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.