Part 7

Does the imagination of the epicure revolt at the suggestion of so rude a dish? To hundreds of thousands of weary emigrants, trudging their way across the continent, spending their days and nights in the open air and breathing an atmosphere bright with ozone, even ruder viands than this were as nectar and ambrosia.

The evolution of cooks, teamsters, woodsmen, and herders from the raw materials of a party of emigrants was one of the interesting features of life on the Great Plains. Here was a little company made up of a variety of experiences and aptitudes. Each man's best faculty in a novel service must be discovered. At the outset, none knew who should drive the oxen, who should do the cooking, or whose ingenuity would be taxed to mend broken wagon or tattered clothing. Gradually, and not altogether without grumbling and objection, each man filled his own proper place. No matter if the members of the party were college-bred, society men, farmers' sons, or ex-salesmen; each man found his legitimate vocation after a while. The severest critic of another's work was eventually charged with the labor which he had all along declared was not rightly performed by others. By the time the journey was fairly undertaken, the company was manned in every section as completely as if each worker had been assigned to his place in a council of the Fates. It was just and fit that he who had steadily derided the cooking of every other should show the others how cooking should be done; and common consent gave to the best manager of cattle the arduous post of driver. There was no place for drones, of course, for this was a strenuous life. Before the continent had been crossed the master spirits had asserted themselves. It was an evolution of the fittest.

I have said that these assignments to duty were not accomplished without grumbling and objection. Indeed, the division of labor in a party of emigrants was a prolific cause of quarrel. In our own little company of five there were occasional angry debates while the various burdens were being adjusted, but no outbreak ever occurred. We saw not a little fighting in the camps of others who sometimes jogged along the trail in our company, and these bloody fisticuffs were invariably the outcome of disputes over divisions of labor.

It should not be understood that the length of time required to traverse the distance between the Missouri and the Sacramento was wholly consumed in traveling. Nobody appeared to be in a feverish haste to finish the journey; and it was necessary to make occasional stops on the trail, where conditions were favorable, for the purpose of resting and refitting. A pleasant camping-place, with wood, water, and grass in plenty, was an invitation to halt and take a rest. This was called a "lay-by," and the halt sometimes lasted several days, during which wagon-tires were reset, ox-yokes repaired, clothes mended, and a general clean-up of the entire outfit completed preparatory to another long and uninterrupted drive toward the setting sun. If the stage of the journey immediately before us was an unusually difficult one, the stop was longer and the overhauling more thorough.

A day's march averaged about twenty miles; an uncommonly good day with favorable conditions would give us twenty-five miles. The distances from camping-place to camping-place were usually well known to all wayfarers. By some subtle agency, information (and sometimes misinformation) was disseminated along the trail before us and behind us, and we generally knew what sort of camping-place we should find each night, and how far it was from the place of the morning start. So, when we halted for the night, we knew pretty accurately how many miles we had covered in that day's tramp.

Of course riding was out of the question. We had one horse, but he was reserved for emergencies, and nobody but a shirk would think of crawling into the wagon, loaded down as it was with the necessaries of life, unless sickness made it impossible for him to walk. In this way we may be said to have walked all the way from the Missouri to the Sacramento. Much walking makes the human leg a mere affair of skin, bone, and sinew. We used to say that our legs were like chair-posts. But then the exercise was "good for the health." Nobody was ever ill.

Grass, wood, and water were three necessities of life on the trail. But these were sometimes very difficult to find. Usually one or two of the party went on ahead of the rest and looked out a suitable camping-place where those essentials could be found. Fuel was sometimes absolutely unobtainable, possibly a few dry weeds and stalks being the only combustible thing to be found.

Emigrants who were dependent upon open fires for cooking were often in very hard case. We were fortunate in the possession of a small sheet-iron camp-stove, for the heating of which a small amount of fuel was sufficient. This handy little apparatus was lashed to the rear end of the wagon when on the trail, and when it was in use, every sort of our simple cookery could be carried on by it with most satisfactory results. When we were obliged to camp for the night on wet ground after a rain, the flat-bottomed camp-stove, well heated and light, was moved from place to place inside the tent until the surface on which we must make our bed was fairly dry. Sometimes, however, we camped down on the damp ground; and sometimes, before we learned the trick of digging a ditch around the tent when signs of rain appeared, we woke to find ourselves lying in puddles of water. In such a case it was better to lie in the water that had been slightly warmed by the heat of one's body than to turn over into a colder stream on the other side. These experiences were novel and interesting; nobody ever suffered seriously from them.

In the matter of the necessaries of life, we had times of plenty and times of scarcity. There were places where our cattle were knee-deep in wild, succulent grasses, and there were times when they had nothing but the coarse and wilted sheaves of grass carried along the trail from the last camp. Flour, coffee, and bacon never failed us; and there were times when we had more fresh meat than we could eat. In the buffalo country, of course, we had the wholesome beef of that then multitudinous animal in every possible variety. In the Rocky Mountain region, antelope, prairie-dogs, black-tail deer, jack-rabbits, and occasionally sage-hens gave us an enjoyable change from our staple diet of bacon and bread. The antelope were very wild and timid, and no one thought of chasing them; they were brought down by stratagem. A bright-colored handkerchief fastened to a ramrod stuck into the ground was a lure which no antelope could resist. A small drove of these inquisitive creatures would circle distantly round and round the strange flag: but ever drawing nearer, sometimes pausing as if to discuss among themselves what that thing could possibly be, they would certainly come at last within gunshot of the patient hunter lying flat on the ground; a rifle-ball would bring down one of the herd, and the rest would disappear as if the earth had swallowed them.

In the heart of the buffalo country the buffaloes were an insufferable nuisance. Vast herds were moving across our trail from south to north, trampling the moist and grassy soil into a black paste, and so polluting the streams and springs that drinking-water was often difficult to obtain. The vastness of some of these droves was most impressive, in spite of the calamitous ruin they left behind them. As far as the eye could reach, the surface of the earth was a heaving mass of animal life; the ground seemed to be covered with a brown mantle of fur. As we advanced along the trail, the droves would quietly separate to our right and left, leaving a lane along which we traveled with herds on each side of us. From an eminence, looking backward and forward, one could see that we were completely hemmed in before and behind; and the space left for us by the buffalo moved along with us. They never in the least incommoded us by any hostile action; all they asked, apparently, was to be let alone.

The buffalo is not the clumsy animal he looks in captivity or in pictures. It is a fleet horse that can overtake him; and to see him drop into a wallow while on a keen run, roll over and over two or three times, and skip to his feet and away with his comrades with the nimbleness of a kitten, is a sight to be remembered.

Although we traveled a part of the time through what was known as a hostile Indian country, we were never molested by the red men. Friendly Indians came into our camps to beg, to pilfer, or to sell buckskins and moccasins. Before us and behind us were several attacks upon caravans, the victims usually being few in number and unprepared for a skirmish. But while we were in the region deemed dangerous from Indians we massed in with other companies of emigrants, so that we were seldom less than one hundred and fifty strong; a regular watch was kept by night, and the wagons were parked in a circle which could be used as a defense in case of an attack.

In the course of weeks, the camp, wherever it might be pitched, took on the semblance of a home. The tent was our house; the rude cooking-and eating-apparatus and the comfortable bedding were our household furniture, and the live stock about us was our movable property. Except in the most trying and difficult straits, evening found us busy with household cares and amusements. Our neighbors were changeable, it is true, but we often found new and pleasant acquaintances, and sometimes old friends from whom we had been separated for weeks would trundle up and camp near us.

One of the famous landmarks to which we had looked forward with great interest was the Devil's Gate of the Rockies, through which we passed before beginning the climb of the backbone of the continent. It was a far more impressive spectacle than the pass. The gate is double, and through one of its tall, black portals murmurs the Sweetwater on its way to join the North Platte. The trail lies through the other fissure, trail and stream being only a few hundred rods apart.

Two days from Fort Bridger we entered Echo Cañon, one of the most delightful spots which I remember on the long, long trail. The cañon is about twenty miles long, and could be readily traversed in a single day; but we loitered through it, so that we were more than two days in its charmed fastnesses. On each side of the route the cliffs tower to a great height, marked with columnar formations and clouded with red, white, yellow, and drab, like some ancient wall of brick and stone. The crests of these towers are crowded with verdure, and here and there are trees and vines that line the cañon and climb upward to the flying buttresses of the rocky walls. A delicious stream of water crosses and recrosses the trail; and while we were in the cañon, grass and fuel were abundant. To make our comfort complete, great quantities of wild berries hung invitingly from the bushes by the sides of the way. Silvery rivulets fell from the walls of the cañon, and wild vines and flowers in great variety bloomed against the buttresses and donjon-keeps of the formations through which we threaded our way.

Crossing the Weber, we entered one more cañon, and suddenly, one afternoon, emerging from the mouth of Emigrant Cañon, we looked down upon one of the fairest scenes on which the eye of man has ever gazed--the Great Salt Lake valley. It was like a jewel set in the heart of the continent. Deep below us, stretching north and south, was the level floor of the valley. Far to the westward rose a wall of mountains, purple, pink, and blue in the distance. Nearer sparkled the azure waters of the Great Salt Lake.

The route from the city of the Saints lay around the northern end of the lake, but, in order to reach the road to Bear River, we were obliged to cross a few fenced fields, and this involved long parleys with surly owners. We passed through a string of small towns on our way up to the main-traveled trail, the last of these being Box Elder, now known as Brigham City. Box Elder was a settlement of about three hundred people, and boasted a post-office, a blacksmith's shop, a trading-post, and a brewery. At this last-named establishment we bought some fresh yeast, which served us a good turn in breadmaking for many a day thereafter. We bought new flour in Salt Lake City at a fair price, having skimped ourselves on that article for some time on account of the exorbitant cost of it at the trading-posts on the trail. At Fort Bridger, flour was thirty-five dollars a barrel, and bacon was one dollar a pound.

We were now approaching the edge of the Great Desert, which, stretching from the Bitter Root Mountains, in northern Idaho, to the southern boundary of Arizona, interposed for many years a barrier that was supposed to be impassable to the hardy emigrant. Now came long night marches and dreary days spent in traversing a region intolerable with dust, heat, rocky trails, and sideling hills.

The last day's drive in the desert was the hardest of all. Twenty miles lay between us and the Honey Lake valley. It was to be traveled in the night; and as the numerous trains and caravans swept down into the plain from the point of rocks on which I was sitting, waiting for our wagons to come up, it was pathetic to note the intentness with which this multitude of home-seekers and gold-seekers set their faces westward. There was no haste, no fussy anxiety, but the vast multitude of men, women, and children who had left all behind them to look for a new life in an unknown land trooped silently down into the desert waste. The setting sun bathed the plain in golden radiance, and eastward the rocky pinnacles of the ranges through which we had toiled were glorified with purple, gold, and crimson. It was a sight to be remembered--as beautiful as a dream, hiding a wilderness as cruel as death.

Honey Lake belied the sweetness of its name. It was a small sheet of muddy water, but emptying into it was a sparkling river, or creek, known as Susan's River, which, meandering through an emerald valley and watering many a meadow, gave unwonted beauty to a scene the like of which had not been gazed upon by the toil-worn plainsmen for many a day. Here, too, we got our first glimpse of the Sierra Nevada.

After the privation and poverty of the desert, the wild abundance of the forests of the Sierra was luxury indescribable. We camped by crystal waterfalls with rank and succulent grasses all about us; overhead were the spreading branches of noble pines, and our camp-fires were heaped with an extravagance of fuel. But we soon found how hard it was to climb the mountain-range; and when, after a day's solid rest and comfort, we reached the crest of the ridge, we saw that the trail pitched almost perpendicularly over the sharp backbone of the Sierra. Two or three trees that grew by the place where the track led to the brink were scarred and worn nearly through by ropes that had been wound around them to let down the heavy wagons into the abyss below. The cattle were taken out of the teams and driven down through the undergrowth of thickets; and then, making a rope fast to the rear axle of each wagon, one wagon at a time was carefully lowered down the steep declivity.

That arduous labor over, we passed through the "Devil's Corral" and camped in Mountain Meadows, a very paradise of a spot, in which it seemed as if we were surrounded by every luxury imaginable, albeit we had nothing but what uncultivated nature gave us.

The vale of the new Eldorado was tawny and gold with sear grass and wild oats. In the distance rose the misty mountain wall of the Coast Range; nearer a heroic outline of noble peaks broke the yellow abundance of the valley's floor. This was the group known as Sutter's Buttes, near the base of which was Nye's Ranch (now Marysville), the goal of our long tramp. Dogtown, Inskip, and a little host of other mining hamlets, claimed our attention briefly as we swept down into the noble valley, on whose farther edge, by the historic Yuba, we found our last camp.

Here we met the wave of migration that earlier broke on the shores of the Pacific. In the winter of 1849-50 two hundred and fifty vessels sailed for San Francisco from the ports of the Atlantic States; and their multitudes of men were reinforced by other multitudes from other lands. In a single year the population of the State was augmented by an influx of more than one hundred thousand persons, arriving by sea and by land.

THE FIRST EMIGRANT TRAIN TO CALIFORNIA

BY JOHN BIDWELL (PIONEER OF '41)

In the spring of 1839--living at the time in the western part of Ohio--being then in my twentieth year, I conceived a desire to see the great prairies of the West, especially those most frequently spoken of, in Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri. Emigration from the East was tending westward, and settlers had already begun to invade those rich fields.

Starting on foot to Cincinnati, ninety miles distant, I fortunately got a chance to ride most of the way on a wagon loaded with farm produce. My outfit consisted of about $75, the clothes I wore, and a few others in a knapsack which I carried in the usual way strapped upon my shoulders, for in those days travelers did not have valises or trunks. Though traveling was considered dangerous, I had no weapon more formidable than a pocket-knife. From Cincinnati I went down the Ohio River by steamboat to the Mississippi, up the Mississippi to St. Louis, and thence to Burlington, in what was then the Territory of Iowa. Those were bustling days on the western rivers, which were then the chief highways of travel. The scenes at the wood landings I recall as particularly lively and picturesque. Many passengers would save a little by helping to "wood the boat," _i. e._, by carrying wood down the bank and throwing it on the boat, a special ticket being issued on that condition.

In 1839 Burlington had perhaps not over two hundred inhabitants, though it was the capital of Iowa Territory. After consultation with the governor, Robert Lucas of Ohio, I concluded to go into the interior and select a tract of land on the Iowa River. In those days one was permitted to take up 160 acres, and where practicable it was usual to take part timber and part prairie. After working awhile at putting up a log house--until all the people in the neighborhood became ill with fever and ague--I concluded to move on and strike out to the south and southwest into Missouri. I traveled across country, sometimes by the sun, without road or trail. There were houses and settlements, but they were scattered; sometimes one would have to go twenty miles to find a place to stay at night.

On my arrival, my money being all spent, I was obliged to accept the first thing that offered, and began teaching school in the country about five miles from the town of Weston, which was located on the north side of the Missouri River and about four miles above Fort Leavenworth in Kansas Territory. Possibly some may suppose it did not take much education to teach a country school at that period in Missouri. The rapid settlement of that new region had brought together people of all classes and conditions, and had thrown into juxtaposition almost every phase of intelligence as well as of illiteracy. But there was no lack of self-reliance or native shrewdness in any class, and I must say that I learned to have a high esteem for the people, among whom I found warm and lifelong friends.

In November or December of 1840, while still teaching school in Platte County, I came across a Frenchman named Roubideaux, who said he had been to California. He had been a trader in New Mexico, and had followed the road traveled by traders from the frontier of Missouri to Santa Fé. He had probably gone through what is now New Mexico and Arizona into California by the Gila River trail used by the Mexicans. His description of California was in the superlative degree favorable, so much so that I resolved if possible to see that wonderful land, and with others helped to get up a meeting at Weston and invited him to make a statement before it in regard to the country. At that time when a man moved out West, as soon as he was fairly settled he wanted to move again, and naturally every question imaginable was asked in regard to this wonderful country. Roubideaux described it as one of perennial spring and boundless fertility, and laid stress on the countless thousands of wild horses and cattle. He told about oranges, and hence must have been at Los Angeles, or the mission of San Gabriel, a few miles from it. Every conceivable question that we could ask him was answered favorably. Generally the first question which a Missourian asked about a country was whether there was any fever and ague. I remember his answer distinctly. He said there was but one man in California that had ever had a chill there, and it was a matter of so much wonderment to the people of Monterey that they went eighteen miles into the country to see him shake. Nothing could have been more satisfactory on the score of health. He said that the Spanish authorities were most friendly, and that the people were the most hospitable on the globe; that you could travel all over California and it would cost you nothing for horses or food. Even the Indians were friendly. His description of the country made it seem like a Paradise.

The result was that we appointed a corresponding secretary, and a committee to report a plan of organization. A pledge was drawn up in which every signer agreed to purchase a suitable outfit, and to rendezvous at Sapling Grove in what is now the State of Kansas, on the 9th of the following May, armed and equipped to cross the Rocky Mountains to California. We called ourselves the Western Emigration Society, and as soon as the pledge was drawn up every one who agreed to come signed his name to it, and it took like wildfire. In a short time, I think within a month, we had about five hundred names; we also had correspondence on the subject with people all over Missouri, and even as far east as Illinois and Kentucky, and as far south as Arkansas. As soon as the movement was announced in the papers we had many letters of inquiry, and we expected people in considerable numbers to join us. About that time we heard of a man living in Jackson County, Missouri, who had received a letter from a person in California named Dr. Marsh, speaking favorably of the country, and a copy of this letter was published.