the Nebraska side. There the river was a half-mile wide. The crossing was effected by means of an old-fashioned ferryboat or scow, propelled by a small

tion of pre-empters. This brought us to the town of Nebraska City, then a beginning of a dozen or twenty houses, on the west bank. Omaha

es from civilization, and thereafter saw no more evidence of the

ide, like a vast field of young, growing grain, its monotony relieved only by occasi

, were crossing the Missouri at various points between St. Louis and Council Bluffs; mo

such a trip; leaving friends and the familiar surroundings of what had been home, to face a siege of tra

icking up fortunes in the California gold mines and soon returning to their former haunts. But those who were going

e "cow counties." It was told us also that there were strips of redwood forest along the coast, and these trees, a hundred to several hundred feet in height, could be split into boards ten to twenty feet long, for building purposes; and that this material was to be had by anybody for the taking. Some said that the Spanish padres, at their missions in several localities near the Pacific shore,

small spring furnished an ample supply of water. Firewood we had brought with us for th

ered by growths of cottonwood trees and small willows. From these islands we obtained from time to time the fuel needed for the camp, as we took our course along the river's southerly shore; and occa

latte consumed

ding, therefore, dangerous. We tested it, by riding horses across. Contrary to our expectations, the bottom was found to be a surface of smooth sand, packed hard enough to bear up the wagons, when the movement was quick and continuous. A cut was made in the bank, to form a runway for passage o

ed miles, as far as Fort Laramie, through open country, in which there was

TNO

n formation and scenery; composed of vast mountains of enormous height, with broken ridges and deep v