Beyond Kennekuk we crossed the first Grasshopper Creek. Creek, I must warn the English reader, is pronounced “CRIK.”“crik,” and in these lands, as in the jargon of Australia, means not “an arm of the sea,” but a small stream of sweet water, a rivulet; the rivers of Europe, according to the Anglo-American of the West, are “criks.” On our line there are many grasshopper creeks; they anastomose with, or debouch into, the Kansas River, and they reach the sea viâ the Missouri and the Mississippi. This particular Grasshopper was dry and dusty up to the ankles; timber clothed the banks, and slabs of sandstone cumbered the sole. Our next obstacle was the Walnut Creek, which we found, however, provided with a corduroy bridge; formerly it was a dangerous ford, rolling down heavy streams of melted snow, and then crossed by means of the “bouco” or coracle, two hides sewed together, distended like a leather tub with willow rods, and poled or paddled. At this point the country is unusually well populated; a house appears after every mile. Beyond Walnut Creek a dense nimbus, rising ghost-like from the northern horizon, furnished us with a spectacle of those perilous prairie storms which make the prudent lay aside their revolvers and disembarrass themselves of their cartridges. Gusts of raw, cold, and violent wind from the west whizzed overhead, thunder crashed and rattled closer and closer, and vivid lightning, flashing out of the murky depths around, made earth and air one blaze of living fire. Then the rain began to patter ominously upon the carriages; the canvas, however, by swelling, did its duty in becoming water-tight, and we rode out the storm dry. Those learned in the weather predicted a succession of such outbursts, but the prophecy was not fulfilled. The thermometer fell about 6° (F.), and a strong north wind set in, blowing dust or gravel, a fair specimen of “Kansas gales,” which are equally common in Nebraska, especially during the month of October. It subsided on the 9th of August.
Arriving about 1 A.M. at Locknan’s Station, a few log and timber huts near a creek well feathered with white oak and American elm, hickory and black walnut, we found beds and snatched an hourful of sleep.
8th August, to Rock Creek.
Resuming, through air refrigerated by rain, our now weary way, we reached at 6 A.M. a favorite camping-ground, the “Big Nemehaw” Creek, which, like its lesser neighbor, flows after rain into the Missouri River, viâ Turkey Creek, the Big Blue, and the Kansas. It is a fine bottom of rich black soil, whose green woods at that early hour were wet with heavy dew, and scattered over the surface lay pebbles and blocks of quartz and porphyritic granites. “Richland,” a town mentioned in guide-books, having disappeared, we drove for breakfast to Seneca, a city consisting of a few shanties, mostly garnished with tall square lumber fronts, ineffectually, especially when the houses stand one by one, masking the diminutiveness of the buildings behind them. The land, probably in prospect of a Pacific Railroad, fetched the exaggerated price of $20 an acre, and already a lawyer has “hung out his shingle” there.
Refreshed by breakfast and the intoxicating air, brisk as a bottle of veuve Clicquot—it is this that gives one the “prairie fever”—we bade glad adieu to Seneca, and prepared for another long stretch of twenty-four hours. That day’s chief study was of wagons, those ships of the great American Sahara which, gathering in fleets at certain seasons, conduct the traffic between the eastern and the western shores of a waste which is every where like a sea, and which presently will become salt. The white-topped wain—banished by railways from Pennsylvania, where, drawn by the “Conestoga horse,” it once formed a marked feature in the landscape—has found a home in the Far West. They are not unpicturesque from afar, these long-winding trains, in early morning like lines of white cranes trooping slowly over the prairie, or in more mysterious evening resembling dim sails crossing a rolling sea. The vehicles are more simple than our Cape wagons—huge beds like punts mounted on solid wheels, with logs for brakes, and contrasting strongly with the emerald plain, white tilts of twilled cotton or osnaburg, supported by substantial oaken or hickory bows. The wain is literally a “prairie ship:” its body is often used as a ferry, and when hides are unprocurable the covering is thus converted into a “bull boat.” Two stakes driven into the ground, to mark the length, are connected by a longitudinal keel and ribs of willow rods; cross-sticks are tied with thongs to prevent “caving in,” and the canvas is strained over the frame-work. In this part of the country the wagon is unnecessarily heavy; made to carry 4000 lbs., it rarely carries 3000: westward I have seen many a load of 31⁄2 tons of 2000 lbs. each, and have heard of even 6 tons. The wheels are of northern white oak, well seasoned under pain of perpetual repairs, the best material, “bow-dark” Osage orange-wood (bois d’arc or Maclura aurantiaca), which shrinks but little, being rarely procurable about Concord and Troy, the great centres of wagon manufacture. The neap or tongue (pole) is jointed where it enters the hounds, or these will be broken by the heavy jolts; and the perch is often made movable, so that after accidents a temporary conveyance can be made out of the débris. A long covered wooden box hangs behind: on the road it carries fuel; at the halt it becomes a trough, being preferred to nose-bags, which prevent the animals breathing comfortably; and in the hut, where every part of the wagon is utilized, it acts as a chest for valuables. A bucket swings beneath the vehicle, and it is generally provided with an extra chain for “coraling.” The teams vary in number from six to thirteen yoke; they are usually oxen, an “Old Country” prejudice operating against the use of cows.[22] The yoke, of pine or other light wood, is, as every where in the States, simple and effective, presenting a curious contrast to the uneasy and uncertain contrivances which still prevail in the antiquated Campagna and other classic parts of Europe. A heavy cross-piece, oak or cotton-wood, is beveled out in two places, and sometimes lined with sheet-lead, to fit the animals’ necks, which are held firm in bows of bent hickory passing through the yoke and pinned above. The several pairs of cattle are connected by strong chains and rings projecting from the under part of the wood-work.
[22] According to Mormon rule, however, the full team consists of one wagon (12 ft. long, 3 ft. 4 in. wide, and 18 in. deep), two yoke of oxen, and two milch cows. The Saints have ever excelled in arrangements for travel by land and sea.
THE WESTERN YOKE.
THE “RIPPER.”The “ripper,” or driver, who is bound to the gold regions of Pike’s Peak, is a queer specimen of humanity. He usually hails from one of the old Atlantic cities—in fact, from settled America—and, like the civilized man generally, he betrays a remarkable aptitude for facile descent into savagery. His dress is a harlequinade, typical of his disposition. Eschewing the chimney-pot or stove-pipe tile of the bourgeois, he affects the “Kossuth,” an Anglo-American version of the sombrero, which converts felt into every shape and form, from the jaunty little head-covering of the modern sailor to the tall steeple-crown of the old Puritan. He disregards the trichotomy of St. Paul, and emulates St. Anthony and the American aborigines in the length of his locks, whose ends are curled inward, with a fascinating sausage-like roll not unlike the Cockney “aggrawator.” If a young hand, he is probably in the buckskin mania, which may pass into the squaw mania, a disease which knows no cure: the symptoms are, a leather coat and overalls to match, embroidered if possible, and finished along the arms and legs with fringes cut as long as possible, while a pair of gaudy moccasins, resplendent with red and blue porcelain beads, fits his feet tightly as silken hose. I have heard of coats worth $250, vests $100, and pants $150: indeed, the poorest of buckskin suits will cost $75, and if hard-worked it must be renewed every six months. The successful miner or the gambler—in these lands the word is confined to the profession—will add $10 gold buttons to the attractions of his attire. The older hand prefers to buckskin a “wamba” or round-about, a red or rainbow-colored flannel over a check cotton shirt; his lower garments, garnished a tergo with leather, are turned into Hessians by being thrust inside his cow-hide Wellingtons; and, when in riding gear, he wraps below each knee a fold of deer, antelope, or cow skin, with edges scalloped where they fall over the feet, and gartered tightly against thorns and stirrup thongs, thus effecting that graceful elephantine bulge of the lower leg for which “Jack ashore” is justly celebrated. Those who suffer from sore eyes wear huge green goggles, which give a crab-like air to the physiognomy, and those who can not procure them line the circumorbital region with lampblack, which is supposed to act like the surma or kohl of the Orient. A broad leather belt supports on the right a revolver, generally Colt’s Navy or medium size (when Indian fighting is expected, the large dragoon pistol is universally preferred); and on the left, in a plain black sheath, or sometimes in the more ornamental Spanish scabbard, is a buck-horn or ivory-handled bowie-knife. In the East the driver partially conceals his tools; he has no such affectation in the Far West: moreover, a glance through the wagon-awning shows guns and rifles stowed along the side. When driving he is armed with a mammoth fustigator, a system of plaited cow-hides cased with smooth leather; it is a knout or an Australian stock-whip, which, managed with both hands, makes the sturdiest ox curve and curl its back. If he trudges along an ox-team, he is a grim and grimy man, who delights to startle your animals with a whip-crack, and disdains to return a salutation: if his charge be a muleteer’s, you may expect more urbanity; he is then in the “upper-crust” of teamsters; he knows it, and demeans himself accordingly. He can do nothing without whisky, which he loves to call tarantula juice, strychnine, red-eye, corn juice, Jersey lightning, leg-stretcher, “tangle-leg,”[23] and many other hard and grotesque names; he chews tobacco like a horse; he becomes heavier “on the shoulder” or “on the shyoot,” as, with the course of empire, he makes his way westward; and he frequently indulges in a “spree,” which in these lands means four acts of drinking-bout, with a fifth of rough-and-tumble. Briefly, he is a post-wagon driver exaggerated.
[23] For instance, “whisky is now tested by the distance a man can walk after tasting it. The new liquor called ‘Tangle-leg’ is said to be made of diluted alcohol, nitric acid, pepper, and tobacco, and will upset a man at a distance of 400 yards from the demijohn.”