e. It was not all like that. A
good deal of it was.

Some will say that these overland travelers were over-zealous, even
foolhardy. One of the earliest pioneers, Mr. Daniel B. Miller, who
reached Oregon by the plains route in 1852, wrote later to relatives
in Illinois, "I would not bring a family across for all that is
contained in Oregon and California." Himself single, he had come with
a train composed almost wholly of men, but learned incidentally what
risks there were in escorting women and children through the wilds.

But the enduring of all this toil, exposure and hardship had for its
inspiration the buoyant hope of something good just beyond, something
that was believed to be worthy of the privation and effort it was
costing. The ardor of that hope was too intense to be discouraged by
anything that human strength could overcome. The memories of those
strenuous experiences are held as all but sacred, and you never meet
one of these early overland emigrants who does not like to sit by your
fireside and tell you about it. He forgets, for the moment, how hard
it was, and dwells upon it, telling it over and over again, with the
same pride and sense of noble achievement that the old soldier feels
when recounting the battles and the camp life and the hard marches of
the war, when he was young, away back in the sixties. One crossing
this country by present-day conveyances, in richly appointed railroad
trains, with all the comforts obtainable in modern sleeping, dining
and parlor cars, can hardly be expected to conceive what it was to
cover the same course under the conditions described; when there was
not even a poor wagon road, and the utmost speed did not equal in a
day the distance traveled in half an hour by the present mode. Any
person who rides in a cumbrous and heavily laden wagon, behind a team
whose pace never exceeds a slow walk; over dusty ground, in hot
weather, will, before one day is passed, feel that endurance requires
utmost fortitude. Consider what patience must be his if the journey
continues for four, five or six long months!

It is worthy of mention that there was no dissension among our people,
nor even unpleasantness, during the entire trip, nor did we observe
any among others. We were fortunate in having no "grouches" among us.
Harmony, cheerfulness, a disposition to be jolly, even to the degree
of hilarity, was the prevailing spirit. That, too, under circumstances
often so trying that they migh