第48章 CHAPTER XX(1)

WE must move on; we have a long and rough journey before us.

Durham had old friends in New York, Fred Calthorpe had letters to Colonel Fremont, who was then a candidate for the Presidency, and who had discovered the South Pass; and Mr. Ellice had given me a letter to John Jacob Astor - THE

American millionaire of that day. We were thus well provided with introductions; and nothing could exceed the kindness and hospitality of our American friends.

But time was precious. It was already mid May, and we had everything to get - wagons, horses, men, mules, and provisions. So that we were anxious not to waste a day, but hurry on to St. Louis as fast as we could. Durham was too ill to go with us. Phoca had never intended to do so. Fred, Samson, and I, took leave of our companions, and travelling via the Hudson to Albany, Buffalo, down Lake Erie, and across to Chicago, we reached St. Louis in about eight days. As a single illustration of what this meant before railroads, Samson and I, having to stop a day at Chicago, hired a buggy and drove into the neighbouring woods, or wilderness, to hunt for wild turkeys.

Our outfit, the whole of which we got at St. Louis, consisted of two heavy wagons, nine mules, and eight horses. We hired eight men, on the nominal understanding that they were to go with us as far as the Rocky Mountains on a hunting expedition. In reality all seven of them, before joining us, had separately decided to go to California.

Having published in 1852 an account of our journey, entitled 'A Ride over the Rocky Mountains,' I shall not repeat the story, but merely give a summary of the undertaking, with a few of the more striking incidents to show what travelling across unknown America entailed fifty or sixty years ago.

A steamer took us up the Missouri to Omaha. Here we disembarked on the confines of occupied territory. From near this point, where the Platte river empties into the Missouri, to the mouth of the Columbia, on the Pacific - which we ultimately reached - is at least 1,500 miles as the crow flies; for us (as we had to follow watercourses and avoid impassable ridges) it was very much more. Some five-and-forty miles from our starting-place we passed a small village called Savannah. Between it and Vancouver there was not a single white man's abode, with the exception of three trading stations - mere mud buildings - Fort Laramie, Fort Hall, and Fort Boise.

The vast prairies on this side of the Rocky Mountains were grazed by herds of countless bison, wapiti, antelope, and deer of various species. These were hunted by moving tribes of Indians - Pawnees, Omahaws, Cheyennes, Ponkaws, Sioux, &c.

On the Pacific side of the great range, a due west course - which ours was as near as we could keep it - lay across a huge rocky desert of volcanic debris, where hardly any vegetation was to be met with, save artemisia - a species of wormwood - scanty blades of gramma grass, and occasional osiers by river-banks. The rivers themselves often ran through canons or gulches, so deep that one might travel for days within a hundred feet of water yet perish (some of our animals did so) for the want of a drop to drink. Game was here very scarce - a few antelope, wolves, and abundance of rattlesnakes, were nearly the only living things we saw. The Indians were mainly fishers of the Shoshone - or Great Snake River - tribe, feeding mostly on salmon, which they speared with marvellous dexterity; and Root-diggers, who live upon wild roots. When hard put to it, however, in winter, the latter miserable creatures certainly, if not the former, devoured their own children. There was no map of the country. It was entirely unexplored; in fact, Bancroft the American historian, in his description of the Indian tribes, quotes my account of the Root-diggers; which shows how little was known of this region up to this date. I carried a small compass fastened round my neck. That and the stars (we travelled by night when in the vicinity of Indians) were my only guides for hundreds of dreary miles.

Such then was the task we had set ourselves to grapple with.

As with life itself, nothing but the magic powers of youth and ignorance could have cajoled us to face it with heedless confidence and eager zest. These conditions given, with health - the one essential of all enjoyment - added, the first escape from civilised restraint, the first survey of primordial nature as seen in the boundless expanse of the open prairie, the habitat of wild men and wild animals, - exhilarate one with emotions akin to the schoolboy's rapture in the playground, and the thoughtful man's contemplation of the stars. Freedom and change, space and the possibilities of the unknown, these are constant elements of our day-dreams; now and then actual life dangles visions of them before our eyes, alas! only to teach us that the aspirations which they inspire are, for the most part, illusory.

Brief indeed, in our case, were the pleasures of novelty.

For the first few days the business was a continuous picnic for all hands. It was a pleasure to be obliged to help to set up the tents, to cut wood, to fetch water, to harness the mules, and work exactly as the paid men worked. The equality in this respect - that everything each wanted done had to be done with his own hands - was perfect; and never, from first to last, even when starvation left me bare strength to lift the saddle on to my horse, did I regret the necessity, or desire to be dependent on another man. But the bloom soon wore off the plum; and the pleasure consisted not in doing but in resting when the work was done.

For the reason already stated, a sample only of the daily labour will be given. It may be as well first to bestow a few words upon the men; for, in the long run, our fellow beings are the powerful factors, for good or ill, in all our worldly enterprises.