These Were The First Emigrants That We Had Overtaken, Although We Had
Found Abundant And Melancholy Traces Of Their Progress Throughout The
Whole Course Of The Journey.
Sometimes we passed the grave of one
who had sickened and died on the way.
The earth was usually torn up,
and covered thickly with wolf-tracks. Some had escaped this
violation. One morning a piece of plank, standing upright on the
summit of a grassy hill, attracted our notice, and riding up to it we
found the following words very roughly traced upon it, apparently by
a red-hot piece of iron:
MARY ELLIS
DIED MAY 7TH, 1845.
Aged two months.
Such tokens were of common occurrence, nothing could speak more for
the hardihood, or rather infatuation, of the adventurers, or the
sufferings that await them upon the journey.
We were late in breaking up our camp on the following morning, and
scarcely had we ridden a mile when we saw, far in advance of us,
drawn against the horizon, a line of objects stretching at regular
intervals along the level edge of the prairie. An intervening swell
soon hid them from sight, until, ascending it a quarter of an hour
after, we saw close before us the emigrant caravan, with its heavy
white wagons creeping on in their slow procession, and a large drove
of cattle following behind. Half a dozen yellow-visaged Missourians,
mounted on horseback, were cursing and shouting among them; their
lank angular proportions enveloped in brown homespun, evidently cut
and adjusted by the hands of a domestic female tailor.
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