rench fur trader from St. Joseph, circulated cheeringly from mouth
to mouth--a man in Monterey had had chills and people came from miles
around to see him shake, so novel was the spectacle. That was the
country for the men and women of the Mississippi Valley, who shook half
the year and spent the other half getting over it.

The call of the West was a siren song in the ears of these waiting
companies. The blood of pioneers urged them forward. Their
forefathers had moved from the old countries across the seas, from the
elm-shaded towns of New England, from the unkempt villages that
advanced into the virgin lands by the Great Lakes, from the peace and
plenty of the splendid South. Year by year they had pushed the
frontier westward, pricked onward by a ceaseless unrest, "the old land
hunger" that never was appeased. The forests rang to the stroke of
their ax, the slow, untroubled rivers of the wilderness parted to the
plowing wheels of their unwieldy wagons, their voices went before them
into places where Nature had kept unbroken her vast and pondering
silence. The distant country by the Pacific was still to explore and
they yoked their oxen, and with a woman and a child on the seat started
out again, responsive to the cry of "Westward, Ho!"

As many were bound for Oregon as for California. Marcus Whitman and
the missionaries had brought alluring stories of that great domain once
held so cheaply the country almost lost it. It was said to be of a
wonderful fertility and league-long stretches of idle land awaited the
settler. The roads ran together more than half the way, parting at
Green River, where the Oregon trail turned to Fort Hall and the
California dipped southward and wound, a white and spindling thread,
across what men then called "The Great American Desert." Two days'
journey from Independence this road branched from the Santa Fe Trail
and bent northward across the prairie. A signboard on a stake pointed
the way and bore the legend, "Road to Oregon." It was the starting
point of one of the historic highways of the world. The Indians called
it "The Great Medicine Way of the Pale-face."

Checked in the act of what they called "jumping off" the emigrants wore
away the days in telling stories of the rival countries, and in
separating from old companies and joining new ones. It was an
important matter, this of traveling partnerships. A trip of two
thousand miles on unknown roads beset with dangers was