Having published in 1852 an account of our journey, entitled ‘A Ride over the Rocky Mountains,’ I shall not repeat the story, but merely give a summary of the undertaking, with a few of the more striking incidents to show what travelling across unknown America entailed fifty or sixty years ago.
A steamer took us up the Missouri to Omaha. Here we disembarked on the confines of occupied territory. From near this point, where the Platte river empties into the Missouri, to the mouth of the Columbia, on the Pacific—which we ultimately reached—is at least 1,500 miles as the crow flies; for us (as we had to follow watercourses and avoid impassable ridges) it was very much more. Some five-and-forty miles from our starting-place we passed a small village called Savannah. Between it and Vancouver there was not a single white man’s abode, with the exception of three trading stations—mere mud buildings—Fort Laramie, Fort Hall, and Fort Boisé.
The vast prairies on this side of the Rocky Mountains were grazed by herds of countless bison, wapiti, antelope, and deer of various species. These were hunted by moving tribes of Indians—Pawnees, Omahaws, Cheyennes, Ponkaws, Sioux, &c. On the Pacific side of the great range, a due west course—which ours was as near as we could keep it—lay across a huge rocky desert of volcanic débris, where hardly any vegetation was to be met with, save artemisia—a species of wormwood—scanty blades of gramma grass, and occasional osiers by river-banks. The rivers themselves often ran through cañons or gulches, so deep that one might travel for days within a hundred feet of water yet perish (some of our animals did so) for the want of a drop to drink. Game was here very scarce—a few antelope, wolves, and abundance of rattlesnakes, were nearly the only living things we saw. The Indians were mainly fishers of the Shoshone—or Great Snake River—tribe, feeding mostly on salmon, which they speared with marvellous dexterity; and Root-diggers, who live upon wild roots. When hard put to it, however, in winter, the latter miserable creatures certainly, if not the former, devoured their own children. There was no map of the country. It was entirely unexplored; in fact, Bancroft the American historian, in his description of the Indian tribes, quotes my account of the Root-diggers; which shows how little was known of this region up to this date. I carried a small compass fastened round my neck. That and the stars (we travelled by night when in the vicinity of Indians) were my only guides for hundreds of dreary miles.
Such then was the task we had set ourselves to grapple with. As with life itself, nothing but the magic powers of youth and ignorance could have cajoled us to face it with heedless confidence and eager zest. These conditions given, with health—the one essential of all enjoyment—added, the first escape from civilised restraint, the first survey of primordial nature as seen in the boundless expanse of the open prairie, the habitat of wild men and wild animals,—exhilarate one with emotions akin to the schoolboy’s rapture in the playground, and the thoughtful man’s contemplation of the stars. Freedom and change, space and the possibilities of the unknown, these are constant elements of our day-dreams; now and then actual life dangles visions of them before our eyes, alas! only to teach us that the aspirations which they inspire are, for the most part, illusory.
Brief indeed, in our case, were the pleasures of novelty. For the first few days the business was a continuous picnic for all hands. It was a pleasure to be obliged to help to set up the tents, to cut wood, to fetch water, to harness the mules, and work exactly as the paid men worked. The equality in this respect—that everything each wanted done had to be done with his own hands—was perfect; and never, from first to last, even when starvation left me bare strength to lift the saddle on to my horse, did I regret the necessity, or desire to be dependent on another man. But the bloom soon wore off the plum; and the pleasure consisted not in doing but in resting when the work was done.
For the reason already stated, a sample only of the daily labour will be given. It may be as well first to bestow a few words upon the men; for, in the long run, our fellow beings are the powerful factors, for good or ill, in all our worldly enterprises.
We had two ordinary mule-drivers—Potter and Morris, a little acrobat out of a travelling circus, a metif or half-breed Indian named Jim, two French Canadians—Nelson and Louis (the latter spoke French only); Jacob, a Pennsylvanian auctioneer whose language was a mixture of Dutch, Yankee, and German; and (after we reached Fort Laramie) another Nelson—‘William’ as I shall call him—who offered his services gratis if we would allow him to go with us to California.
Jacob the Dutch Yankee was the most intelligent and the most useful of the lot, and was unanimously elected cook for the party. The Canadian Nelson was a hard-working good young fellow, with a passionate temper. Louis was a hunter by profession, Gallic to the tip of his moustache—fond of slapping his breast and telling of the mighty deeds of nous autres en haut. Jim, the half-breed was Indian by nature—idle, silent, treacherous, but a crafty hunter. William deserves special mention, not from any idiosyncrasy of the man, but because he was concerned soon after he joined us in the most disastrous of my adventures throughout the expedition.
To look at, William Nelson might have sat for the portrait of Leatherstocking. He was a tall gaunt man who had spent his youth bringing rafts of timber down the Wabash river, from Fort Wayne to Maumee, in Ohio. For the last six years (he was three-and-thirty) he had been trapping musk rats and beaver, and dealing in pelts generally. At the time of our meeting he was engaged to a Miss Mary something—the daughter of an English immigrant, who would not consent to the marriage until William was better off. He was now bound for California, where he hoped to make the required fortune. The poor fellow was very sentimental about his Mary; but, despite his weatherbeaten face, hardy-looking frame, and his ‘longue carabine,’ he was scarcely the hero which, no doubt, Miss Mary took him for.
Yes, the novelty soon wore off. We had necessaries enough to last to California. We also had enough unnecessaries to bring us to grief in a couple of weeks. Our wagons were loaded to the roof. And seeing there was no road nor so much as a track, that there were frequent swamps and small rivers to be crossed, that our Comanche mules were wilder than the Indians who had owned them, it may easily be believed that our rate of progress did not average more than six or seven miles a day; sometimes it took from dawn to dusk to cross a stream by ferrying our packages, and emptied wagons, on such rafts as could be extemporised. Before the end of a fortnight, both wagons were shattered, wheels smashed, and axles irreparable. The men, who were as refractory as the other animals, helped themselves to provisions, tobacco and whisky, at their own sweet will, and treated our remonstrances with resentment and contempt.