that afternoon. In the old times the keel-boatmen
bound west started out singing. The pack-train men of the fur trade went
shouting and shooting, and the confident hilarity of the Santa Fe wagon
caravans was a proverb. But now, here in the great Oregon train, matters
were quite otherwise. There were women and children along. An unsmiling
gravity marked them all. When the dusky velvet of the prairie night
settled on almost the last day of the rendezvous it brought a general
feeling of anxiety, dread, uneasiness, fear. Now, indeed, and at last,
all these realized what was the thing that they had undertaken.

To add yet more to the natural apprehensions of men and women embarking
on so stupendous an adventure, all manner of rumors now continually
passed from one company to another. It was said that five thousand
Mormons, armed to the teeth, had crossed the river at St. Joseph and
were lying in wait on the Platte, determined to take revenge for the
persecutions they had suffered in Missouri and Illinois. Another story
said that the Kaw Indians, hitherto friendly, had banded together for
robbery and were only waiting for the train to appear. A still more
popular story had it that a party of several Englishmen had hurried
ahead on the trail to excite all the savages to waylay and destroy the
caravans, thus to wreak the vengeance of England upon the Yankees for
the loss of Oregon. Much unrest arose over reports, hard to trace, to
the effect that it was all a mistake about Oregon; that in reality it
was a truly horrible country, unfit for human occupancy, and sure to
prove the grave of any lucky enough to survive the horrors of the trail,
which never yet had been truthfully reported. Some returned travelers
from the West beyond the Rockies, who were hanging about the landing at
the river, made it all worse by relating what purported to be actual
experiences.

"If you ever get through to Oregon," they said, "you'll be ten years
older than you are now. Your hair will be white, but not by age."

The Great Dipper showed clear and close that night, as if one might
almost pick off by hand the familiar stars of the traveler's
constellation. Overhead countless brilliant points of lesser light
enameled the night mantle, matching the many camp fires of the great
gathering. The wind blew soft and low. Night on the prairie is always
solemn, and to-night the tense anxiety, the strained anticipation of
more than two thousand souls invoked