and eight wagons, gathered itself
together from the little city of Monroe, Michigan, and adjacent country,
and, setting its face toward the western horizon, started for the newly
found gold fields of California, where it expected to unloose from the
storage quarters of Nature sufficient of shining wealth to insure peace
and plenty to twenty-five life-times and their dependencies. As is usual
upon such occasions, this March morning departure from home and friends
was a strange commingling of sadness and gladness, of hope and fear, for
in those days whoever went into the regions beyond the Missouri River
were considered as already lost to the world. It was going into the dark
unknown and untried places of earth whose farewells always surrounded
those who remained at home with an atmosphere of foreboding.

Nothing of importance occurred during our travel through the States,
except the general bad roads, which caused us to make slow progress.
Crossing the Mississippi River at Warsaw, Illinois, we kept along the
northern tier of counties in Missouri, which were heavily timbered and
sparsely settled. Bearing south-west, we arrived at St. Joseph,
Missouri, on the first day of May.

The town was a collection of one-story, cheap, wooden buildings, located
along the river and Black Snake Hollow.

The inhabitants appeared to be chiefly French and half-breed Indians.
The principal business was selling outfits to immigrants and trading
horses, mules and cattle. There was one steam ferry-boat, which had
several days crossing registered ahead.

The level land below the town was the camping-place of our colony. After
two or three days at this point, we drove up to the town of Savannah,
where we laid in new supplies and passed on to the Missouri River, where
we crossed by hand-ferry at Savannah Landing, now called Amazonia. Here
we pressed for the first time the soil of the then unsettled plains of
the great West. Working our way through the heavily timbered bottom, we
camped under the bluffs, wet and weary.

We remained here over Sunday, it having been decided to observe the
Sabbath days as a time of rest. We usually rested Wednesday afternoons
also.

Just after crossing the river, we had a number of set-backs; beginning
with the crippling of a wheel while passing through a growth of timber.
As we examined the broken spokes, we realized that they would soon have
to be replaced by new ones, and that the wise thing to do was to pro