Soon teams were detached from the wagons, and with the cattle (being driven for commencement in a new country) were turned forth upon the grass. Rich and abundant pasturage was stretching from the place of their halt westward, seemingly until it bordered against the foot-hills of the Indian territory in the distance.
Among the fifty souls that composed that emigrant band, some were total strangers. Independence had been selected as the gathering-place of all who might heed a call that had been published and circulated for months, beating up for volunteers to an emigrant company about seeking a home in the Southwest. It was intended, as the object and destination of this company, to establish an American colony near the mouth of the Gulf of California. Inducements had been held out, that if the region lying about the juncture of the Colorado and Gila Rivers could thus be colonized, every facility should be guaranteed the colonists for making to themselves a comfortable and luxuriant home.
After a frugal meal, served throughout the various divisions of the camp, the evening of the 9th was spent in perfecting regulations for the long and dangerous trip, and in the forming of acquaintances, and the interchange of salutations and gratulations.
Little groups, now larger and now smaller, by the constant moving to and fro of members of the camp, had chatted the evening up to a seasonable bedtime. Then, at the call of the “crier,” all were collected around one camp-fire for the observance of public worship, which was conducted by a clergyman present. Into that hour of earnest worship were crowded memories of the home-land and friends now forever abandoned for a settlement in the “far-off Southwest.” There flowed and mingled the tear of regret and of hope; there and then rose the earnest prayer for Providential guidance; and at that hour there swelled out upon the soft, clear air of as lovely an evening as ever threw its star-lit curtain upon hill and vale, the song of praise and the shout of triumph, not alone in the prospect of a home by the Colorado of the South, but of glad exultation in the prospect of a home hard by the “River of Life,” which rose to view as the final termination of the journeyings and toil incident to mortality’s pilgrimage.
FIRST NIGHT’S ENCAMPMENT.
Now the hush of sleep’s wonted hour has stolen slowly over the entire encampment, and nothing without indicates remaining life, save the occasional growl of the ever-faithful watch-dog, or the outburst of some infant member of that villa-camp, wearied and worn, and overtasked by the hurry and bustle of the previous day.
Reader, we now wish you to go with us into that camp, and receive an introduction to an interesting family consisting of father, mother, and seven children; the oldest of this juvenile group a girl of sixteen, the youngest a bright little boy of one year. Silence is here, but to that household sleep has no welcome. The giant undertaking upon which they are now fairly launched is so freighted with interest to themselves and their little domestic kingdom, as to leave no hour during the long night for the senses to yield to the soft dominion of sleep. Besides, this journey now before them has been preceded by lesser ones, and these had been so frequent and of such trivial result as that vanity seemed written upon all the deep and checkered past, with its world of toil and journeyings. In a subdued whisper, but with speaking countenances and sparkling eyes, these parents are dwelling upon this many-colored by-gone.
Mr. Oatman is a medium-sized man, about five feet in height, black hair, with a round face, and yet in the very prime of life. Forty-one winters had scarcely been able to plow the first furrow of age upon his manly cheek. Vigorous, healthy, and of a jovial turn of mind, predisposed to look only upon the bright side of everything, he was happy; of a sanguine temperament, he was given to but little fear, and seemed ever drinking from the fresh fountains of a living buoyant hope. From his boyhood he had been of a restless, roving disposition, fond of novelty, and anxious that nothing within all the circuit of habitable earth should be left out of the field of his ever curious and prying vision.
He had been favored with rare educational advantages during his boyhood, in Western New-York. These advantages he had improved with a promising vigilance until about nineteen years of age. He then became anxious to see, and try his fortune in, the then far away West. The thought of emigrating had not been long cogitated by his quick and ready mind, ere he came to a firm resolution to plant his feet upon one of the wild prairies of Illinois.