14th. Made an early start and traveled 28 miles; passed a new made
grave, (made this morning) of a young man who accidentally shot himself
through the head, whilst in the act of taking a rifle out of the wagon,
with the muzzle towards him. He was from Illinois. We have had a dry,
hot day, and the dust has been very annoying to us. Litwiler and myself
scoured the creek bottoms to-day again in search of irons of wagons
that had been burnt, and succeeded in finding some hub bands, with
which I repaired our wagon so that it answered as well as before it was
broken. We turned off from the road this evening about a mile, and
camped by a branch of the Little Blue river, where we found a plentiful
supply of grass, wood and water. Litwiler killed a wild turkey this
evening, which was very fat. We have a beautiful camping ground as the
heart could desire; our wagons are circled, with the tents on the
outside like a Tartar village, on the side of a gentle sloping knoll,
at the base of which stretches off to the river, a beautiful grove of
timber through which runs a clear sparkling brook made by a copious
spring which arises from the ground only a few rods from our
encampment. Our horses are feeding about in sight on the side hills,
cropping the rich grass, an abundance of which they have not had before
since we started on this long journey. Indeed we look, if we except the
wagons, more like a wandering band of Tartars than a company of
christians bound on a business excursion; and the appearance of our men
does not tend to destroy the illusion, as sunburnt and bearded with
their belts stuck full of bowie knives and revolvers, they lounge about
in groups on the ground around the camp fires, or busy themselves
amongst the horses, or in the various sports which are got up by the
travelers on the plains to while away the time. But it requires a more
able pen than mine to describe, vividly, a scene like this. To see it
and feel it in all its beauty, one must be hundreds of miles from
civilization, out on those great ocean like prairies, where the sight
of a tree is welcome to the traveler as the sight of a sail to the
mariner when he has been for a long time traversing an unknown sea. He
must be there on a balmy sunset eve, after a long and wearisome march
over arid plains, destitute of water, and suffocated with the dust.
Then when he can find a camping ground combining all the blessings of
grass, good water and beautiful groves, all that the traveler on the
plains holds essential to human comfort, he will truly appreciate a
scene of this kind, but to the dwellers in cities, who know nothing of
the beauties of nature in Nature's temple, the vast wilderness, no
description would give a life-like picture of such a scene.