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Show CHAPTER VI. THE PLATTE AND THE DESERT. "SEE ST thou yon dreary plain, forlorn anu wild, The seat of desolation 1" PARADISE LosT. "HERE have we war for war, and blood for hlood., KING JonN. WE were now arrived at the close of our solitary journeyings along the St. Joseph's Trail. On the evening _of the twenty -third of May we encamped near its junction w1th the old legitimate trail of the Oregon emigrants. We had ridden long that afternoon tryinrr in vain to find wood and water, until ' • b 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 ocean-like swells on every side. We pitched our tents by it ; not however before the keen eye of I-Ienry 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, THE PLATTE AND THE DESERT. 71 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 quarrelling meanwhile a1nong themselves. 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 sum1nit 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 : D I E D M A Y 7 t h•, 1 8 4 5 . AGED TWO MONTHS. Such tokens were of common occurrence. Nothing could speak n10re for the hardihood, or rather infatuation, of the adventurers, or the sufferings that await them upon the journey. |
