A tour through the domains of Uncle Samuel without visiting the wide regions of the Far West would be, to use a novel simile, like seeing Hamlet with the part of Prince of Denmark, by desire, omitted. Moreover, I had long determined to add the last new name to the list of “Holy Cities;” to visit the young rival, soi-disant, of Memphis, Benares, Jerusalem, Rome, Meccah; and after having studied the beginnings of a mighty empire “in that New World which is the Old,” to observe the origin and the working of a regular go-ahead Western and Columbian revelation. Mingled with the wish of prospecting the City of the Great Salt Lake in a spiritual point of view, of seeing Utah as it is, not as it is said to be, was the mundane desire of enjoying a little skirmishing with the savages, who in the days of Harrison and Jackson had given the pale faces tough work to do, and that failing, of inspecting the line of route which Nature, according to the general consensus of guide-books, has pointed out as the proper, indeed the only practical direction for a railway between the Atlantic and the Pacific. The commerce of the world, the Occidental Press had assured me, is undergoing its grand climacteric: the resources of India and the nearer orient are now well-nigh cleared of “loot,” and our sons, if they would walk in the paths of their papas, must look to Cipangri and the parts about Cathay for their annexations.

The Man was ready, the Hour hardly appeared propitious for other than belligerent purposes. Throughout the summer of 1860 an Indian war was raging in Nebraska; the Comanches, Kiowas, and Cheyennes were “out;” the Federal government had dispatched three columns to the centres of confusion; intestine feuds among the aborigines were talked of; the Dakotah or Sioux had threatened to “wipe out” their old foe the Pawnee, both tribes being possessors of the soil over which the road ran. Horrible accounts of murdered post-boys and cannibal emigrants, greatly exaggerated, as usual, for private and public purposes, filled the papers, and that nothing might be wanting, the following positive assertion (I afterward found it to be, as Sir Charles Napier characterized one of a Bombay editor’s saying, “a marked and emphatic lie”) was copied by full half the press:

“Utah has a population of some fifty-two or fifty-three thousand—more or less—rascals. Governor Cumming has informed the President exactly how matters stand in respect to them. Neither life nor property is safe, he says, and bands of depredators roam unpunished through the territory. The United States judges have abandoned their offices, and the law is boldly defied every where. He requests that 500 soldiers may be retained at Utah to afford some kind of protection to American citizens who are obliged to remain here.”

“Mormon” had in fact become a word of fear; the Gentiles looked upon the Latter-Day Saints much as our crusading ancestors regarded the “Hashshashiyun,” whose name, indeed, was almost enough to frighten them. Mr. Brigham Young was the Shaykh-el-Jebel, the Old Man of the Hill redivivus, Messrs. Kimball and Wells were the chief of his Fidawin, and “Zion on the tops of the mountains” formed a fair representation of Alamut.

“Going among the Mormons!” said Mr. M—— to me at New Orleans; “they are shooting and cutting one another in all directions; how can you expect to escape?”

Another general assertion was that “White Indians”—those Mormons again!—had assisted the “Washoes,” “Pah Utes,” and “Bannacks” in the fatal affair near Honey Lake, where Major Ormsby, of the militia, a military frontier-lawyer, and his forty men, lost the numbers of their mess.

But sagely thus reflecting that “dangers which loom large from afar generally lose size as one draws near;” that rumors of wars might have arisen, as they are wont to do, from the political necessity for another “Indian botheration,” as editors call it; that Governor Cumming’s name might have been used in vain; that even the President might not have been a Pope, infallible; and that the Mormons might turn out somewhat less black than they were painted; moreover, having so frequently and willfully risked the chances of an “I told you so” from the lips of friends, those “prophets of the past;” and, finally, having been so much struck with the discovery by some Western man of an enlarged truth, viz., that the bugbear approached has more affinity to the bug than to the bear, I resolved to risk the chance of the “red nightcap” from the bloodthirsty Indian and the poisoned bowie-dagger—without my Eleonora or Berengaria—from the jealous Latter-Day Saints. I forthwith applied myself to the audacious task with all the recklessness of a “party” from town precipitating himself for the first time into “foreign parts” about Calais.

And, first, a few words touching routes.

THE PACIFIC RAILROADAs all the world knows, there are three main lines proposed for a “Pacific Railroad” between the Mississippi and the Western Ocean, the Northern, Central, and Southern.[2]

The first, or British, was in my case not to be thought of; it involves semi-starvation, possibly a thorough plundering by the Bedouins, and, what was far worse, five or six months of slow travel. The third, or Southern, known as the Butterfield or American Express, offered to start me in an ambulance from St. Louis, and to pass me through Arkansas, El Paso, Fort Yuma on the Gila River, in fact through the vilest and most desolate portion of the West. Twenty-four mortal days and nights—twenty-five being schedule time—must be spent in that ambulance; passengers becoming crazy by whisky, mixed with want of sleep, are often obliged to be strapped to their seats; their meals, dispatched during the ten-minute halts, are simply abominable, the heats are excessive, the climate malarious; lamps may not be used at night for fear of unexisting Indians: briefly, there is no end to this Via Mala’s miseries. The line received from the United States government upward of half a million of dollars per annum for carrying the mails, and its contract had still nearly two years to run.

There remained, therefore, the central route, which has two branches. You may start by stage to the gold regions about Denver City or Pike’s Peak, and thence, if not accidentally or purposely shot, you may proceed by an uncertain ox-train to Great Salt Lake City, which latter part can not take less than thirty-five days. On the other hand, there is “the great emigration route” from Missouri to California and Oregon, over which so many thousands have traveled within the past few years. I quote from a useful little volume, “The Prairie Traveler,”[7] by Randolph B. Marcy, Captain U. S. Army. “The track is broad, well worn, and can not be mistaken. It has received the major part of the Mormon emigration, and was traversed by the army in its march to Utah in 1857.”

The mail-coach on this line was established in 1850, by Colonel Samuel H. Woodson, an eminent lawyer, afterward an M. C., and right unpopular with Mormondom, because he sacrilegiously owned part of Temple Block, in Independence, Mo., which is the old original New Zion. The following are the rates of contract and the phases through which the line has passed.

1. Colonel Woodson received for carrying a monthly mail $19,500 (or $23,000?): length of contract 4 years.

2. Mr. F. McGraw, $13,500, besides certain considerable extras.

3. Messrs. Heber Kimball & Co. (Mormons), $23,000.

4. Messrs. Jones & Co., $30,000.

5. Mr. J. M. Hockaday, weekly mail, $190,000.

6. Messrs. Russell, Majors, & Waddell, army contractors; weekly mail, $190,000.[8]

Thus it will be seen that in 1856 the transit was in the hands of the Latter-Day Saints: they managed it well, but they lost the contracts during their troubles with the federal government in 1857, when it again fell into Gentile possession. In those early days it had but three changes of mules, at Forts Bridger, Laramie, and Kearney. In May, 1859, it was taken up by the present firm, which expects, by securing the monopoly of the whole line between the Missouri River and San Francisco, and by canvassing at head-quarters for a bi-weekly—which they have now obtained—and even a daily transit, which shall constitutionally extinguish the Mormon community, to insert the fine edge of that wedge which is to open an aperture for the Pacific Railroad about to be. At Saint Joseph (Mo.), better known by the somewhat irreverent abbreviation of St. Jo, I was introduced to Mr. Alexander Majors, formerly one of the contractors for supplying the army in THE UTAH LINE.Utah—a veteran mountaineer, familiar with life on the prairies. His meritorious efforts to reform the morals of the land have not yet put forth even the bud of promise. He forbade his drivers and employés to drink, gamble, curse, and travel on Sundays; he desired them to peruse Bibles distributed to them gratis; and though he refrained from a lengthy proclamation commanding his lieges to be good boys and girls, he did not the less expect it of them. Results: I scarcely ever saw a sober driver; as for profanity—the Western equivalent for hard swearing—they would make the blush of shame crimson the cheek of the old Isis bargee; and, rare exceptions to the rule of the United States, they are not to be deterred from evil talking even by the dread presence of a “lady.” The conductors and road-agents are of a class superior to the drivers; they do their harm by an inordinate ambition to distinguish themselves. I met one gentleman who owned to three murders, and another individual who lately attempted to ration the mules with wild sage. The company was by no means rich; already the papers had prognosticated a failure, in consequence of the government withdrawing its supplies, and it seemed to have hit upon the happy expedient of badly entreating travelers that good may come to it of our evils. The hours and halting-places were equally vilely selected; for instance, at Forts Kearney, Laramie, and Bridger, the only points where supplies, comfort, society, are procurable, a few minutes of grumbling delay were granted as a favor, and the passengers were hurried on to some distant wretched ranch,[9] apparently for the sole purpose of putting a few dollars into the station-master’s pockets. The travel was unjustifiably slow, even in this land, where progress is mostly on paper. From St. Jo to Great Salt Lake City, the mails might easily be landed during the fine weather, without inconvenience to man or beast, in ten days; indeed, the agents have offered to place them at Placerville in fifteen. Yet the schedule time being twenty-one days, passengers seldom reached their destination before the nineteenth; the sole reason given was, that snow makes the road difficult in its season, and that if people were accustomed to fast travel, and if letters were received under schedule time, they would look upon the boon as a right.

Before proceeding to our preparations for travel, it may be as well to cast a glance at the land to be traveled over.

The United States territory lying in direct line between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean is now about 1200 miles long from north to south, by 1500 of breadth, in 49° and 32° N. lat., about equal to Equatorial Africa, and 1800 in N. lat. 38°. The great uncultivable belt of plain and mountain region through which the Pacific Railroad must run has a width of 1100 statute miles near the northern boundary; in the central line, 1200; and through the southern, 1000. Humboldt justly ridiculed the “maddest natural philosopher” who compared the American continent to a female figure—long, thin, watery, and freezing at the 58th°, the degrees being symbolic of the year at which woman grows old. Such description manifestly will not apply to the 2,000,000 of square miles in this section of the Great Republic—she is every where broader than she is long.

The meridian of 105° north longitude (G.)—Fort Laramie lies in 104° 31′ 26″—divides this vast expanse into two nearly equal parts. The eastern half is a basin or river valley rising gradually from the Mississippi to the Black Hills, and the other outlying ranges of the Rocky Mountains. The average elevation near the northern boundary (49°) is 2500 feet, in the middle latitude (38°) 6000 feet, and near the southern extremity (32°), about 4000 feet above sea level. These figures explain the complicated features of its water-shed. The western half is a mountain region whose chains extend, as far as they are known, in a general N. and S. direction.

The 99th meridian (G.)—Fort Kearney lies in 98° 58′ 11″—divides the western half of the Mississippian Valley into two unequal parts.

The eastern portion, from the Missouri to Fort Kearney—400 to 500 miles in breadth—may be called the “Prairie land.” It is true that passing westward of the 97° meridian, the mauvaises terres, or Bad Grounds, are here and there met with, especially near the 42d parallel, in which latitude they extend farther to the east, and that upward to 99° the land is rarely fit for cultivation, though fair for grazing. Yet along the course of the frequent streams there is valuable soil, and often sufficient wood to support settlements. This territory is still possessed by settled Indians, by semi-nomads, and by powerful tribes of equestrian and wandering savages, mixed with a few white men, who, as might be expected, excel them in cunning and ferocity.

The western portion of the valley, from Fort Kearney to the base of the Rocky Mountains—a breadth of 300 to 400 miles—is emphatically “the desert,” sterile and uncultivable, a dreary expanse of wild sage (artemisia) and saleratus. The surface is sandy, gravelly, and pebbly; cactus carduus and aloes abound; THE WESTERN GRAZING-GROUNDS.grass is found only in the rare river bottoms where the soils of the different strata are mixed, and the few trees along the borders of streams—fertile lines of wadis, which laborious irrigation and coal mining might convert into oases—are the cotton-wood and willow, to which the mezquite[10] may be added in the southern latitudes. The desert is mostly uninhabited, unendurable even to the wildest Indian. But the people on its eastern and western frontiers, namely, those holding the extreme limits of the fertile prairie, and those occupying the desirable regions of the western mountains, are, to quote the words of Lieutenant Gouverneur K. Warren, U. S. Topographical Engineers, whose valuable reconnaissances and explanations of Nebraska in 1855, ’56, and ’57 were published in the Reports of the Secretary of War, “on the shore of a sea, up to which population and agriculture may advance and no farther. But this gives these outposts much of the value of places along the Atlantic frontier, in view of the future settlements to be formed in the mountains, between which and the present frontier a most valuable trade would exist. The western frontier has always been looking to the east for a market; but as soon as the wave of emigration has passed over the desert portion of the plains, to which the discoveries of gold have already given an impetus that will propel it to the fertile valleys of the Rocky Mountains, then will the present frontier of Kansas and Nebraska become the starting-point for all the products of the Mississippi Valley which the population of the mountains will require. We see the effects of it in the benefits which the western frontier of Missouri has received from the Santa Fé tract, and still more plainly in the impetus given to Leavenworth by the operations of the army of Utah in the interior region. This flow of products has, in the last instance, been only in one direction; but when those mountains become settled, as they eventually must, then there will be a reciprocal trade materially beneficial to both.”

The mountain region westward of the sage and saleratus desert, extending between the 105th and 111th meridian (G.)—a little more than 400 miles—will in time become sparsely peopled. Though in many parts arid and sterile, dreary and desolate, the long bunch grass (Festuca), the short curly buffalo grass (Sisleria dactyloides), the mesquit grass (Stipa spata), and the Gramma, or rather, as it should be called, “Gamma” grass (Chondrosium fœnum),[11] which clothe the slopes west of Fort Laramie, will enable it to rear an abundance of stock. The fertile valleys, according to Lieutenant Warren, “furnish the means of raising sufficient quantities of grain and vegetables for the use of the inhabitants, and beautiful healthy and desirable locations for their homes. The remarkable freedom here from sickness is one of the attractive features of the region, and will in this respect go far to compensate the settler from the Mississippi Valley for his loss in the smaller amount of products that can be taken from the soil. The great want of suitable building material, which now so seriously retards the growth of the West, will not be felt there.” The heights of the Rocky Mountains rise abruptly from 1000 to 6000 feet over the lowest known passes, computed by the Pacific Railroad surveyors to vary from 4000 to 10,000 feet above sea-level. The two chains forming the eastern and western rims of the Rocky Mountain basin have the greatest elevation, walling in, as it were, the other sub-ranges.

There is a popular idea that the western slope of the Rocky Mountains is smooth and regular; on the contrary, the land is rougher, and the ground is more complicated than on the eastern declivities. From the summit of the Wasach range to the eastern foot of the Sierra Nevada, the whole region, with exceptions, is a howling wilderness, the sole or bed of an inland sweetwater sea, now shrunk into its remnants—the Great Salt and the Utah Lakes. Nothing can be more monotonous than its regular succession of high grisly hills, cut perpendicularly by rough and rocky ravines, and separating bare and barren plains. From the seaward base of the Sierra Nevada to the Pacific—California—the slope is easy, and the land is pleasant, fertile, and populous.

After this aperçu of the motives which sent me forth, once more a pilgrim, to young Meccah in the West, of the various routes, and of the style of country wandered over, I plunge at once into personal narrative.

Lieutenant Dana (U. S. Artillery), my future compagnon de voyage, left St. Louis,[12] “the turning-back place of English sportsmen,” for St. Jo on the 2d of August, preceding me by two days. Being accompanied by his wife and child, and bound on a weary voyage to Camp Floyd, Utah Territory, he naturally wanted a certain amount of precise information concerning the route, and one of the peculiarities of this line is that no one knows any thing about it. In the same railway car which carried me from St. Louis were five passengers, all bent upon making Utah with the least delay—an unexpected cargo of officials: Mr. F********, a federal judge with two sons; Mr. W*****, a state secretary; and Mr. G****, a state marshal. As the sequel may show, Dana was doubly fortunate in securing places before the list could be filled up by the unusual throng: all we thought of at the time was our good luck in escaping a septidium at St. Jo, whence the stage started on Tuesdays only. We hurried, therefore, to pay for our tickets—$175 each being the moderate sum—to reduce our luggage to its minimum approach toward 25 lbs., the price of transport for excess being exorbitantly fixed at $1 per lb., and to lay in a few necessaries for the way, tea and sugar, tobacco and cognac. I will not take liberties with my company’s KIT.“kit;” my own, however, was represented as follows:

One India-rubber blanket, pierced in the centre for a poncho, and garnished along the longer side with buttons, and corresponding elastic loops with a strap at the short end, converting it into a carpet-bag—a “sine quâ non” from the equator to the pole. A buffalo robe ought to have been added as a bed: ignorance, however, prevented, and borrowing did the rest. With one’s coat as a pillow, a robe, and a blanket, one may defy the dangerous “bunks” of the stations.

For weapons I carried two revolvers: from the moment of leaving St. Jo to the time of reaching Placerville or Sacramento the pistol should never be absent from a man’s right side—remember, it is handier there than on the other—nor the bowie-knife from his left. Contingencies with Indians and others may happen, when the difference of a second saves life: the revolver should therefore be carried with its butt to the fore, and when drawn it should not be leveled as in target practice, but directed toward the object by means of the right fore finger laid flat along the cylinder while the medius draws the trigger. The instinctive consent between eye and hand, combined with a little practice, will soon enable the beginner to shoot correctly from the hip; all he has to do is to think that he is pointing at the mark, and pull. As a precaution, especially when mounted upon a kicking horse, it is wise to place the cock upon a capless nipple, rather than trust to the intermediate pins. In dangerous places the revolver should be discharged and reloaded every morning, both for the purpose of keeping the hand in, and to do the weapon justice. A revolver is an admirable tool when properly used; those, however, who are too idle or careless to attend to it, had better carry a pair of “Derringers.” For the benefit of buffalo and antelope, I had invested $25 at St. Louis in a “shooting-iron” of the “Hawkins” style—that enterprising individual now dwells in Denver City—it was a long, top-heavy rifle; it weighed 12 lbs., and it carried the smallest ball—75 to the pound—a combination highly conducive to good practice. Those, however, who can use light weapons, should prefer the Maynard breech-loader, with an extra barrel for small shot; and if Indian fighting is in prospect, the best tool, without any exception, is a ponderous double-barrel, 12 to the pound, and loaded as fully as it can bear with slugs. The last of the battery was an air-gun to astonish the natives, and a bag of various ammunition.

Captain Marcy outfits his prairie traveler with a “little blue mass, quinine, opium, and some cathartic medicine put up in doses for adults.” I limited myself to the opium, which is invaluable when one expects five consecutive days and nights in a prairie wagon, quinine, and Warburg’s drops, without which no traveler should ever face fever, and a little citric acid, which, with green tea drawn off the moment the leaf has sunk, is perhaps the best substitute for milk and cream. The “holy weed Nicotian” was not forgotten; cigars must be bought in extraordinary quantities, as the driver either receives or takes the lion’s share: the most satisfactory outfit is a quantum sufficit of Louisiana Pirique and Lynchburg gold-leaf—cavendish without its abominations of rum and honey or molasses—and two pipes, a meerschaum for luxury, and a brier-root to fall back upon when the meerschaum shall have been stolen. The Indians will certainly pester for matches; the best lighting apparatus, therefore, is the Spanish mechero, the Oriental sukhtah—agate and cotton match—besides which, it offers a pleasing exercise, like billiards, and one at which the British soldier greatly excels, surpassed only by his exquisite skill in stuffing the pipe.

For literary purposes, I had, besides the two books above quoted, a few of the great guns of exploration, Frémont, Stansbury, and Gunnison, with a selection of the most violent Mormon and Anti-Mormon polemicals, sketching materials—I prefer the “improved metallics” five inches long, and serving for both diary and drawing-book—and a tourist’s writing-case of those sold by Mr. Field (Bible Warehouse, The Quadrant), with but one alteration, a snap lock, to obviate the use of that barbarous invention called a key. For instruments I carried a pocket sextant with a double face, invented by Mr. George, of the Royal Geographical Society, and beautifully made by Messrs. Cary, an artificial horizon of black glass, and bubble tubes to level it, night and day compasses, with a portable affair attached to a watch-chain—a traveler feels nervous till he can “orienter” himself—a pocket thermometer, and a B. P. ditto. The only safe form for the latter would be a strong neckless tube, the heavy pyriform bulbs in general use never failing to break at the first opportunity. A Stanhope lens, a railway whistle, and instead of the binocular, useful things of earth, a very valueless telescope—(warranted by the maker to show Jupiter’s satellites, and by utterly declining so to do, reading a lesson touching the non-advisability of believing an instrument-maker)—completed the outfit.

The prairie traveler is not particular about TOILET.toilet: the easiest dress is a dark flannel shirt, worn over the normal article; no braces—I say it, despite Mr. Galton—but broad leather belt for “six-shooter” and for “Arkansas tooth-pick,” a long clasp-knife, or for the rapier of the Western world, called after the hero who perished in the “red butchery of the Alamo.” The nether garments should be forked with good buckskin, or they will infallibly give out, and the lower end should be tucked into the boots, after the sensible fashion of our grandfathers, before those ridiculous Wellingtons were dreamed of by our sires. In warm weather, a pair of moccasins will be found easy as slippers, but they are bad for wet places; they make the feet tender, they strain the back sinews, and they form the first symptom of the savage mania. Socks keep the feet cold; there are, however, those who should take six pair. The use of the pocket-handkerchief is unknown in the plains; some people, however, are uncomfortable without it, not liking “se emungere” after the fashion of Horace’s father.

In cold weather—and rarely are the nights warm—there is nothing better than the old English tweed shooting-jacket, made with pockets like a poacher’s, and its similar waistcoat, a “stomach warmer” without a roll collar, which prevents comfortable sleep, and with flaps as in the Year of Grace 1760, when men were too wise to wear our senseless vests, whose only property seems to be that of disclosing after exertions a lucid interval of linen or longcloth. For driving and riding, a large pair of buckskin gloves, or rather gauntlets, without which even the teamster will not travel, and leggins—the best are made in the country, only the straps should be passed through and sewn on to the leathers—are advisable, if at least the man at all regards his epidermis: it is almost unnecessary to bid you remember spurs, but it may be useful to warn you that they will, like riches, make to themselves wings. The head-covering by excellence is a brown felt, which, by a little ingenuity, boring, for instance, holes round the brim to admit a ribbon, you may convert into a riding-hat or night-cap, and wear alternately after the manly slouch of Cromwell and his Martyr, the funny three-cornered spittoon-like “shovel” of the Dutch Georges, and the ignoble cocked-hat, which completes the hideous metamorphosis.

And, above all things, as you value your nationality—this is written for the benefit of the home reader—let no false shame cause you to forget your hat-box and your umbrella. I purpose, when a moment of inspiration waits upon leisure and a mind at ease, to invent an elongated portmanteau, which shall be perfection—portable—solid leather of two colors, for easy distinguishment—snap lock—in length about three feet; in fact, long enough to contain without creasing “small clothes,” a lateral compartment destined for a hat, and a longitudinal space where the umbrella can repose: its depth—but I must reserve that part of the secret until this benefit to British humanity shall have been duly made by Messrs. Bengough Brothers, and patented by myself.

The dignitaries of the mail-coach, acting upon the principle “first come first served,” at first decided, maugre all our attempts at “moral suasion,” to divide the party by the interval of a week. Presently reflecting, I presume, upon the unadvisability of leaving at large five gentlemen, who, being really in no particular hurry, might purchase a private conveyance and start leisurely westward, they were favored with a revelation of “’cuteness.” On the day before departure, as, congregated in the Planter’s House Hotel, we were lamenting over our “morning glory,” the necessity of parting—in the prairie the more the merrier, and the fewer the worse cheer—a youth from the office was introduced to tell, Hope-like, a flattering tale and a tremendous falsehood. This juvenile delinquent stated with unblushing front, over the hospitable cocktail, that three coaches instead of one had been newly and urgently applied for by the road-agent at Great Salt Lake City, and therefore that we could not only all travel together, but also all travel with the greatest comfort. We exulted. But on the morrow only two conveyances appeared, and not long afterward the two dwindled off to one. “The Prairie Traveler” doles out wisdom in these words: “Information concerning the route coming from strangers living or owning property near them, from agents of steam-boats and railways, or from other persons connected with transportation companies”—how carefully he piles up the heap of sorites—“should be received with great caution, and never without corroboratory evidence from disinterested sources.” The main difficulty is to find the latter—to catch your hare—to know whom to believe.

I now proceed to my Diary.

THE START.

Tuesday, 7th August, 1860.

Precisely at 8 A.M. appeared in front of the Patee House—the Fifth Avenue Hotel of St. Jo—the vehicle destined to be our home for the next three weeks. We scrutinized it curiously.

The mail is carried by a “Concord coach,” a spring wagon, comparing advantageously with the horrible vans which once dislocated the joints of men on the Suez route. MAIL-COACH.—MULES.The body is shaped somewhat like an English tax-cart considerably magnified. It is built to combine safety, strength, and lightness, without the slightest regard to appearances. The material is well-seasoned white oak—the Western regions, and especially Utah, are notoriously deficient in hard woods—and the manufacturers are the well-known coachwrights, Messrs. Abbott, of Concord, New Hampshire; the color is sometimes green, more usually red, causing the antelopes to stand and stretch their large eyes whenever the vehicle comes in sight. The wheels are five to six feet apart, affording security against capsising, with little “gather” and less “dish;” the larger have fourteen spokes and seven fellies; the smaller twelve and six. The tires are of unusual thickness, and polished like steel by the hard dry ground; and the hubs or naves and the metal nave-bands are in massive proportions. The latter not unfrequently fall off as the wood shrinks, unless the wheel is allowed to stand in water; attention must be paid to resetting them, or in the frequent and heavy “sidlins” the spokes may snap off all round like pipe-stems. The wagon-bed is supported by iron bands or perpendiculars abutting upon wooden rockers, which rest on strong leather thoroughbraces: these are found to break the jolt better than the best steel springs, which, moreover, when injured, can not readily be repaired. The whole bed is covered with stout osnaburg supported by stiff bars of white oak; there is a sun-shade or hood in front, where the driver sits, a curtain behind which can be raised or lowered at discretion, and four flaps on each side, either folded up or fastened down with hooks and eyes. In heavy frost the passengers must be half dead with cold, but they care little for that if they can go fast. The accommodations are as follows: In front sits the driver, with usually a conductor or passenger by his side; a variety of packages, large and small, is stowed away under his leather cushion; when the brake must be put on, an operation often involving the safety of the vehicle, his right foot is planted upon an iron bar which presses by a leverage upon the rear wheels; and in hot weather a bucket for watering the animals hangs over one of the lamps, whose companion is usually found wanting. The inside has either two or three benches fronting to the fore or placed vis-à-vis; they are movable and reversible, with leather cushions and hinged padded backs; unstrapped and turned down, they convert the vehicle into a tolerable bed for two persons or two and a half. According to Cocker, the mail-bags should be safely stowed away under these seats, or if there be not room enough, the passengers should perch themselves upon the correspondence; the jolly driver, however, is usually induced to cram the light literature between the wagon-bed and the platform, or running-gear beneath, and thus, when ford-waters wash the hubs, the letters are pretty certain to endure ablution. Behind, instead of dicky, is a kind of boot where passengers’ boxes are stored beneath a stout canvas curtain with leather sides. The comfort of travel depends upon packing the wagon; if heavy in front or rear, or if the thoroughbraces be not properly “fixed,” the bumping will be likely to cause nasal hemorrhage. The description will apply to the private ambulance, or, as it is called in the West, “avalanche,” only the latter, as might be expected, is more convenient; it is the drosky in which the vast steppes of Central America are crossed by the government employés.

On this line mules are preferred to horses as being more enduring. They are all of legitimate race; the breed between the horse and the she-ass is never heard of, and the mysterious jumard is not believed to exist. In dry lands, where winter is not severe—they inherit the sire’s impatience of cold—they are invaluable animals; in swampy ground this American dromedary is the meanest of beasts, requiring, when stalled, to be hauled out of the mire before it will recover spirit to use its legs. For sureness of foot (during a journey of more than 1000 miles, I saw but one fall and two severe stumbles), sagacity in finding the road, apprehension of danger, and general cleverness, mules are superior to their mothers: their main defect is an unhappy obstinacy derived from the other side of the house. They are great in hardihood, never sick nor sorry, never groomed nor shod, even where ice is on the ground; they have no grain, except five quarts per diem when snow conceals the grass; and they have no stable save the open corral. Moreover, a horse once broken down requires a long rest; the mule, if hitched up or ridden for short distances, with frequent intervals to roll and repose, may still, though “resté,” get over 300 miles in tolerable time. The rate of travel on an average is five miles an hour; six is good; between seven and eight is the maximum, which sinks in hilly countries to three or four. I have made behind a good pair, in a light wagon, forty consecutive miles at the rate of nine per hour, and in California a mule is little thought of if it can not accomplish 250 miles in forty-eight hours. The price varies from $100 to $130 per head when cheap, rising to $150 or $200, and for fancy animals from $250 to $400. The value, as in the case of the Arab, depends upon size; “rats,” or small mules, especially in California, are not esteemed. The “span”—the word used in America for beasts well matched—is of course much more expensive. At each station on this road, averaging twenty-five miles apart—beyond the forks of the Platte they lengthen out by one third—are three teams of four animals, with two extra, making a total of fourteen, besides two ponies for the express riders. In the East they work beautifully together, and are rarely mulish beyond a certain ticklishness of temper, which warns you not to meddle with their ears when in harness, or to attempt encouraging them by preceding them upon the road. In the West, where they run half wild and are lassoed for use once a week, they are fearfully handy with their heels; they flirt out with the hind legs, they rear like goats, breaking the harness and casting every strap and buckle clean off the body, and they bite their replies to the chorus of curses and blows: the wonder is that more men are not killed. Each fresh team must be ringed half a dozen times before it will start fairly; there is always some excitement in change; some George or Harry, some Julia or Sally disposed to shirk work or to play tricks, some Brigham Young or General Harney—the Trans-Vaal Republican calls his worst animal “England”—whose stubbornness is to be corrected by stone-throwing or the lash.

But the wagon still stands at the door. We ought to start at 8 30 A.M.; we are detained an hour while last words are said, and adieu—a long adieu—is bidden to joke and julep, to ice and idleness. Our “plunder”[13] is clapped on with little ceremony; a hat-case falls open—it was not mine, gentle reader—collars and other small gear cumber the ground, and the owner addresses to the clumsy-handed driver the universal G— d—, which in these lands changes from its expletive or chrysalis form to an adjectival development. We try to stow away as much as possible; the minor officials, with all their little faults, are good fellows, civil and obliging; they wink at non-payment for bedding, stores, weapons, and they rather encourage than otherwise the multiplication of whisky-kegs and cigar-boxes. We now drive through the dusty roads of St. Jo, the observed of all observers, and presently find ourselves in the steam ferry which is to convey us from the right to the left bank of the Missouri River. The “Big Muddy,” as it is now called—the Yellow River of old writers—venerable sire of snag and sawyer, displays at this point the source whence it has drawn for ages the dirty brown silt which pollutes below their junction the pellucid waters of the “Big Drink.”[14] It runs, like the lower Indus, through deep walls of stiff clayey earth, and, like that river, its supplies, when filtered (they have been calculated to contain one eighth of solid matter), are sweet and wholesome as its brother streams. The Plata of this region, it is the great sewer of the prairies, the main channel and common issue of the water-courses and ravines which have carried on the work of denudation and degradation for days dating beyond the existence of Egypt.