On The Evening Of The 23d Of May We Encamped
Near Its Junction With The Old Legitimate Trail Of The Oregon
Emigrants.
We had ridden long that afternoon, trying in vain to find
wood and water, until at length we saw the sunset sky reflected from
a pool encircled by bushes and a rock or two.
The water lay in the
bottom of a hollow, the smooth prairie gracefully rising in oceanlike
swells on every side. We pitched our tents by it; not however before
the keen eye of Henry Chatillon had discerned some unusual object
upon the faintly-defined outline of the distant swell. But in the
moist, hazy atmosphere of the evening, nothing could be clearly
distinguished. As we lay around the fire after supper, a low and
distant sound, strange enough amid the loneliness of the prairie,
reached our ears - peals of laughter, and the faint voices of men and
women. For eight days we had not encountered a human being, and this
singular warning of their vicinity had an effect extremely wild and
impressive.
About dark a sallow-faced fellow descended the hill on horseback, and
splashing through the pool rode up to the tents. He was enveloped in
a huge cloak, and his broad felt hat was weeping about his ears with
the drizzling moisture of the evening. Another followed, a stout,
square-built, intelligent-looking man, who announced himself as
leader of an emigrant party encamped a mile in advance of us. About
twenty wagons, he said, were with him; the rest of his party were on
the other side of the Big Blue, waiting for a woman who was in the
pains of child-birth, and quarreling meanwhile among themselves.
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