"God grant that it may be so," answered Joshua Peniman solemnly.
CHAPTER X
NEBRASKA
The Peniman family found the little town of Bellevue the most pleasant and attractive place they had struck in many days' travel, and it comforted the hearts of the elders of the party to find that after all Nebraska was not the treeless and verdureless wilderness they had been led to expect.
Located on the banks of the great Missouri, overlooking the green wood-crowned bluffs, with the soft verdant valley winding its way below, they were not surprised as they gazed upon it that the old fur-trader, Manuel Lisa, had named it "belle vue," or "beautiful view," so many years before.
This was the stopping-place of all the adventurers to the far western land. Trappers, traders, travelers and prospective settlers all stopped here for rest and refreshment before making the plunge into the wilderness that lay beyond on the trackless plains. Missionaries here made their first attempt to civilize and Christianize the Territory, and Mr. and Mrs. Peniman found great comfort and solace in sitting again in a church, even though not of their own particular faith, and listening to the word of God.
They made their preparations to leave this last anchor to civilization with much reluctance and regret. They wished many times that they might consider their journey ended here. But the object of that journey had been to so locate that each of their growing lads might be enabled to homestead his 160 acres as soon as he was old enough, and the bottom lands of the Missouri were already pretty well squatted by trappers and settlers. So after a pleasant and restful day at Bellevue they purchased the last essentials for their home in the wilderness, loaded them into the Carroll wagon, and started westward on the most trying and perilous part of their journey.
They crossed the Platte River, a winding, shallow stream twisting along over its flat sandy bottom, which gave the Territory the Indian name of "Ne-bras-kah," or "Flat Water," and started across the prairies.
After leaving the Oregon Trail there was not even a track to be seen on the prairies. There was no road, nor any sign of a road. All to the westward seemed an unbroken wilderness. Meadow-larks sang in the grass, deer or antelope now and then flitted across their vision far away in the knee-high sage-brush, and their eyes strained westward over an ocean of immensity that looked as if it stretched away unbroken to the very edge of the world.
They watched the sun go down that night as the voyager sees it go down at sea, sinking inch by inch with no obstructing obstacle between, until its red rim sank below the horizon, leaving them alone on the vast solitude of the prairies.