OCR Text |
Show ( 28 NATIONAL WAGON ROAD GUIDE. luxuries of living, in the form of dried fruits, can-fruits and meats, and even good pickles, are a luxury on the way. A box of raisins, a drum or two figs, you will never regret having taken, and they will . all seem doubly delicious when eaten upon the plains, and will all be gone much sooner than you desire. If your teams are oxen, you had better calculate on from one hundred to one hundred and ten days for the trip, indeed this would be considere~ making good time. If horses or mules and wagons, then from seventy-five to ninety days, and if by packing, from sixty to seventyfive days. It is a perfectly safe calcu ation to allow three pounds of food to a man per day ; but this quantity is hardly ever consumed ; and yet to provide against contingencies, as delay on the way, by sickness or accident, it will be well to make that quantity the basis of calculation, as you will then be on the safe side. But little allowance should be made upon any expectation of procuring game by the way, for if you get any, you will be fortunate, unless you call fish game. • I vV e speak of fish here, not with a view of leading the emigrant to suppose he is to be regaled upon trout at every stream we have noted as containing them, for he will find it quite the reverse; but there is a perfectly feasible mode, by which a company can supply them· selves with fish in abundance, at very many places along . the route. It is to have a small seine, say forty or fifty ' NATIONAL WAGON ROAD GUIDE. 29 feet in length, by four or five feet in depth, and made of thread or light twine ; it would weigh but few pounds, and would pay its cost ten times over before the journey was completed, and conduce greatly to the comfort and convenience of the owners ; besides being a matter of economy in point of weight, as more than its own weight of fish might be taken at several places, and thus lessen considerably the weight of provisions nececessary to be taken at the start; and one such seine Vlould answer for a company of six or eight "'ragons. · But without putting any dependence upon game or :fish, or upon such flour, meats or vegetables, as can be. procured on the way-if you go by Salt Lake or the l\iormorl. settlements-we shall give our list of articles for each man for one hundred days : 50 pounds ot flour, 25 pounds of corn-meal, 50 pounds of crackers or pilot bread, 50 pounds of hams, 25 pounds of bacon, 10 pounds of .butter, 5 pounds of dried beef, 20 pounds of coffee, 30 pounds of sugar, · .5 pounds of rice, 5 po~nds of beans, 5 pounds of cheese. 280 _pounds. ' |