The sky is of wonderful clearness and transparency. Narrow belts and fringes of forest mark the way of winding streams.
In the distance rise conical mounds, wrapped in the soft veil of dim and dreamy haze.
Upon the beaten road are emigrants wending their way, their household goods packed in long covered wagons, drawn by oxen, mules, or horses; speculators working their way to some new town with women and children; and we meet with half-breed girls, with heavy eye-lashes and sun-burnt cheeks, jogging along on horseback.
I was surprised to see so many women among the emigrants, and to see how easily they adapted themselves to the hardships experienced in a journey across the plains.
As a rule, the emigrants travel without tents, sleeping in and under wagons, without removing their clothing.
Cooking among emigrants to the far West is a very primitive operation, a frying-pan and perhaps a Dutch oven comprising the major part of the kitchen furniture.
The scarcity of timber is a source of great inconvenience and discomfort, “buffalo chips” being the substitute. At some of the stations, where opportunity offered, Mr. Kelly bought wood by the pound, as I had not yet been long enough inured to plains privations to relish food cooked over a fire made with “chips” of that kind.
We crossed the Platte River by binding four wagon boxes together, then loaded the boat with goods, and were rowed across by about twenty men.
We were several days in crossing. Our cattle and horses swam across. The air had been heavy and oppressively hot; now the sky began to darken suddenly, and just as we reached the opposite shore, a gleam of lightning, like a forked tongue of flame, shot out of the black clouds, blinding us by its flash, and followed by a frightful crash of thunder.
Another gleam and another crash followed, and the dense blackness lowered threateningly over us, almost shutting out the heights beyond, and seeming to encircle us like prisoners in the valley that lay at our feet.