FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42  
43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   >>   >|  
t, and they were thin in flesh; his wagons were apparently light and as frail as the teams. But I soon found that his outfit, like ours, carried no extra weight, and he knew how to care for a team. He was, besides, an obliging neighbor, which was fully demonstrated on many trying occasions, as we traveled in company for more than a thousand miles, until his road to California parted from ours at the big bend of the Bear River. Of the trip through Iowa little remains to be said further than that the grass was thin and washy, the roads muddy and slippery, and the weather execrable, although May had been ushered in long before we reached the little Mormon town of Kanesville (now Council Bluffs), a few miles above the place where we were to cross the Missouri River. Here my brother Oliver joined us, having come from Indianapolis with old-time comrades and friends. Now, with the McAuleys and Oliver's party, we mustered a train of five wagons. [Illustration: A yoke of oxen.] It was here at Kanesville that the last purchases were made, the last letter sent back to anxious friends. Once across the Missouri and headed westward, we should have to cross the Rocky Mountains to find a town again. We had now come to the beginning of the second stage of our long journey. We had reached the Missouri River. From the western bank of the river we should strike out across the Plains, through what is now Nebraska and Wyoming, to the crest of the continent. We should follow the ox-team trail along the north bank of the Platte, and then up the north fork of the Platte to the mountains. But first we must get across the Missouri. "What on earth is that?" exclaimed one of the women, as we approached the landing for the ferry which crossed the river to a point a few miles below where Omaha now stands. "It looks for all the world like a big white flatiron," answered another. [Illustration: On this page and the following are shown the main trails that stretched across the continent, west of the Missouri, in the years before the building of railroads. The Oregon Trail from Kanesville to Portland is marked with the heaviest line. The lighter line from Huntsville to Kanesville shows Ezra Meeker's early travels; this marks not a trail but a main-traveled road. People starting out from St. Louis for the Oregon Country went by way of the Santa Fe Trail about as far as Fort Leavenworth, then northwest to Fort Kearney on the Platte River,
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42  
43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Missouri

 

Kanesville

 
Platte
 

Oregon

 

traveled

 

reached

 

Oliver

 
friends
 

wagons

 

Illustration


continent

 

exclaimed

 

approached

 
landing
 
strike
 

Plains

 

western

 
journey
 

Nebraska

 

Wyoming


mountains
 

follow

 
People
 

starting

 

travels

 

Huntsville

 

Meeker

 

Leavenworth

 

northwest

 
Kearney

Country

 

lighter

 

heaviest

 
flatiron
 

answered

 
stands
 
building
 

railroads

 

Portland

 
marked

stretched

 
trails
 
crossed
 

mustered

 

thousand

 

California

 

company

 
occasions
 
demonstrated
 

parted