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Show 26 NATIONAL WAGON ROAD GUIDE. may appear ; unless you vvould dp just as we did, nea~~Iy . use up your animals in doing it. But we had a motlve other than to gratify our curiosty ; it was, to enable us with fidelity and accuracy, to get up the little work you • are now peru~nng. · In your journeyings, stop at least one day · ~n ~he week for rest, if it be only for the good of your animals. Let it be on Sunday, if you can find good feed and water ; but if not, drive on till you can, and then stop for a longer time than a day. There are those however, who prefer, and would recommend the traveler to move on a few miles every day; Sundays not excepted. It is a terribly severe journey for the poor draft animals; therefore never be cruel or unreasonable towards them ; but at all times, day and night, take the very best possible care of them. Load 'vith nothing but what is really n~cessary, clothing, food, a few tools, and the necessary cooking utensils. Every man should have ope good warm over coat, for night work, standing guard, and a few cold storms. More sickness arises from undue exposure to cold and rain, durip.g the first three weeks of the trip, than from all other causes'together, if we except the use of poor whisky. On reaching the great grass and clover valleys and me~dows that lie along the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada mountains, from Oregon on the north, to Walker's river on the south, including the valleys of Honey Lake, the Truckee, Washoe· and the ,Carson, NATIONAL WAGON ROAD GUIDE. 27 recruit your animals as long as you will; indeed it would be well, particularly if you have herds of cattle 4 with you, to remain there quite into autumn, or even till the spring following; but if you have only tearns, and those horses or mules, when you do cross the mountains, which you can do in tvvo days at any time, and arrive in Cal~fornia, your animals even though poor, if large, will be v;rorth at least fifty per cent. more than though they were small animals. SPECIAL OUTFIT AND DIRECTIONS. In giving our advice der this head, we shall be governed solely by our own experience, even at the risk of its differing from that which you may obtain from num~ers about to cross the plains with you, that because they, too, have once made the trip, feel competent to. advise. But we have seen this very class of men, in the hurry and anxiety of preparation upon the frontier, strenuuously declare that, "take plenty .of hard bread and bacon, and all will be well"; whilst we say, don't you believe a word of it. For, to live majnly upon any two articles of food, for days and weeks and even for months, and particularly upon hard bread and 'bacon, the strongest men get tired of it; and we have seen just such men, who were ready to give-after being a month upon the plains-almost any price, for even the taste of a luxury. Therefore don't fail to take, besides the staple articles, some of the I \ |