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.

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