Two days after leaving Fort Bridger we had the first indication that
winter was near at hand, even though it was then July. That night the
buckets of water were crusted with ice a full half inch thick, and
upon the tops of the mountains which towered so high above us snow had
fallen.
[Illustration]
You can well fancy how we shivered while making ready to cook
breakfast. When the train had started, Ellen and I crawled under the
bed clothing, for it seemed as if we were like to freeze, and no one
knows how long we might have remained had not mother insisted that we
should sit once more on the front seat, where we could see the wondrous
beauties everywhere around us.
Just at that time we were traveling through what seemed to be a
mountain gorge; towering many hundred feet above our heads on either
side were crags which had been formed in the most comical figures. Some
of them really looked like animals, and I could see now and then the
head of an elephant or of a lion.
Later in the day father told us that we had passed in the early
morning, while Ellen and I were asleep, a rock which looked so much
like a beast that the trappers had given it the name of the Elephant's
Statue.
During nearly two days we continued along these rocky roads, with the
mountains overshadowing us, and in places the cliffs hanging so low
that it seemed as if the rumbling of our wagons must cause them to fall
upon our heads.
The next night we kept a fire in the cookstove because of the heavy
frost in the air; then we came to a narrow pass between the mountains,
where was a gorge or chasm, so deep that we could readily believe Eben
Jordan when he said the people at Fort Bridger told him the sun never
penetrated to the bottom.
[Illustration]
It was what is known as Ogden's Hole, and got its name, according to
one story, through being the death place of a trapper by the name of
Ogden, who had hidden himself there from the Indians and was either
killed by them or starved to death, Eben was not certain which.