CHAPTER I._The City of the Saints, and Across the Rocky Mountains to California

Transcriber’s Notes

Texts printed in italics, bold face and small capitals have been

transcribed _between underscores_, =between equal signs= and as ALL

CAPITALS respectively. Superscript texts have been transcribed as

^{text}.

More Transcriber’s Notes may be found at the end of this text.

[Illustration: GREAT SALT LAKE CITY. (From the North.)]

THE CITY OF THE SAINTS,

AND

ACROSS THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS TO CALIFORNIA.

RICHARD F. BURTON,

AUTHOR OF

“THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA,” ETC.

With Illustrations.

NEW YORK:

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,

FRANKLIN SQUARE.

1862.

“Clear your mind of cant.”--JOHNSON.

“MONTESINOS.--America is in more danger from religious fanaticism.

The government there not thinking it necessary to provide religious

instruction for the people in any of the new states, the prevalence

of superstition, and that, perhaps, in some wild and terrible shape,

may be looked for as one likely consequence of this great and

portentous omission. An Old Man of the Mountain might find dupes and

followers as readily as the All-friend Jemima; and the next Aaron

Burr who seeks to carve a kingdom for himself out of the overgrown

territories of the Union, may discern that fanaticism is the most

effective weapon with which ambition can arm itself; that the way

for both is prepared by that immorality which the want of religion

naturally and necessarily induces, and that camp-meetings may be

very well directed to forward the designs of military prophets. Were

there another Mohammed to arise, there is no part of the world where

he would find more scope or fairer opportunity than in that part of

the Anglo-American Union into which the older states continually

discharge the restless part of their population, leaving laws and

Gospel to overtake it if they can, for in the march of modern

colonization both are left behind.”

_This remarkable prophecy appeared from the pen of Robert Southey,

the Poet-Laureate, in March, 1829_ (“_Sir Thomas More; or, Colloquies

on the Progress and Prospects of Society_,” vol. i., Part II., “_The

Reformation--Dissenters--Methodists_.”)

Dedication.

RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES.

I HAVE PREFIXED YOUR NAME, DEAR MILNES, TO “THE CITY OF THE SAINTS:”

THE NAME OF A LINGUIST, TRAVELER, POET, AND, ABOVE ALL, A MAN OF

INTELLIGENT INSIGHT INTO THE THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS OF HIS BROTHER MEN.

PREFACE.

Unaccustomed, of late years at least, to deal with tales of twice-told

travel, I can not but feel, especially when, as in the present case,

so much detail has been expended upon the trivialities of a Diary,

the want of that freshness and originality which would have helped

the reader over a little lengthiness. My best excuse is the following

extract from the lexicographer’s “Journey to the Western Islands,” made

in company with Mr. Boswell during the year of grace 1773, and upheld

even at that late hour as somewhat a feat in the locomotive line.

“These diminutive observations seem to take away something from the

dignity of writing, and therefore are never communicated but with

hesitation, and a little fear of abasement and contempt. But it must be

remembered that life consists not of a series of illustrious actions or

elegant enjoyments; the greater part of our time passes in compliance

with necessities, in the performance of daily duties, in the removal of

small inconveniences, in the procurement of petty pleasures, and we are

well or ill at ease as the main stream of life glides on smoothly, or

is ruffled by small obstacles and frequent interruptions.”

True! and as the novelist claims his right to elaborate, in the

“domestic epic,” the most trivial scenes of household routine, so the

traveler may be allowed to enlarge, when copying nature in his humbler

way, upon the subject of his little drama, and, not confining himself

to the great, the good, and the beautiful, nor suffering himself

to be wholly engrossed by the claims of cotton, civilization, and

Christianity, useful knowledge and missionary enterprise, to _desipere

in loco_ by expatiating upon his bed, his meat, and his drink.

The notes forming the ground-work of this volume were written on patent

improved metallic pocket-books in sight of the objects which attracted

my attention. The old traveler is again right when he remarks: “There

is yet another cause of error not always easily surmounted, though

more dangerous to the veracity of itinerary narratives than imperfect

mensuration. An observer deeply impressed by any remarkable spectacle

does not suppose that the traces will soon vanish from his mind,

and, having commonly no great convenience for writing”--Penny and

Letts are of a later date--“defers the description to a time of more

leisure and better accommodation. He who has not made the experiment,

or is not accustomed to require rigorous accuracy from himself,

will scarcely believe how much a few hours take from certainty of

knowledge and distinctness of imagery; how the succession of objects

will be broken, how separate parts will be confused, and how many

particular features and discriminations will be found compressed and

conglobated with one gross and general idea.” Brave words, somewhat

pompous and diffused, yet worthy to be written in letters of gold. But,

though of the same opinion with M. Charles Didier, the Miso-Albion

(Séjour chez le Grand-Chérif de la Mekkeh, Preface, p. vi.), when

he characterizes “un voyage de fantaisie” as “le pire de tous les

romans,” and with Admiral Fitzroy (Hints to Travelers, p. 3), that

the descriptions should be written with the objects in view, I would

avoid the other extreme, viz., that of publishing, as our realistic

age is apt to do, mere photographic representations. Byron could not

write verse when on Lake Leman, and the traveler who puts forth his

narrative without after-study and thought will produce a kind of

Persian picture, pre-Raphaelitic enough, no doubt, but lacking distance

and perspective--in artists’ phrase, depth and breadth--in fact, a

narrative about as pleasing to the reader’s mind as the sage and

saleratus prairies of the Far West would be to his ken.

In working up this book I have freely used authorities well known

across the water, but more or less rare in England. The books

principally borrowed from are “The Prairie Traveler,” by Captain

Marcy; “Explorations of Nebraska,” by Lieutenant G. A. Warren; and

Mr. Bartlett’s “Dictionary of Americanisms.” To describe these

regions without the aid of their first explorers, Messrs. Frémont and

Stansbury, would of course have been impossible. If I have not always

specified the authority for a statement, it has been rather for the

purpose of not wearying the reader by repetitions than with the view of

enriching my pages at the expense of others.

In commenting upon what was seen and heard, I have endeavored to

assume--whether successfully or not the public will decide--the

cosmopolitan character, and to avoid the capital error, especially

in treating of things American, of looking at them from the

fancied vantage-ground of an English point of view. I hold the

Anglo-Scandinavian[1] of the New World to be in most things equal,

in many inferior, and in many superior, to his cousin in the Old;

and that a gentleman, that is to say, a man of education, probity,

and honor--not, as I was once told, one who must get _on onner_

and _onnest_--is every where the same, though living in separate

hemispheres. If, in the present transition state of the Far West, the

broad lands lying between the Missouri River and the Sierra Nevada have

occasionally been handled somewhat roughly, I have done no more than

I should have permitted myself to do while treating of rambles beyond

railways through the semi-civilized parts of Great Britain, with their

“pleasant primitive populations”--Wales, for instance, or Cornwall.

[1] The word is proposed by Dr. Norton Shaw, Secretary to the Royal

Geographical Society, and should be generally adopted. Anglo-Saxon is

to Anglo-Scandinavian what Indo-Germanic is to Indo-European; both

serve to humor the absurd pretensions of claimants whose principal

claim to distinction is pretentiousness. The coupling England with

Saxony suggests to my memory a toast once proposed after a patriotic

and fusional political feed in the Isle of the Knights--“Malta and

England united can conquer the world.”

I need hardly say that this elaborate account of the Holy City of the

West and its denizens would not have seen the light so soon after the

appearance of a “Journey to Great Salt Lake City,” by M. Jules Remy,

had there not been much left to say. The French naturalist passed

through the Mormon Settlements in 1855, and five years in the Far West

are equal to fifty in less conservative lands; the results of which

are, that the relation of my experiences will in no way clash with his,

or prove a tiresome repetition to the reader of both.

If in parts of this volume there appear a tendency to look upon

things generally in their ludicrous or absurd aspects--from which

nothing sublunary is wholly exempt--my excuse must be _sic me natura

fecit_. Democritus was not, I believe, a whit the worse philosopher

than Heraclitus. The Procreation of Mirth should be a theme far more

sympathetic than the Anatomy of Melancholy, and the old Roman gentleman

had a perfect right to challenge all objectors with

ridentem dicere verum

Quid vetat?

Finally, I would again solicit forbearance touching certain errors of

omission and commission which are to be found in these pages. Her most

gracious majesty has been pleased to honor me with an appointment as

Consul at Fernando Po, in the Bight of Biafra, and the necessity of an

early departure has limited me to a single revise.

14 ST. JAMES’ SQUARE, 1st July, 1861.

CONTENTS.

CHAP. PAGE

I. WHY I WENT TO GREAT SALT LAKE CITY. -- THE VARIOUS ROUTES.

-- THE LINE OF COUNTRY TRAVERSED. -- DIARIES AND

DISQUISITIONS. 1

II. THE SIOUX OR DAKOTAHS. 93

III. CONCLUDING THE ROUTE TO THE GREAT SALT LAKE CITY. 131

IV. FIRST WEEK AT GREAT SALT LAKE CITY. -- PRELIMINARIES. 203

V. SECOND WEEK AT GREAT SALT LAKE CITY. -- VISIT TO THE

PROPHET. 237

VI. DESCRIPTIVE GEOGRAPHY, ETHNOLOGY, AND STATISTICS OF UTAH

TERRITORY. 272

VII. THIRD WEEK AT GREAT SALT LAKE CITY. -- EXCURSIONS. 322

VIII. EXCURSIONS CONTINUED. 343

IX. LATTER-DAY SAINTS. -- OF THE MORMON RELIGION. 361

X. FARTHER OBSERVATIONS AT GREAT SALT LAKE CITY. 417

XI. LAST DAYS AT GREAT SALT LAKE CITY. 441

XII. TO RUBY VALLEY. 443

XIII. TO CARSON VALLEY. 473

CONCLUSION. 499

APPENDICES. 503

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

1. GREAT SALT LAKE CITY FROM THE NORTH _Frontispiece._

2. ROUTE FROM THE MISSOURI RIVER TO THE PACIFIC _to face_ 1

3. MAP OF THE WASACH MOUNTAINS AND GREAT SALT LAKE „ 1

4. GENERAL MAP OF NORTH AMERICA „ 1

5. THE WESTERN YOKE 23

6.CHIMNEY ROCK 74

7. SCOTT’S BLUFFS 77

8. INDIANS 94

9. PLAN OF GREAT SALT LAKE CITY _to face_ 193

10. STORES IN MAIN STREET 199

11. ENDOWMENT HOUSE AND TABERNACLE 221

12. THE PROPHET’S BLOCK 247

13. THE TABERNACLE 259

14. ANCIENT LAKE BENCH-LAND 272

15. THE DEAD SEA 322

16. ENSIGN PEAK 358

17. DESERÉT ALPHABET 420

18. MOUNT NEBO 443

19. FIRST VIEW OF CARSON LAKE 490

20. VIRGINIA CITY 498

21. IN THE SIERRA NEVADA 502

[Illustration:

Route from the

MISSOURI RIVER

to the

PACIFIC.

_Route of Capt^{n.} Burton_]

[Illustration:

The

Wahsatch Mountains

GREAT SALT LAKE

(_from Capt^{n.} Stansbury_)]

[Illustration:

NORTH

AMERICA

_Engraved by_ E. Weller _34. Red Lion Square._

_London, Longman & Co._]

THE CITY OF THE SAINTS.

CHAPTER I.

Why I went to Great Salt Lake City.--The various Routes.--The Line of

Country traversed.--Diaries and Disquisitions.

A tour through the domains of Uncle Samuel without visiting the

wide regions of the Far West would be, to use a novel simile, like

seeing Hamlet with the part of Prince of Denmark, by desire, omitted.

Moreover, I had long determined to add the last new name to the list

of “Holy Cities;” to visit the young rival, _soi-disant_, of Memphis,

Benares, Jerusalem, Rome, Meccah; and after having studied the

beginnings of a mighty empire “in that New World which is the Old,” to

observe the origin and the working of a regular go-ahead Western and

Columbian revelation. Mingled with the wish of prospecting the City of

the Great Salt Lake in a spiritual point of view, of seeing Utah as

it is, not as it is said to be, was the mundane desire of enjoying a

little skirmishing with the savages, who in the days of Harrison and

Jackson had given the pale faces tough work to do, and that failing,

of inspecting the line of route which Nature, according to the general

consensus of guide-books, has pointed out as the proper, indeed the

only practical direction for a railway between the Atlantic and the

Pacific. The commerce of the world, the Occidental Press had assured

me, is undergoing its grand climacteric: the resources of India and the

nearer orient are now well-nigh cleared of “loot,” and our sons, if

they would walk in the paths of their papas, must look to Cipangri and

the parts about Cathay for _their_ annexations.

The Man was ready, the Hour hardly appeared propitious for other than

belligerent purposes. Throughout the summer of 1860 an Indian war was

raging in Nebraska; the Comanches, Kiowas, and Cheyennes were “out;”

the Federal government had dispatched three columns to the centres

of confusion; intestine feuds among the aborigines were talked of;

the Dakotah or Sioux had threatened to “wipe out” their old foe the

Pawnee, both tribes being possessors of the soil over which the road

ran. Horrible accounts of murdered post-boys and cannibal emigrants,

greatly exaggerated, as usual, for private and public purposes,

filled the papers, and that nothing might be wanting, the following

positive assertion (I afterward found it to be, as Sir Charles Napier

characterized one of a Bombay editor’s saying, “a marked and emphatic

lie”) was copied by full half the press:

“Utah has a population of some fifty-two or fifty-three thousand--more

or less--rascals. Governor Cumming has informed the President exactly

how matters stand in respect to them. Neither life nor property is

safe, he says, and bands of depredators roam unpunished through the

territory. The United States judges have abandoned their offices, and

the law is boldly defied every where. He requests that 500 soldiers

may be retained at Utah to afford some kind of protection to American

citizens who are obliged to remain here.”

“Mormon” had in fact become a word of fear; the Gentiles looked upon

the Latter-Day Saints much as our crusading ancestors regarded the

“Hashshashiyun,” whose name, indeed, was almost enough to frighten

them. Mr. Brigham Young was the Shaykh-el-Jebel, the Old Man of

the Hill redivivus, Messrs. Kimball and Wells were the chief of

his Fidawin, and “Zion on the tops of the mountains” formed a fair

representation of Alamut.

“Going among the Mormons!” said Mr. M---- to me at New Orleans; “they

are shooting and cutting one another in all directions; how can _you_

expect to escape?”

Another general assertion was that “White Indians”--those Mormons

again!--had assisted the “Washoes,” “Pah Utes,” and “Bannacks” in the

fatal affair near Honey Lake, where Major Ormsby, of the militia, a

military frontier-lawyer, and his forty men, lost the numbers of their

mess.

But sagely thus reflecting that “dangers which loom large from afar

generally lose size as one draws near;” that rumors of wars might

have arisen, as they are wont to do, from the political necessity

for another “Indian botheration,” as editors call it; that Governor

Cumming’s name might have been used in vain; that even the President

might not have been a Pope, infallible; and that the Mormons might

turn out somewhat less black than they were painted; moreover, having

so frequently and willfully risked the chances of an “I told you so”

from the lips of friends, those “prophets of the past;” and, finally,

having been so much struck with the discovery by some Western man

of an enlarged truth, viz., that the bugbear approached has more

affinity to the bug than to the bear, I resolved to risk the chance

of the “red nightcap” from the bloodthirsty Indian and the poisoned

bowie-dagger--without my Eleonora or Berengaria--from the jealous

Latter-Day Saints. I forthwith applied myself to the audacious task

with all the recklessness of a “party” from town precipitating himself

for the first time into “foreign parts” about Calais.

And, first, a few words touching routes.

[THE PACIFIC RAILROAD]

As all the world knows, there are three main lines proposed for a

“Pacific Railroad” between the Mississippi and the Western Ocean, the

Northern, Central, and Southern.[2]

[2] The following table shows the lengths, comparative costs, etc.,

of the several routes explored for a railroad from the Mississippi

to the Pacific, as extracted from the Speech of the Hon. Jefferson

Davis, of Mississippi, on the Pacific Railway Bill in the United

States Senate, January, 1859, and quoted by the Hon. Sylvester Maury

in the “Geography and Resources of Arizona and Sonora.”

+-----------------+------+-------+-----------+-------+--------+-------+

| | pro- | as- | Compar- | of | being | of the|

+-----------------+------+-------+-----------+-------+--------+-------+

|Paul to Seattle | 1955 | 18,654|135,871,000| 535 | 1490 | 6,044|

+-----------------+------+-------+-----------+-------+--------+-------+

|Paul to Vancouver| 1800 | 17,645|425,781,000| 374 | 1490 | 6,044|

+-----------------+------+-------+-----------+-------+--------+-------+

|viâ South Pass, | | 29,120| | | | |

|to Benicia | 2299 | [3] |122,770,000| 899 | 1400 | 8,373|

+-----------------+------+-------+-----------+-------+--------+-------+

|Francisco | 2325 | [4] | ticable. | 865 | 1460 | 10,032|

+-----------------+------+-------+-----------+-------+--------+-------+

|to Benicia | 2535 | [5] | ticable. | 915 | 1620 | 10,032|

+-----------------+------+-------+-----------+-------+--------+-------+

|phis to San Fran-| | 48,521| | | | |

|cisco | 2366 | [4] |113,000,000| 916 | 1450 | 7,550|

+-----------------+------+-------+-----------+-------+--------+-------+

|Memphis to San | | 48,862| | | | |

|Pedro | 2090 | [4] | 99,000,000| 690 | 1400 | 7,550|

+-----------------+------+-------+-----------+-------+--------+-------+

|to San Francisco | | 38,200| | | | |

|by coast route | 2174 | [6] | 94,000,000| 984 | 1190 | 5,717|

+-----------------+------+-------+-----------+-------+--------+-------+

|Gaines’ Landing | | 30,181| | | | |

|to San Pedro | 1748 | [6] | 72,000,000| 558 | 1190 | 5,717|

+-----------------+------+-------+-----------+-------+--------+-------+

|Gaines’ Landing | | 33,454| | | | |

|to San Diego | 1683 | [6] | 72,000,000| 524 | 1159 | 5,717|

+-----------------+------+-------+-----------+-------+--------+-------+

[3] The ascents and descents between Rock Island and Council Bluffs

are not known, and therefore not included in this sum.

[4] The ascents and descents between St. Louis and Westport are not

known, and therefore not included in this sum.

[5] The ascents and descents between Memphis and Fort Smith are not

known, and therefore not included in this sum.

[6] The ascents and descents between Gaines’ Landing and Fulton are

not known, and therefore not included in this sum.

The first, or British, was in my case not to be thought of; it involves

semi-starvation, possibly a thorough plundering by the Bedouins, and,

what was far worse, five or six months of slow travel. The third,

or Southern, known as the Butterfield or American Express, offered

to start me in an ambulance from St. Louis, and to pass me through

Arkansas, El Paso, Fort Yuma on the Gila River, in fact through the

vilest and most desolate portion of the West. Twenty-four mortal days

and nights--twenty-five being schedule time--must be spent in that

ambulance; passengers becoming crazy by whisky, mixed with want of

sleep, are often obliged to be strapped to their seats; their meals,

dispatched during the ten-minute halts, are simply abominable, the

heats are excessive, the climate malarious; lamps may not be used at

night for fear of unexisting Indians: briefly, there is no end to

this Via Mala’s miseries. The line received from the United States

government upward of half a million of dollars per annum for carrying

the mails, and its contract had still nearly two years to run.

There remained, therefore, the central route, which has two branches.

You may start by stage to the gold regions about Denver City or Pike’s

Peak, and thence, if not accidentally or purposely shot, you may

proceed by an uncertain ox-train to Great Salt Lake City, which latter

part can not take less than thirty-five days. On the other hand, there

is “the great emigration route” from Missouri to California and Oregon,

over which so many thousands have traveled within the past few years.

I quote from a useful little volume, “The Prairie Traveler,”[7] by

Randolph B. Marcy, Captain U. S. Army. “The track is broad, well worn,

and can not be mistaken. It has received the major part of the Mormon

emigration, and was traversed by the army in its march to Utah in 1857.”

[7] Printed by Messrs. Harper & Brothers, New York, 1859, and Messrs.

Sampson Low, Son, and Co., Ludgate Hill, and amply meriting the

honors of a second edition.

The mail-coach on this line was established in 1850, by Colonel Samuel

H. Woodson, an eminent lawyer, afterward an M. C., and right unpopular

with Mormondom, because he sacrilegiously owned part of Temple Block,

in Independence, Mo., which is the old original New Zion. The following

are the rates of contract and the phases through which the line has

passed.

1. Colonel Woodson received for carrying a monthly mail $19,500 (or

$23,000?): length of contract 4 years.

2. Mr. F. McGraw, $13,500, besides certain considerable extras.

3. Messrs. Heber Kimball & Co. (Mormons), $23,000.

4. Messrs. Jones & Co., $30,000.

5. Mr. J. M. Hockaday, weekly mail, $190,000.

6. Messrs. Russell, Majors, & Waddell, army contractors; weekly mail,

$190,000.[8]

[8] In the American Almanac for 1861 (p. 196), the length of routes

in Utah Territory is 1450 miles, 533 of which have no specified mode

of transportation, and the remainder, 977, in coaches; the total

transportation is thus 170,872 miles, and the total cost $144,638.

[THE UTAH LINE.]

Thus it will be seen that in 1856 the transit was in the hands of the

Latter-Day Saints: they managed it well, but they lost the contracts

during their troubles with the federal government in 1857, when it

again fell into Gentile possession. In those early days it had but

three changes of mules, at Forts Bridger, Laramie, and Kearney.

In May, 1859, it was taken up by the present firm, which expects,

by securing the monopoly of the whole line between the Missouri

River and San Francisco, and by canvassing at head-quarters for a

bi-weekly--which they have now obtained--and even a daily transit,

which shall constitutionally extinguish the Mormon community, to insert

the fine edge of that wedge which is to open an aperture for the

Pacific Railroad about to be. At Saint Joseph (Mo.), better known by

the somewhat irreverent abbreviation of St. Jo, I was introduced to

Mr. Alexander Majors, formerly one of the contractors for supplying

the army in Utah--a veteran mountaineer, familiar with life on the

prairies. His meritorious efforts to reform the morals of the land

have not yet put forth even the bud of promise. He forbade his drivers

and employés to drink, gamble, curse, and travel on Sundays; he

desired them to peruse Bibles distributed to them gratis; and though

he refrained from a lengthy proclamation commanding his lieges to be

good boys and girls, he did not the less expect it of them. Results:

I scarcely ever saw a sober driver; as for profanity--the Western

equivalent for hard swearing--they would make the blush of shame

crimson the cheek of the old Isis bargee; and, rare exceptions to

the rule of the United States, they are not to be deterred from evil

talking even by the dread presence of a “lady.” The conductors and

road-agents are of a class superior to the drivers; they do their

harm by an inordinate ambition to distinguish themselves. I met one

gentleman who owned to three murders, and another individual who

lately attempted to ration the mules with wild sage. The company was

by no means rich; already the papers had prognosticated a failure, in

consequence of the government withdrawing its supplies, and it seemed

to have hit upon the happy expedient of badly entreating travelers

that good may come to it of our evils. The hours and halting-places

were equally vilely selected; for instance, at Forts Kearney, Laramie,

and Bridger, the only points where supplies, comfort, society, are

procurable, a few minutes of grumbling delay were granted as a favor,

and the passengers were hurried on to some distant wretched ranch,[9]

apparently for the sole purpose of putting a few dollars into the

station-master’s pockets. The travel was unjustifiably slow, even in

this land, where progress is mostly on paper. From St. Jo to Great Salt

Lake City, the mails might easily be landed during the fine weather,

without inconvenience to man or beast, in ten days; indeed, the agents

have offered to place them at Placerville in fifteen. Yet the schedule

time being twenty-one days, passengers seldom reached their destination

before the nineteenth; the sole reason given was, that snow makes the

road difficult in its season, and that if people were accustomed to

fast travel, and if letters were received under schedule time, they

would look upon the boon as a right.

[9] “Rancho” in Mexico means primarily a rude thatched hut where

herdsmen pass the night; the “rancharia” is a sheep-walk or

cattle-run, distinguished from a “hacienda,” which must contain

cultivation. In California it is a large farm with grounds often

measured by leagues, and it applies to any dirty hovel in the

Mississippian Valley.

Before proceeding to our preparations for travel, it may be as well to

cast a glance at the land to be traveled over.

The United States territory lying in direct line between the

Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean is now about 1200 miles long

from north to south, by 1500 of breadth, in 49° and 32° N. lat.,

about equal to Equatorial Africa, and 1800 in N. lat. 38°. The great

uncultivable belt of plain and mountain region through which the

Pacific Railroad must run has a width of 1100 statute miles near the

northern boundary; in the central line, 1200; and through the southern,

1000. Humboldt justly ridiculed the “maddest natural philosopher”

who compared the American continent to a female figure--long, thin,

watery, and freezing at the 58th°, the degrees being symbolic of the

year at which woman grows old. Such description manifestly will not

apply to the 2,000,000 of square miles in this section of the Great

Republic--she is every where broader than she is long.

The meridian of 105° north longitude (G.)--Fort Laramie lies in 104°

31′ 26″--divides this vast expanse into two nearly equal parts. The

eastern half is a basin or river valley rising gradually from the

Mississippi to the Black Hills, and the other outlying ranges of the

Rocky Mountains. The average elevation near the northern boundary

(49°) is 2500 feet, in the middle latitude (38°) 6000 feet, and near

the southern extremity (32°), about 4000 feet above sea level. These

figures explain the complicated features of its water-shed. The western

half is a mountain region whose chains extend, as far as they are

known, in a general N. and S. direction.

The 99th meridian (G.)--Fort Kearney lies in 98° 58′ 11″--divides the

western half of the Mississippian Valley into two unequal parts.

The eastern portion, from the Missouri to Fort Kearney--400 to 500

miles in breadth--may be called the “Prairie land.” It is true that

passing westward of the 97° meridian, the _mauvaises terres_, or Bad

Grounds, are here and there met with, especially near the 42d parallel,

in which latitude they extend farther to the east, and that upward to

99° the land is rarely fit for cultivation, though fair for grazing.

Yet along the course of the frequent streams there is valuable soil,

and often sufficient wood to support settlements. This territory is

still possessed by settled Indians, by semi-nomads, and by powerful

tribes of equestrian and wandering savages, mixed with a few white men,

who, as might be expected, excel them in cunning and ferocity.

[THE WESTERN GRAZING-GROUNDS.]

The western portion of the valley, from Fort Kearney to the base of

the Rocky Mountains--a breadth of 300 to 400 miles--is emphatically

“the desert,” sterile and uncultivable, a dreary expanse of wild sage

(artemisia) and saleratus. The surface is sandy, gravelly, and pebbly;

cactus carduus and aloes abound; grass is found only in the rare river

bottoms where the soils of the different strata are mixed, and the

few trees along the borders of streams--fertile lines of wadis, which

laborious irrigation and coal mining might convert into oases--are

the cotton-wood and willow, to which the mezquite[10] may be added in

the southern latitudes. The desert is mostly uninhabited, unendurable

even to the wildest Indian. But the people on its eastern and western

frontiers, namely, those holding the extreme limits of the fertile

prairie, and those occupying the desirable regions of the western

mountains, are, to quote the words of Lieutenant Gouverneur K. Warren,

U. S. Topographical Engineers, whose valuable reconnaissances and

explanations of Nebraska in 1855, ’56, and ’57 were published in the

Reports of the Secretary of War, “on the shore of a sea, up to which

population and agriculture may advance and no farther. But this gives

these outposts much of the value of places along the Atlantic frontier,

in view of the future settlements to be formed in the mountains,

between which and the present frontier a most valuable trade would

exist. The western frontier has always been looking to the east for

a market; but as soon as the wave of emigration has passed over the

desert portion of the plains, to which the discoveries of gold have

already given an impetus that will propel it to the fertile valleys

of the Rocky Mountains, then will the present frontier of Kansas

and Nebraska become the starting-point for all the products of the

Mississippi Valley which the population of the mountains will require.

We see the effects of it in the benefits which the western frontier of

Missouri has received from the Santa Fé tract, and still more plainly

in the impetus given to Leavenworth by the operations of the army of

Utah in the interior region. This flow of products has, in the last

instance, been only in one direction; but when those mountains become

settled, as they eventually must, then there will be a reciprocal trade

materially beneficial to both.”

[10] Often corrupted from the Spanish to muskeet (_Algarobia

glandulosa_), a locust inhabiting Texas, New Mexico, California,

etc., bearing, like the carob generally, a long pod full of sweet

beans, which, pounded and mixed with flour, are a favorite food with

the Southwestern Indians.

The mountain region westward of the sage and saleratus desert,

extending between the 105th and 111th meridian (G.)--a little more

than 400 miles--will in time become sparsely peopled. Though in many

parts arid and sterile, dreary and desolate, the long bunch grass

(_Festuca_), the short curly buffalo grass (_Sisleria dactyloides_),

the mesquit grass (_Stipa spata_), and the Gramma, or rather, as it

should be called, “Gamma” grass (_Chondrosium fœnum_),[11] which clothe

the slopes west of Fort Laramie, will enable it to rear an abundance of

stock. The fertile valleys, according to Lieutenant Warren, “furnish

the means of raising sufficient quantities of grain and vegetables

for the use of the inhabitants, and beautiful healthy and desirable

locations for their homes. The remarkable freedom here from sickness is

one of the attractive features of the region, and will in this respect

go far to compensate the settler from the Mississippi Valley for his

loss in the smaller amount of products that can be taken from the soil.

The great want of suitable building material, which now so seriously

retards the growth of the West, will not be felt there.” The heights

of the Rocky Mountains rise abruptly from 1000 to 6000 feet over the

lowest known passes, computed by the Pacific Railroad surveyors to vary

from 4000 to 10,000 feet above sea-level. The two chains forming the

eastern and western rims of the Rocky Mountain basin have the greatest

elevation, walling in, as it were, the other sub-ranges.

[11] Some of my informants derived the word from the Greek letter;

others make it Hispano-Mexican.

There is a popular idea that the western slope of the Rocky Mountains

is smooth and regular; on the contrary, the land is rougher, and the

ground is more complicated than on the eastern declivities. From the

summit of the Wasach range to the eastern foot of the Sierra Nevada,

the whole region, with exceptions, is a howling wilderness, the sole

or bed of an inland sweetwater sea, now shrunk into its remnants--the

Great Salt and the Utah Lakes. Nothing can be more monotonous than its

regular succession of high grisly hills, cut perpendicularly by rough

and rocky ravines, and separating bare and barren plains. From the

seaward base of the Sierra Nevada to the Pacific--California--the slope

is easy, and the land is pleasant, fertile, and populous.

After this _aperçu_ of the motives which sent me forth, once more a

pilgrim, to young Meccah in the West, of the various routes, and of

the style of country wandered over, I plunge at once into personal

narrative.

[KIT.]

Lieutenant Dana (U. S. Artillery), my future _compagnon de voyage_,

left St. Louis,[12] “the turning-back place of English sportsmen,” for

St. Jo on the 2d of August, preceding me by two days. Being accompanied

by his wife and child, and bound on a weary voyage to Camp Floyd, Utah

Territory, he naturally wanted a certain amount of precise information

concerning the route, and one of the peculiarities of this line is that

no one knows any thing about it. In the same railway car which carried

me from St. Louis were five passengers, all bent upon making Utah with

the least delay--an unexpected cargo of officials: Mr. F********,

a federal judge with two sons; Mr. W*****, a state secretary; and

Mr. G****, a state marshal. As the sequel may show, Dana was doubly

fortunate in securing places before the list could be filled up by the

unusual throng: all we thought of at the time was our good luck in

escaping a septidium at St. Jo, whence the stage started on Tuesdays

only. We hurried, therefore, to pay for our tickets--$175 each being

the moderate sum--to reduce our luggage to its minimum approach toward

25 lbs., the price of transport for excess being exorbitantly fixed at

$1 per lb., and to lay in a few necessaries for the way, tea and sugar,

tobacco and cognac. I will not take liberties with my company’s “kit;”

my own, however, was represented as follows:

[12] St. Louis (Mo.) lies in N. lat. 28° 37′ and W. long. (G.) 90°

16′: its elevation above tide water is 461 feet: the latest frost

is in the first week of March, the earliest is in the middle of

November, giving some 115 days of cold. St. Joseph (Mo.) lies about

N. lat. 39° 40′, and W. long. (G.) 34° 54′.

One India-rubber blanket, pierced in the centre for a poncho, and

garnished along the longer side with buttons, and corresponding elastic

loops with a strap at the short end, converting it into a carpet-bag--a

“sine quâ non” from the equator to the pole. A buffalo robe ought to

have been added as a bed: ignorance, however, prevented, and borrowing

did the rest. With one’s coat as a pillow, a robe, and a blanket, one

may defy the dangerous “bunks” of the stations.

For weapons I carried two revolvers: from the moment of leaving St. Jo

to the time of reaching Placerville or Sacramento the pistol should

never be absent from a man’s right side--remember, it is handier there

than on the other--nor the bowie-knife from his left. Contingencies

with Indians and others may happen, when the difference of a second

saves life: the revolver should therefore be carried with its butt

to the fore, and when drawn it should not be leveled as in target

practice, but directed toward the object by means of the right fore

finger laid flat along the cylinder while the medius draws the trigger.

The instinctive consent between eye and hand, combined with a little

practice, will soon enable the beginner to shoot correctly from the

hip; all he has to do is to think that he is pointing at the mark, and

pull. As a precaution, especially when mounted upon a kicking horse,

it is wise to place the cock upon a capless nipple, rather than trust

to the intermediate pins. In dangerous places the revolver should be

discharged and reloaded every morning, both for the purpose of keeping

the hand in, and to do the weapon justice. A revolver is an admirable

tool when properly used; those, however, who are too idle or careless

to attend to it, had better carry a pair of “Derringers.” For the

benefit of buffalo and antelope, I had invested $25 at St. Louis in a

“shooting-iron” of the “Hawkins” style--that enterprising individual

now dwells in Denver City--it was a long, top-heavy rifle; it weighed

12 lbs., and it carried the smallest ball--75 to the pound--a

combination highly conducive to good practice. Those, however, who can

use light weapons, should prefer the Maynard breech-loader, with an

extra barrel for small shot; and if Indian fighting is in prospect,

the best tool, without any exception, is a ponderous double-barrel, 12

to the pound, and loaded as fully as it can bear with slugs. The last

of the battery was an air-gun to astonish the natives, and a bag of

various ammunition.

Captain Marcy outfits his prairie traveler with a “little blue mass,

quinine, opium, and some cathartic medicine put up in doses for

adults.” I limited myself to the opium, which is invaluable when one

expects five consecutive days and nights in a prairie wagon, quinine,

and Warburg’s drops, without which no traveler should ever face fever,

and a little citric acid, which, with green tea drawn off the moment

the leaf has sunk, is perhaps the best substitute for milk and cream.

The “holy weed Nicotian” was not forgotten; cigars must be bought in

extraordinary quantities, as the driver either receives or takes the

lion’s share: the most satisfactory outfit is a _quantum sufficit_

of Louisiana Pirique and Lynchburg gold-leaf--cavendish without its

abominations of rum and honey or molasses--and two pipes, a meerschaum

for luxury, and a brier-root to fall back upon when the meerschaum

shall have been stolen. The Indians will certainly pester for matches;

the best lighting apparatus, therefore, is the Spanish mechero, the

Oriental sukhtah--agate and cotton match--besides which, it offers a

pleasing exercise, like billiards, and one at which the British soldier

greatly excels, surpassed only by his exquisite skill in stuffing the

pipe.

For literary purposes, I had, besides the two books above quoted,

a few of the great guns of exploration, Frémont, Stansbury, and

Gunnison, with a selection of the most violent Mormon and Anti-Mormon

polemicals, sketching materials--I prefer the “improved metallics”

five inches long, and serving for both diary and drawing-book--and a

tourist’s writing-case of those sold by Mr. Field (Bible Warehouse,

The Quadrant), with but one alteration, a snap lock, to obviate the

use of that barbarous invention called a key. For instruments I

carried a pocket sextant with a double face, invented by Mr. George,

of the Royal Geographical Society, and beautifully made by Messrs.

Cary, an artificial horizon of black glass, and bubble tubes to

level it, night and day compasses, with a portable affair attached

to a watch-chain--a traveler feels nervous till he can “orienter”

himself--a pocket thermometer, and a B. P. ditto. The only safe form

for the latter would be a strong neckless tube, the heavy pyriform

bulbs in general use never failing to break at the first opportunity.

A Stanhope lens, a railway whistle, and instead of the binocular,

useful things of earth, a very valueless telescope--(warranted by the

maker to show Jupiter’s satellites, and by utterly declining so to

do, reading a lesson touching the non-advisability of believing an

instrument-maker)--completed the outfit.

[TOILET.]

The prairie traveler is not particular about toilet: the easiest dress

is a dark flannel shirt, worn over the normal article; no braces--I say

it, despite Mr. Galton--but broad leather belt for “six-shooter” and

for “Arkansas tooth-pick,” a long clasp-knife, or for the rapier of the

Western world, called after the hero who perished in the “red butchery

of the Alamo.” The nether garments should be forked with good buckskin,

or they will infallibly give out, and the lower end should be tucked

into the boots, after the sensible fashion of our grandfathers, before

those ridiculous Wellingtons were dreamed of by our sires. In warm

weather, a pair of moccasins will be found easy as slippers, but they

are bad for wet places; they make the feet tender, they strain the back

sinews, and they form the first symptom of the savage mania. Socks keep

the feet cold; there are, however, those who should take six pair. The

use of the pocket-handkerchief is unknown in the plains; some people,

however, are uncomfortable without it, not liking “se emungere” after

the fashion of Horace’s father.

In cold weather--and rarely are the nights warm--there is nothing

better than the old English tweed shooting-jacket, made with pockets

like a poacher’s, and its similar waistcoat, a “stomach warmer” without

a roll collar, which prevents comfortable sleep, and with flaps as in

the Year of Grace 1760, when men were too wise to wear our senseless

vests, whose only property seems to be that of disclosing after

exertions a lucid interval of linen or longcloth. For driving and

riding, a large pair of buckskin gloves, or rather gauntlets, without

which even the teamster will not travel, and leggins--the best are

made in the country, only the straps should be passed through and sewn

on to the leathers--are advisable, if at least the man at all regards

his epidermis: it is almost unnecessary to bid you remember spurs,

but it may be useful to warn you that they will, like riches, make to

themselves wings. The head-covering by excellence is a brown felt,

which, by a little ingenuity, boring, for instance, holes round the

brim to admit a ribbon, you may convert into a riding-hat or night-cap,

and wear alternately after the manly slouch of Cromwell and his Martyr,

the funny three-cornered spittoon-like “shovel” of the Dutch Georges,

and the ignoble cocked-hat, which completes the hideous metamorphosis.

And, above all things, as you value your nationality--this is written

for the benefit of the home reader--let no false shame cause you

to forget your hat-box and your umbrella. I purpose, when a moment

of inspiration waits upon leisure and a mind at ease, to invent an

elongated portmanteau, which shall be perfection--portable--solid

leather of two colors, for easy distinguishment--snap lock--in length

about three feet; in fact, long enough to contain without creasing

“small clothes,” a lateral compartment destined for a hat, and a

longitudinal space where the umbrella can repose: its depth--but I must

reserve that part of the secret until this benefit to British humanity

shall have been duly made by Messrs. Bengough Brothers, and patented by

myself.

The dignitaries of the mail-coach, acting upon the principle “first

come first served,” at first decided, maugre all our attempts at “moral

suasion,” to divide the party by the interval of a week. Presently

reflecting, I presume, upon the unadvisability of leaving at large five

gentlemen, who, being really in no particular hurry, might purchase

a private conveyance and start leisurely westward, they were favored

with a revelation of “’cuteness.” On the day before departure, as,

congregated in the Planter’s House Hotel, we were lamenting over our

“morning glory,” the necessity of parting--in the prairie the more

the merrier, and the fewer the worse cheer--a youth from the office

was introduced to tell, Hope-like, a flattering tale and a tremendous

falsehood. This juvenile delinquent stated with unblushing front,

over the hospitable cocktail, that three coaches instead of one had

been newly and urgently applied for by the road-agent at Great Salt

Lake City, and therefore that we could not only all travel together,

but also all travel with the greatest comfort. We exulted. But on the

morrow only two conveyances appeared, and not long afterward the two

dwindled off to one. “The Prairie Traveler” doles out wisdom in these

words: “Information concerning the route coming from strangers living

or owning property near them, from agents of steam-boats and railways,

or from other persons connected with transportation companies”--how

carefully he piles up the heap of sorites--“should be received

with great caution, and never without corroboratory evidence from

disinterested sources.” The main difficulty is to find the latter--to

catch your hare--to know whom to believe.

I now proceed to my Diary.

THE START.

_Tuesday, 7th August, 1860._

Precisely at 8 A.M. appeared in front of the Patee House--the Fifth

Avenue Hotel of St. Jo--the vehicle destined to be our home for the

next three weeks. We scrutinized it curiously.

[MAIL-COACH.--MULES.]

The mail is carried by a “Concord coach,” a spring wagon, comparing

advantageously with the horrible vans which once dislocated the joints

of men on the Suez route. The body is shaped somewhat like an English

tax-cart considerably magnified. It is built to combine safety,

strength, and lightness, without the slightest regard to appearances.

The material is well-seasoned white oak--the Western regions, and

especially Utah, are notoriously deficient in hard woods--and the

manufacturers are the well-known coachwrights, Messrs. Abbott, of

Concord, New Hampshire; the color is sometimes green, more usually red,

causing the antelopes to stand and stretch their large eyes whenever

the vehicle comes in sight. The wheels are five to six feet apart,

affording security against capsising, with little “gather” and less

“dish;” the larger have fourteen spokes and seven fellies; the smaller

twelve and six. The tires are of unusual thickness, and polished like

steel by the hard dry ground; and the hubs or naves and the metal

nave-bands are in massive proportions. The latter not unfrequently

fall off as the wood shrinks, unless the wheel is allowed to stand in

water; attention must be paid to resetting them, or in the frequent

and heavy “sidlins” the spokes may snap off all round like pipe-stems.

The wagon-bed is supported by iron bands or perpendiculars abutting

upon wooden rockers, which rest on strong leather thoroughbraces:

these are found to break the jolt better than the best steel springs,

which, moreover, when injured, can not readily be repaired. The whole

bed is covered with stout osnaburg supported by stiff bars of white

oak; there is a sun-shade or hood in front, where the driver sits, a

curtain behind which can be raised or lowered at discretion, and four

flaps on each side, either folded up or fastened down with hooks and

eyes. In heavy frost the passengers must be half dead with cold, but

they care little for that if they can go fast. The accommodations

are as follows: In front sits the driver, with usually a conductor

or passenger by his side; a variety of packages, large and small, is

stowed away under his leather cushion; when the brake must be put on,

an operation often involving the safety of the vehicle, his right foot

is planted upon an iron bar which presses by a leverage upon the rear

wheels; and in hot weather a bucket for watering the animals hangs

over one of the lamps, whose companion is usually found wanting. The

inside has either two or three benches fronting to the fore or placed

_vis-à-vis_; they are movable and reversible, with leather cushions

and hinged padded backs; unstrapped and turned down, they convert

the vehicle into a tolerable bed for two persons or two and a half.

According to Cocker, the mail-bags should be safely stowed away under

these seats, or if there be not room enough, the passengers should

perch themselves upon the correspondence; the jolly driver, however, is

usually induced to cram the light literature between the wagon-bed and

the platform, or running-gear beneath, and thus, when ford-waters wash

the hubs, the letters are pretty certain to endure ablution. Behind,

instead of dicky, is a kind of boot where passengers’ boxes are stored

beneath a stout canvas curtain with leather sides. The comfort of

travel depends upon packing the wagon; if heavy in front or rear, or if

the thoroughbraces be not properly “fixed,” the bumping will be likely

to cause nasal hemorrhage. The description will apply to the private

ambulance, or, as it is called in the West, “avalanche,” only the

latter, as might be expected, is more convenient; it is the drosky in

which the vast steppes of Central America are crossed by the government

employés.

On this line mules are preferred to horses as being more enduring.

They are all of legitimate race; the breed between the horse and the

she-ass is never heard of, and the mysterious jumard is not believed

to exist. In dry lands, where winter is not severe--they inherit the

sire’s impatience of cold--they are invaluable animals; in swampy

ground this American dromedary is the meanest of beasts, requiring,

when stalled, to be hauled out of the mire before it will recover

spirit to use its legs. For sureness of foot (during a journey of more

than 1000 miles, I saw but one fall and two severe stumbles), sagacity

in finding the road, apprehension of danger, and general cleverness,

mules are superior to their mothers: their main defect is an unhappy

obstinacy derived from the other side of the house. They are great in

hardihood, never sick nor sorry, never groomed nor shod, even where ice

is on the ground; they have no grain, except five quarts per diem when

snow conceals the grass; and they have no stable save the open corral.

Moreover, a horse once broken down requires a long rest; the mule, if

hitched up or ridden for short distances, with frequent intervals to

roll and repose, may still, though “_resté_,” get over 300 miles in

tolerable time. The rate of travel on an average is five miles an hour;

six is good; between seven and eight is the maximum, which sinks in

hilly countries to three or four. I have made behind a good pair, in

a light wagon, forty consecutive miles at the rate of nine per hour,

and in California a mule is little thought of if it can not accomplish

250 miles in forty-eight hours. The price varies from $100 to $130 per

head when cheap, rising to $150 or $200, and for fancy animals from

$250 to $400. The value, as in the case of the Arab, depends upon size;

“rats,” or small mules, especially in California, are not esteemed.

The “span”--the word used in America for beasts well matched--is of

course much more expensive. At each station on this road, averaging

twenty-five miles apart--beyond the forks of the Platte they lengthen

out by one third--are three teams of four animals, with two extra,

making a total of fourteen, besides two ponies for the express riders.

In the East they work beautifully together, and are rarely mulish

beyond a certain ticklishness of temper, which warns you not to meddle

with their ears when in harness, or to attempt encouraging them by

preceding them upon the road. In the West, where they run half wild

and are lassoed for use once a week, they are fearfully handy with

their heels; they flirt out with the hind legs, they rear like goats,

breaking the harness and casting every strap and buckle clean off

the body, and they bite their replies to the chorus of curses and

blows: the wonder is that more men are not killed. Each fresh team

must be ringed half a dozen times before it will start fairly; there

is always some excitement in change; some George or Harry, some Julia

or Sally disposed to shirk work or to play tricks, some Brigham Young

or General Harney--the Trans-Vaal Republican calls his worst animal

“England”--whose stubbornness is to be corrected by stone-throwing or

the lash.

But the wagon still stands at the door. We ought to start at 8 30

A.M.; we are detained an hour while last words are said, and adieu--a

long adieu--is bidden to joke and julep, to ice and idleness. Our

“plunder”[13] is clapped on with little ceremony; a hat-case falls

open--it was not mine, gentle reader--collars and other small gear

cumber the ground, and the owner addresses to the clumsy-handed driver

the universal G-- d--, which in these lands changes from its expletive

or chrysalis form to an adjectival development. We try to stow away as

much as possible; the minor officials, with all their little faults,

are good fellows, civil and obliging; they wink at non-payment for

bedding, stores, weapons, and they rather encourage than otherwise the

multiplication of whisky-kegs and cigar-boxes. We now drive through the

dusty roads of St. Jo, the observed of all observers, and presently

find ourselves in the steam ferry which is to convey us from the right

to the left bank of the Missouri River. The “Big Muddy,” as it is now

called--the Yellow River of old writers--venerable sire of snag and

sawyer, displays at this point the source whence it has drawn for ages

the dirty brown silt which pollutes below their junction the pellucid

waters of the “Big Drink.”[14] It runs, like the lower Indus, through

deep walls of stiff clayey earth, and, like that river, its supplies,

when filtered (they have been calculated to contain one eighth of solid

matter), are sweet and wholesome as its brother streams. The Plata of

this region, it is the great sewer of the prairies, the main channel

and common issue of the water-courses and ravines which have carried

on the work of denudation and degradation for days dating beyond the

existence of Egypt.

[13] In Canada they call personal luggage _butin_.

[14] A “Drink” is any river: the Big Drink is the Mississippi.

[THE MISSOURI RIVER]

According to Lieutenant Warren, who endorses the careful examinations

of the parties under Governor Stevens in 1853, the Missouri is a

superior river for navigation to any in the country, except the

Mississippi below their junction. It has, however, serious obstacles

in wind and frost. From the Yellow Stone to its mouth, the breadth,

when full, varies from one third to half a mile; in low water the

width shrinks, and bars appear. Where timber does not break the force

of the winds, which are most violent in October, clouds of sand are

seen for miles, forming banks, which, generally situated at the edges

of trees on the islands and points, often so much resemble the Indian

mounds in the Mississippi Valley, that some of them--for instance,

those described by Lewis and Clarke at Bonhomme Island--have been

figured as the works of the ancient Toltecs. It would hardly be

feasible to correct the windage by foresting the land. The bluffs

of the Missouri are often clothed with vegetation as far as the

debouchure of the Platte River. Above that point the timber, which is

chiefly cotton-wood, is confined to ravines and bottom lands, varying

in width from ten to fifteen miles above Council Bluffs, which is

almost continuous to the mouth of the James River. Every where, except

between the mouth of the Little Cheyenne and the Cannon Ball rivers,

there is a sufficiency of fuel for navigation; but, ascending above

Council Bluffs, the protection afforded by forest growth on the banks

is constantly diminishing. The trees also are injurious; imbedded in

the channel by the “caving-in” of the banks, they form the well-known

sawyers, or floating timbers, and snags, trunks standing like _chevaux

de frise_ at various inclinations, pointing down the stream. From the

mouth of the James River down to the Mississippi, it is a wonder how a

steamer can run: she must lose half her time by laying to at night, and

is often delayed for days, as the wind prevents her passing by bends

filled with obstructions. The navigation is generally closed by ice

at Sioux City on the 10th of November, and at Fort Leavenworth by the

1st of December. The rainy season of the spring and summer commences

in the latitude of Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, and Southern Nebraska,

between the 15th of May and the 30th of June, and continues about two

months. The floods produced by the melting snows in the mountains come

from the Platte, the Big Cheyenne, the Yellow Stone, and the Upper

Missouri, reaching the lower river about the 1st of July, and lasting

a month. Rivers like this, whose navigation depends upon temporary

floods, are greatly inferior for ascent than for descent. The length of

the inundation much depends upon the snow on the mountains: a steamer

starting from St.Louis on the first indication of the rise would not

generally reach the Yellow Stone before low water at the latter point,

and if a miscalculation is made by taking the temporary rise for the

real inundation, the boat must lay by in the middle of the river till

the water deepens.

Some geographers have proposed to transfer to the Missouri, on

account of its superior length, the honor of being the real head of

the Mississippi; they neglect, however, to consider the direction

and the course of the stream, an element which must enter largely in

determining the channels of great rivers. It will, I hope, be long

before this great ditch wins the day from the glorious Father of Waters.

The reader will find in Appendix No. I. a detailed itinerary, showing

him the distances between camping-places, the several mail stations

where mules are changed, the hours of travel, and the facilities for

obtaining wood and water--in fact, all things required for the novice,

hunter, or emigrant. In these pages I shall consider the route rather

in its pictorial than in its geographical aspects, and give less of

diary than of dissertation upon the subjects which each day’s route

suggested.

[THE PRAIRIE.]

Landing in Bleeding Kansas--she still bleeds[15]--we fell at once

into “Emigration Road,” a great thoroughfare, broad and well worn as

a European turnpike or a Roman military route, and undoubtedly the

best and the longest natural highway in the world. For five miles the

line bisected a bottom formed by a bend in the river, with about a

mile’s diameter at the neck. The scene was of a luxuriant vegetation.

A deep tangled wood--rather a thicket or a jungle than a forest--of

oaks and elms, hickory, basswood[16] and black walnut, poplar and

hackberry (_Celtis crassifolia_), box elder, and the common willow

(_Salix longifolia_), clad and festooned, bound and anchored by wild

vines, creepers, and huge llianas, and sheltering an undergrowth of

white alder and red sumach, whose pyramidal flowers were about to

fall, rested upon a basis of deep black mire, strongly suggestive

of chills--fever and ague. After an hour of burning sun and sickly

damp, the effects of the late storms, we emerged from the waste of

vegetation, passed through a straggling “neck o’ the woods,” whose

yellow inmates reminded me of Mississippian descriptions in the days

gone by, and after spanning some very rough ground we bade adieu to

the valley of the Missouri, and emerged upon the region of the Grand

Prairie,[17] which we will pronounce “perrairey.”

[15] And no wonder!

“I advise you, one and all, to enter every election district in

Kansas and vote at the point of the bowie-knife and revolver. Neither

give nor take quarter, as our case demands it.”

“I tell you, mark every scoundrel among you that is the least tainted

with Free-soilism or Abolitionism, and exterminate him. Neither give

nor take quarter from them.”

(Extracts from Speeches of General Stringfellow--happy name!--in the

Kansas Legislature.)

[16] The basswood (_Tilia Americana_) resembles our linden: the

trivial name is derived from “bast,” its inner bark being used for

mats and cordage. From the pliability of the bark and wood, the name

of the tree is made synonymous with “doughface” in the following

extract from one of Mr. Brigham Young’s sermons: “I say, as the Lord

lives, we are bound to become a sovereign state in the Union, or an

independent nation by ourselves; and let them drive us from this

place if they can--they can not do it. I do not throw this out as a

banter. You Gentiles, and hickory and _basswood_ Mormons, can write

it down, if you please; but write it as I speak it.” The above has

been extracted from a “Dictionary of Americanisms,” by John Russell

Bartlett (London, Trübner and Co., 1859), a glossary which the

author’s art has made amusing as a novel.

[17] The word is somewhat indefinite. Hunters apply it generally

to the bare lands lying westward of the timbered course of the

Mississippi; in fact, to the whole region from the southern Rio

Grande to the Great Slave Lake.

Differing from the card-table surfaces of the formation in Illinois and

the lands east of the Mississippi, the Western prairies are rarely flat

ground. Their elevation above sea-level varies from 1000 to 2500 feet,

and the plateau’s aspect impresses the eye with an exaggerated idea

of elevation, there being no object of comparison--mountain, hill, or

sometimes even a tree--to give a juster measure. Another peculiarity

of the prairie is, in places, its seeming horizontality, whereas it is

never level: on an open plain, apparently flat as a man’s palm, you

cross a long groundswell which was not perceptible before, and on its

farther incline you come upon a chasm wide and deep enough to contain

a settlement. The aspect was by no means unprepossessing. Over the

rolling surface, which, however, rarely breaks into hill and dale,

lay a tapestry of thick grass already turning to a ruddy yellow under

the influence of approaching autumn. The uniformity was relieved by

streaks of livelier green in the rich soils of the slopes, hollows, and

ravines, where the water gravitates, and, in the deeper “intervales”

and bottom lands on the banks of streams and courses, by the graceful

undulations and the waving lines of mottes or prairie islands, thick

clumps and patches simulating orchards by the side of cultivated

fields. The silvery cirri and cumuli of the upper air flecked the

surface of earth with spots of dark cool shade, surrounded by a blaze

of sunshine, and by their motion, as they trooped and chased one

another, gave a peculiar liveliness to the scene; while here and there

a bit of hazy blue distance, a swell of the sea-like land upon the far

horizon, gladdened the sight--every view is fair from afar. Nothing, I

may remark, is more monotonous, except perhaps the African and Indian

jungle, than those prairie tracts, where the circle of which you are

the centre has but about a mile of radius; it is an ocean in which one

loses sight of land. You see, as it were, the ends of the earth, and

look around in vain for some object upon which the eye may rest: it

wants the sublimity of repose so suggestive in the sandy deserts, and

the perpetual motion so pleasing in the aspect of the sea. No animals

appeared in sight where, thirty years ago, a band of countless bisons

dotted the plains; they will, however, like the wild aborigines, their

congeners, soon be followed by beings higher in the scale of creation.

These prairies are preparing to become the great grazing-grounds which

shall supply the unpopulated East with herds of civilized kine, and

perhaps with the yak of Tibet, the llama of South America, and the

koodoo and other African antelopes.

As we sped onward we soon made acquaintance with a traditionally

familiar feature, the “pitch-holes,” or “chuck-holes”--the ugly word is

not inappropriate--which render traveling over the prairies at times

a sore task. They are gullies and gutters, not unlike the Canadian

“cahues” of snow formation: varying from 10 to 50 feet in breadth,

they are rivulets in spring and early summer, and--few of them remain

perennial--they lie dry during the rest of the year. Their banks are

slightly raised, upon the principle, _in parvo_, that causes mighty

rivers, like the Po and the Indus, to run along the crests of ridges,

and usually there is in the sole a dry or wet cunette, steep as a

step, and not unfrequently stony; unless the break be attended to, it

threatens destruction to wheel and axle-tree, to hound and tongue. The

pitch-hole is more frequent where the prairies break into low hills;

the inclines along which the roads run then become a net-work of these

American nullahs.

[SQUALOR.]

Passing through a few wretched shanties[18] called Troy--last insult

to the memory of hapless Pergamus--and Syracuse (here we are in the

third, or classic stage of United States nomenclature), we made, at 3

P.M., Cold Springs, the junction of the Leavenworth route. Having taken

the northern road to avoid rough ground and bad bridges, we arrived

about two hours behind time. The aspect of things at Cold Springs,

where we were allowed an hour’s halt to dine and to change mules,

somewhat dismayed our fine-weather prairie travelers. The scene was

the _rale_ “Far West.” The widow body to whom the shanty belonged lay

sick with fever. The aspect of her family was a “caution to snakes:”

the ill-conditioned sons dawdled about, listless as Indians, in skin

tunics and pantaloons fringed with lengthy tags such as the redoubtable

“Billy Bowlegs” wears on tobacco labels; and the daughters, tall young

women, whose sole attire was apparently a calico morning-wrapper, color

invisible, waited upon us in a protesting way. Squalor and misery were

imprinted upon the wretched log hut, which ignored the duster and the

broom, and myriads of flies disputed with us a dinner consisting of

dough-nuts, green and poisonous with saleratus, suspicious eggs in a

massive greasy fritter, and rusty bacon, intolerably fat. It was our

first sight of squatter life, and, except in two cases, it was our

worst. We could not grudge 50 cents a head to these unhappies; at the

same time, we thought it a dear price to pay--the sequel disabused

us--for flies and bad bread, worse eggs and bacon.

[18] American authors derive the word from the Canadian _chienté_, a

dog-kennel. It is, however, I believe, originally Irish.

The next settlement, Valley Home, was reached at 6 P.M. Here the long

wave of the ocean land broke into shorter seas, and for the first time

that day we saw stones, locally called rocks (a Western term embracing

every thing between a pebble and a boulder), the produce of nullahs

and ravines. A well 10 to 12 feet deep supplied excellent water. The

ground was in places so far reclaimed as to be divided off by posts and

rails; the scanty crops of corn (Indian corn), however, were wilted

and withered by the drought, which this year had been unusually long.

Without changing mules we advanced to Kennekuk, where we halted for an

hour’s supper under the auspices of Major Baldwin, whilom Indian agent;

the place was clean, and contained at least one charming face.

Kennekuk derives its name from a chief of the Kickapoos, in whose

reservation we now are. This tribe, in the days of the Baron la Hontan

(1689), a great traveler, but “aiblins,” as Sir Walter Scott said

of his grandmither, “a prodigious story-teller,” then lived on the

Rivière des Puants, or Fox River, upon the brink of a little lake

supposed to be the Winnebago, near the Sakis (Osaki, Sawkis, Sauks,

or Sacs),[19] and the Pouteoustamies (Potawotomies). They are still

in the neighborhood of their dreaded foes, the Sacs and Foxes,[20]

who are described as stalwart and handsome bands, and they have been

accompanied in their southern migration from the waters westward of

the Mississippi, through Illinois, to their present southern seats by

other allies of the Winnebagoes,[21] the Iowas, Nez Percés, Ottoes,

Omahas, Kansas, and Osages. Like the great nations of the Indian

Territory, the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, they form

intermediate social links in the chain of civilization between the

outer white settlements and the wild nomadic tribes to the west, the

Dakotahs and Arapahoes, the Snakes and Cheyennes. They cultivate the

soil, and rarely spend the winter in hunting buffalo upon the plains.

Their reservation is twelve miles by twenty-four; as usual with land

set apart for the savages, it is well watered and timbered, rich and

fertile; it lies across the path and in the vicinity of civilization;

consequently, the people are greatly demoralized. The men are addicted

to intoxication, and the women to unchastity; both sexes and all ages

are inveterate beggars, whose principal industry is horse-stealing.

Those Scottish clans were the most savage that vexed the Lowlands; it

is the case here: the tribes nearest the settlers are best described

by Colonel B----’s phrase, “great liars and dirty dogs.” They have

well-nigh cast off the Indian attire, and rejoice in the splendors of

boiled and ruffled shirts, after the fashion of the whites. According

to our host, a stalwart son of that soil which for generations has

sent out her best blood westward, Kain-tuk-ee, the Land of the Cane,

the Kickapoos number about 300 souls, of whom one fifth are braves.

He quoted a specimen of their facetiousness: when they first saw

a crinoline, they pointed to the wearer and cried, “There walks a

wigwam.” Our “vertugardin” of the 19th century has run the gauntlet of

the world’s jests, from the refined impertinence of Mr. Punch to the

rude grumble of the American Indian and the Kaffir of the Cape.

[19] In the days of Major Pike, who, in 1805-6-7, explored, by order

of the government of the United States, the western territories of

North America, the Sacs numbered 700 warriors and 750 women; they

had four villages, and hunted on the Mississippi and its confluents

from the Illinois to the Iowa River, and on the western plains

that bordered on the Missouri. They were at peace with the Sioux,

Osages, Potawotomies, Menomenes or Folles Avoines, Iowas, and other

Missourian tribes, and were almost consolidated with the Foxes,

with whose aid they nearly exterminated the Illinois, Cahokias,

Kaskaskias, and Peorians. Their principal enemies were the Ojibwas.

They raised a considerable quantity of maize, beans, and melons, and

were celebrated for cunning in war rather than for courage.

[20] From the same source we learn that the Ottagamies, called by

the French Les Renards, numbered 400 warriors and 500 women: they

had three villages near the confluence of the Turkey River with the

Mississippi, hunted on both sides of the Mississippi from the Iowa

stream below the Prairie du Chien to a river of that name above

the same village, and annually sold many hundred bushels of maize.

Conjointly with the Sacs, the Foxes protected the Iowas, and the

three people, since the first treaty of the two former with the

United States, claimed the land from the entrance of the Jauflione

on the western side of the Mississippi, up the latter river to the

Iowa above the Prairie du Chien, and westward to the Missouri. In

1807 they had ceded their lands lying south of the Mississippi to the

United States, reserving to themselves, however, the privileges of

hunting and residing on them.

[21] The Winnebagoes, Winnipegs (turbid water), or Ochangras

numbered, in 1807, 450 warriors and 500 women, and had seven

villages on the Wisconsin, Rock, and Fox Rivers, and Green Bay:

their proximity enabled the tribe to muster in force within four

days. They then hunted on the Rock River, and the eastern side

of the Mississippi, from Rock River to the Prairie du Chien, on

Lake Michigan, on Black River, and in the countries between Lakes

Michigan, Huron, and Superior. Lieutenant Pike is convinced, “from a

tradition among themselves, and their speaking the same language as

the Ottoes of the Platte River,” that they are a tribe who about 150

years before his time had fled from the oppression of the Mexican

Spaniards, and had become clients of the Sioux. They have ever been

distinguished for ferocity and treachery.

[“CRIK.”]

Beyond Kennekuk we crossed the first Grasshopper Creek. Creek, I must

warn the English reader, is pronounced “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.

[Illustration: 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.”

[THE PRAIRIE SADDLE.]

Each train is accompanied by men on horse or mule back--oxen are not

ridden after Cape fashion in these lands.[24] The equipment of the

cavalier excited my curiosity, especially the saddle, which has been

recommended by good authorities for military use. The coming days of

fast warfare, when “heavies,” if not wholly banished to the limbo of

things that were, will be used as mounted “beef-eaters,” only for show,

demand a saddle with as little weight as is consistent with strength,

and one equally easy to the horse and the rider. In no branch of

improvement, except in hat-making for the army, has so little been done

as in saddles. The English military or hunting implement still endures

without other merit than facility to the beast, and, in the man’s

case, faculty of falling uninjured with his horse. Unless the rider be

copper-lined and iron-limbed, it is little better in long marches than

a rail for riding. As far as convenience is concerned, an Arab pad is

preferable to Peat’s best. But the Californian saddle can not supply

the deficiency, as will, I think, appear in the course of description.

[24] Captain Marcy, in quoting Mr. Andersson’s remarks on ox-riding

in Southwestern Africa, remarks that “a ring instead of a stick

put through the cartilage of the animal’s nose would obviate the

difficulty of managing it.” As in the case of the camel, a ring would

soon be torn out by an obstinate beast: a stick resists.

The native Indian saddle is probably the degenerate offspring of the

European pack-saddle: two short forks, composing the pommel and cantle,

are nailed or lashed to a pair of narrow sideboards, and the rude

tree is kept in shape by a green skin or hide allowed to shrink on.

It remarkably resembles the Abyssinian, the Somal, and the Circassian

saddle, which, like the “dug-out” canoe, is probably the primitive form

instinctively invented by mankind. It is the sire of the civilized

saddle, which in these lands varies with every region. The Texan is

known by its circular seat; a string passed round the tree forms a

ring: provided with flaps after the European style, it is considered

easy and comfortable. The Californian is rather oval than circular;

borrowed and improved from the Mexican, it has spread from the Pacific

to the Atlantic slope of the Rocky Mountains, and the hardy and

experienced mountaineer prefers it to all others: it much resembles the

Hungarian, and in some points recalls to mind the old French cavalry

demipique. It is composed of a single tree of light strong wood,

admitting a freer circulation of air to the horse’s spine--an immense

advantage--and, being without iron, it can readily be taken to pieces,

cleaned or mended, and refitted. The tree is strengthened by a covering

of raw-hide carefully sewed on; it rests upon a “sweat-leather,” a

padded sheet covering the back, and it is finished off behind with an

“anchero” of the same material protecting the loins. The pommel is

high, like the crutch of a woman’s saddle, rendering impossible, under

pain of barking the knuckles, that rule of good riding which directs

the cavalier to keep his hands low. It prevents the inexperienced

horseman being thrown forward, and enables him to “hold on” when

likely to be dismounted; in the case of a good rider, its only use

is to attach the lariat, riata, or lasso. The great merit of this

“unicorn” saddle is its girthing: with the English system, the strain

of a wild bull or of a mustang “bucker” would soon dislodge the riding

gear. The “sincho” is an elastic horsehair cingle, five to six inches

wide, connected with “lariat straps,” strong thongs passing round the

pommel and cantle; it is girthed well back from the horse’s shoulder,

and can be drawn till the animal suffers pain: instead of buckle,

the long terminating strap is hitched two or three times through an

iron ring. The whole saddle is covered with a machila, here usually

pronounced _macheer_, two pieces of thick leather handsomely and

fancifully worked or stamped, joined by a running thong in the centre,

and open to admit the pommel and cantle. If too long, it draws in the

stirrup-leathers, and cramps the ankles of any but a bowlegged man.

The machila is sometimes garnished with pockets, always with straps

behind to secure a valise, and a cloak can be fastened over the pommel,

giving purchase and protection to the knees. The rider sits erect, with

the legs in a continuation of the body line, and the security of the

balance-seat enables him to use his arms freely: the _pose_ is that of

the French schools in the last century, heels up and toes down. The

advantages of this equipment are obvious; it is easier to horse and

man probably than any yet invented. On the other hand, the quantity

of leather renders it expensive: without silver or other ornaments,

the price would vary from $25 at San Francisco to $50 at Great Salt

Lake City, and the highly got-up rise to $250 = £50 for a saddle! If

the saddle-cloth slips out, and this is an accident which frequently

occurs, the animal’s back will be galled. The stirrup-leathers can not

be shortened or lengthened without dismounting, and without leggins the

board-like leather _macheer_ soon makes the _mollets_ innocent of skin.

The pommel is absolutely dangerous: during my short stay in the country

I heard of two accidents, one fatal, caused by the rider being thrown

forward on his fork. Finally, the long seat, which is obligatory,

answers admirably with the Californian pacer or canterer, but with the

high-trotting military horse it would inevitably lead--as has been

proved before the European stirrup-leather was shortened--to hernias

and other accidents.

To the stirrups I have but one serious objection--they can not be made

to open in case of the horse falling; when inside the stiff leather

_macheer_, they cramp the legs by bowing them inward, but habit soon

cures this. Instead of the light iron contrivances which before

recovered play against the horse’s side, which freeze the feet in cold,

and which toast them in hot weather, this stirrup is sensibly made of

wood. In the Eastern States it is a lath bent somewhat in the shape of

the dragoon form, and has too little weight; the Californian article

is cut out of a solid block of wood, mountain mahogany being the best,

then maple, and lastly the softer pine and cotton-wood. In some parts

of the country it is made so narrow that only the toe fits in, and then

the instep is liable to be bruised. For riding through bush and thorns,

it is provided in front with zapateros or leathern curtains, secured

to the straps above, and to the wood on both sides: they are curiously

made, and the size, like that of the Turk’s lantern, denotes the

owner’s fashionableness; dandies may be seen with the pointed angles

of their stirrup-guards dangling almost to the ground. The article

was borrowed from Mexico--the land of character dresses. When riding

through prickly chapparal, the leathers begin higher up, and protect

the leg from the knee downward. I would not recommend this stirrup for

Hyde Park, or even Brighton; but in India and other barbarous parts of

the British empire, where, on a cold morning’s march, men and officers

may be seen with wisps of straw defending their feet from the iron,

and on African journeys, where the bush is more than a match for any

texture yet woven, it might, methinks, be advantageously used.

[THE PRAIRIE SPUR.]

The same may be said of the spurs, which, though cruel in appearance,

are really more merciful than ours. The rowels have spikes about two

inches long; in fact, are the shape and size of a small starfish; but

they are never sharpened, and the tinkle near the animal’s sides serves

to urge it on without a real application. The two little bell-like

pendants of metal on each side of the rowel-hinge serve to increase

the rattling, and when a poor rider is mounted upon a tricksy horse,

they lock the rowels, which are driven into the sincho, and thus afford

another _point d’appui_. If the rider’s legs be long enough, the spurs

can be clinched under the pony’s belly. Like the Mexican, they can be

made expensive: $25 a pair would be a common price.

[BRIDLE.]

The bridle is undoubtedly the worst part of the horse’s furniture. The

bit is long, clumsy, and not less cruel than a Chifney. I have seen

the Arab ring, which, with sufficient leverage, will break a horse’s

jaw, and another, not unlike an East Indian invention, with a sharp

triangle to press upon the animal’s palate, apparently for the purpose

of causing it to rear and fall backward. It is the offspring of the

Mexican manége, which was derived, through Spain, from the Moors.

Passing through Ash Point at 9 30 A.M., and halting for water at Uncle

John’s Grocery, where hang-dog Indians, squatting, standing, and

stalking about, showed that the forbidden luxury--essence of corn--was,

despite regulations, not unprocurable there, we spanned the prairie to

Guittard’s Station. This is a clump of board houses on the far side of

a shady, well-wooded creek--the Vermilion, a tributary of the Big Blue

River, so called from its red sandstone bottom, dotted with granitic

and porphyritic boulders.

Our conductor had sprained his ankle, and the driver, being in plain

English drunk, had dashed like a Phaeton over the “chuck-holes;” we

willingly, therefore, halted at 11 30 A.M. for dinner. The host was a

young Alsatian, who, with his mother and sister, had emigrated under

the excitement of Californian fever, and had been stopped, by want of

means, half way. The improvement upon the native was palpable: the

house and kitchen were clean, the fences neat; the ham and eggs, the

hot rolls and coffee, were fresh and good, and, although drought had

killed the salad, we had abundance of peaches and cream, an offering of

French to American taste which, in its simplicity, luxuriates in the

curious mixture of lacteal with hydrocyanic acid.

At Guittard’s I saw, for the first time, the Pony Express rider arrive.

In March, 1860, “the great dream of news transmitted from New York to

San Francisco (more strictly speaking from St. Joseph to Placerville,

California) in eight days was tested.” It appeared, in fact, under the

form of an advertisement in the St. Louis “Republican,”[25] and threw

at once into the shade the great Butterfield Mail, whose expedition

had been the theme of universal praise. Very meritoriously has the

contract been fulfilled. At the moment of writing (Nov., 1860), the

distance between New York and San Francisco has been farther reduced by

the advance of the electric telegraph--it proceeds at the rate of six

miles a day--to Fort Kearney from the Mississippi and to Fort Churchill

from the Pacific side. The merchant thus receives his advices in six

days. The contract of the government with Messrs. Russell, Majors, and

Co., to run the mail from St. Joseph to Great Salt Lake City, expired

the 30th of November, and it was proposed to, continue it only from

Julesburg on the crossing of the South Platte, 480 miles west of St.

Joseph. Mr. Russell, however, objected, and so did the Western States

generally, to abbreviating the mail-service as contemplated by the

Post-office Department. His spirit and energy met with supporters whose

interest it was not to fall back on the times when a communication

between New York and California could not be secured short of

twenty-five or thirty days; and, aided by the newspapers, he obtained

a renewal of his contract. The riders are mostly youths, mounted upon

active and lithe Indian nags. They ride 100 miles at a time--about

eight per hour--with four changes of horses, and return to their

stations the next day: of their hardships and perils we shall hear more

anon. The letters are carried in leathern bags, which are thrown about

carelessly enough when the saddle is changed, and the average postage

is $5 = £1 per sheet.

[25] The following is the first advertisement:

“_To San Francisco in eight days, by the Central Overland California

and Pike’s Peak Express Company._

“The first courier of the ‘Pony Express’ will leave the Missouri

River on Tuesday, April the 3d, at -- o’clock P.M., and will run

regularly weekly hereafter, carrying a letter mail only. The point

on the Missouri River will be in telegraphic communication with the

East, and will be announced in due time.

“Telegraphic messages from all parts of the United States and

Canada, in connection with the point of departure, will be received

up to 5 o’clock P.M. of the day of leaving, and transmitted over

the Placerville and St. Joseph Telegraph-wire to San Francisco and

intermediate points by the connecting Express in eight days. The

letter mail will be delivered in San Francisco in ten days from the

departure of the Express. The Express passes through Forts Kearney,

Laramie, and Bridger, Great Salt Lake City, Camp Floyd, Carson City,

the Washoe Silver Mines, Placerville, and Sacramento. And letters for

Oregon, Washington Territory, British Columbia, the Pacific Mexican

Ports, Russian Possessions, Sandwich Islands, China, Japan, and

India, will be mailed in San Francisco.

“Special messengers, bearers of letters, to connect with the Express

of the 3d April, will receive communications for the Courier of that

day at No. 481 Tenth Street, Washington City, up to 2 45 P.M. on

Friday, March 30th; and in New York, at the office of J.B. Simpson,

Room No. 8 Continental Bank Building, Nassau Street, up to 6 50 A.M.

of 31st March.

“Full particulars can be obtained on application at the above places,

and from the Agents of the Company.

W. H. RUSSELL, President.

“Leavenworth City, Kansas, March, 1860.

“_Office, New York._--J. B. Simpson, Vice-President; Samuel and Allen,

Agents, St. Louis, Mo.; H. J. Spaulding, Agent, Chicago.”

[THE PRAIRIE FIRES.]

Beyond Guittard’s the prairies bore a burnt-up aspect. Far as the eye

could see the tintage was that of the Arabian Desert, sere and tawny

as a jackal’s back. It was still, however, too early; October is the

month for those prairie fires which have so frequently exercised the

Western author’s pen. Here, however, the grass is too short for the

full development of the phenomenon, and beyond the Little Blue River

there is hardly any risk. The fire can easily be stopped, _ab initio_,

by blankets, or by simply rolling a barrel; the African plan of beating

down with boughs might also be used in certain places; and when the

conflagration has extended, travelers can take refuge in a little Zoar

by burning the vegetation to windward. In Texas and Illinois, however,

where the grass is tall and rank, and the roaring flames leap before

the wind with the stride of maddened horses, the danger is imminent,

and the spectacle must be one of awful sublimity.

In places where the land seems broken with bluffs, like an iron-bound

coast, the skeleton of the earth becomes visible; the formation is a

friable sandstone, overlying fossiliferous lime, which is based upon

beds of shale. These undergrowths show themselves at the edges of the

ground-waves and in the dwarf precipices, where the soil has been

degraded by the action of water. The yellow-brown humus varies from

forty to sixty feet deep in the most favored places, and erratic blocks

of porphyry and various granites encumber the dry water-courses and

surface drains. In the rare spots where water then lay, the herbage was

still green, forming oases in the withering waste, and showing that

irrigation is its principal, if not its only want.

Passing by Marysville, in old maps Palmetto City, a county town which

thrives by selling whisky to ruffians of all descriptions, we forded

before sunset the “Big Blue,” a well-known tributary of the Kansas

River. It is a pretty little stream, brisk and clear as crystal, about

forty or fifty yards wide by 2·50 feet deep at the ford. The soil is

sandy and solid, but the banks are too precipitous to be pleasant when

a very drunken driver hangs on by the lines of four very weary mules.

We then stretched once more over the “divide”--the ground, generally

rough or rolling, between the fork or junction of two streams, in

fact, the Indian Doab--separating the Big Blue from its tributary

the Little Blue. At 6 P.M. we changed our fagged animals for fresh,

and the land of Kansas for Nebraska, at Cotton-wood Creek, a bottom

where trees flourished, where the ground had been cleared for corn,

and where we detected the prairie wolf watching for the poultry. The

fur of our first coyote was light yellow-brown, with a tinge of red,

the snout long and sharp, the tail bushy and hanging, the gait like a

dog’s, and the manner expressive of extreme timidity; it is a far more

cowardly animal than the larger white buffalo-wolf and the black wolf

of the woods, which are also far from fierce. At Cotton-wood Station we

took “on board” two way-passengers, “lady” and “gentleman,” who were

drafted into the wagon containing the Judiciary. A weary drive over a

rough and dusty road, through chill night air and clouds of musquetoes,

which we were warned would accompany us to the Pacific slope of the

Rocky Mountains, placed us about 10 P.M. at Rock, also called Turkey

Creek--surely a misnomer; no turkey ever haunted so villainous a

spot! Several passengers began to suffer from fever and nausea; in

such travel the second night is usually the crisis, after which a man

can endure for an indefinite time. The “ranch” was a nice place for

invalids, especially for those of the softer sex. Upon the bedded floor

of the foul “doggery” lay, in a seemingly promiscuous heap, men, women,

children, lambs, and puppies, all fast in the arms of Morpheus, and

many under the influence of a much jollier god. The _employés_, when

aroused pretty roughly, blinked their eyes in the atmosphere of smoke

and musquetoes, and declared that it had been “merry in hall” that

night--the effects of which merriment had not passed off. After half an

hour’s dispute about who should do the work, they produced cold scraps

of mutton and a kind of bread which deserves a totally distinct generic

name. The strongest stomachs of the party made tea, and found some milk

which was not more than one quarter flies. This succulent meal was

followed by the usual douceur. On this road, however mean or wretched

the fare, the station-keeper, who is established by the proprietor of

the line, never derogates by lowering his price.

The City of the Saints, and Across the Rocky Mountains to California · 第 1 / 21 章