OVER THE MOUNTAINS INTO CALIFORNIA

While we were going down the Humbolt River, several days before we got to the sink or desert, six of our men got tired going so slow, and went on and left us. Uncle tried to get them to stay with us, but when they would go, he offered them provisions to take along. Four of them were so gritty that they would not take any. Two of them did. These four thought they would come to what were called "trading posts," but they had all gone back to California, as we afterwards found. The men had nearly starved to death. They had to shoot birds and they used everything they could find for food.

These "trading posts" were kept by men who had brought on pack mules, provisions from California, to sell to emigrants and bought up weak stock and herded them on the grass until they got strong enough to drive across the Sierra Nevada Mountains into California.

Uncle thought we would soon come to one of these trading posts, where we could get flour, but the traders had all gone back and ceased to trade. We ran out of flour and sea biscuits when we crossed the desert into Carson Valley. We had to live on beef and mutton for five or six hundred miles. The first flour and bread we got to eat, was after we crossed the summit of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

I thought I had seen mountains before, but these beat them all. When we got to the headwaters of the Carson River, for it was up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, we went over what was called the Johnson Cut Off. When we got to the foot of the mountain, I looked up its side and told Uncle Joshua that we could never get up this mountain in this world, for it looked as straight up as a wall could possibly be.

"O, yes, we can," he said. "We will get on the trail and go first one way and then another, until we get up."

We were six days getting everything to the top of that mountain, and when we got up, we rested one night. The first horse uncle lost was getting up this mountain. He was a little weak, stumbled and fell off the trail and that was the last we ever saw of him.

The next morning we yoked up the oxen and all got ready to start. Uncle instructed me to lead out. Right on top of the mountain, it was pretty level for some distance. I drove on ahead of the rest. I came to where I saw I had to go down again. I stopped, locked both hind wheels of my wagon, rough locked them by wrapping a chain twice around the felloe and tire, so the tire would ride on the chain and make it drag hard on the ground. I started down. I had not gone far until I found I was going down the same kind of a mountain we had been six days coming up. A little further down, the trail got very narrow. I was on the left side of the oxen, for that was the side upon which we had always taken when driving. That put me on the lower side, so that if I had been knocked off, that would have been the last of me. I stopped and let the wagon pass me, so that I could get on the upper side to drive. When I crossed behind the wagon, the dust blew up in my face so thick that I could not see my wagon, and that was the last I saw of those oxen until nearly sun down.

I went down the mountain as fast as I could. I had no idea I would ever see those oxen again, but when I got down on level ground at the foot of the mountain, where I could see, off about one hundred yards, there stood my oxen and wagon, right side up. There were three yoke of them, six head of cattle, but my near ox, next to the wheel, died that night.

The first ones to come down following me, were uncle and aunt. They were in a light one-seated top buggy, the one they had used all the way across the plains. Uncle had his feet under the buggy, holding down the hind axle tree, while aunt had the lines, driving. They drove a brown mare, which I had taken from Indiana and a black horse they had fetched from Wisconsin.

Aunt was saying, "O, Bailey, I will be killed, I will be killed."

"Hold on Susan, hold on, Susan," answered uncle.

The team was nearly setting down on their hind parts and just sliding. They could not move their feet to step for rods at a time.

"How did you ever get down that mountain," uncle asked when he saw me.

"I will never tell, uncle," I said.

Nor did I tell, for I could not tell myself how those oxen got down that mountain.

When we got started again on the trail, we met a man going across the mountains, over the same route, with a pack train. He was packing provisions across to the miners in Carson Valley. Uncle coaxed him out of two fifty pound sacks of flour at thirty dollars a sack. This made our first bread since crossing the desert.

Somebody stole the black horse which uncle and aunt drove down the mountain, while we were camped there that night. This was the second horse uncle lost on the trip, and the last one since starting from the states.

We drove down the west slope toward the gold mine. The second night after we left the summit, it commenced to snow on us, but not very fast. Every day after that, it was snowing or raining until we came to the gold mines. Some mornings the snow would be two or three inches deep, but by night we would get to where it was raining.One night we camped in what was called Pleasant Valley, near a stream called Boland's Run. A man by the name of Thomas Boland, kept a trading post here, with a stock of groceries, clothing, boots and shoes, and a saloon in connection. A little further down, we helped uncle across the McCosma River, to a place called Fair Play, where uncle said that he and his family could get down to their future home alone. We then bade farewell to uncle and family, and started on a prospecting tour.

This was now the last of November.

After we got to California, we found out that those bad Indians on the Humbolt River, had taken two or three messes or camps, that year, and one man escaped from one of the camps and two out of another, the rest of the men, women and children being killed. These men, who got away from among the Indians in some way or other, got to other camps. The trains that were taken, were camped no great distance apart; far enough so as to herd their stock and keep them separate. They said the Indians holloed on one side and while the campers were looking in the direction of the holloing, the first thing they knew, other Indians came right in on them behind their backs.

These three remaining men said that the next morning they gathered the white men from the camps up and down the river, and followed on the trail of the marauders. The Indians had cut open sacks of flour and scattered it along their trail. They had also cut open feather beds and the feathers were blown over the prairie. When the white men came in sight, the Indians broke and ran in every direction, and when they got up to the captured oxen and wagons, which the Indians had taken from the campers, it was found that the Indians had cooked and were eating an unyoked ox, with the other ox still yoked with the dead one. They did not know how to get the yoke off. The men took what oxen and stock they could find, along with them, but had no time to stay to hunt for them. This is the story of the men who escaped, and were then living in California.

These campers must have driven until after dark, for it seemed they did not have their oxen unyoked, for we always unyoked our oxen as soon as we stopped.

I shall now try to give you a description of the country through which we traveled. Starting in Nebraska, there was what I considered pretty good land for two or three hundred miles, though I did not see very much of the country outside the Platte River bottom. After we came to the Rocky Mountains, I never saw very much of what I called good land laying in one body. Sometimes we would come to some pretty fair rolling land, but it was what I called poor and rough. At times we got so high up, we were above timber line, but we always had grass where there was soil. We passed through sage brush and sand, and all of that kind of country looked desolate to me, but once in awhile, we would come to prairie land. We found some pretty good, rich strips of land away out on the other side of the Rocky Mountains. A good long ways out, we came to such a strip of land, which was called Fur Grove, covered with what we called balsam fir. I do not know in what state it is now, for the whole country from the Missouri River to California was then known as Indian Territory.

Sometimes we would be on the mountain tops, where we could look down and see below where we saw a fog, or at least thought so, but the men said it was raining down in the valley, but clear where we were.

We passed near Red Mountains and there were black mountains not very far apart and which could be seen from one point of view. We crossed some small rivers. I remember one in particular we had to cross on one of those willow brush bridges. There had been so much travel on this bridge, that a great hole was worn in it, but uncle said we did not have time to stop to mend it, and we would have to risk it. We got the horses, sheep, oxen and wagons across on the bridge, but the cattle we had to swim the river. I don't believe I ever heard what the name of that river was, if I did, I have forgotten it.

I did not see much of Iowa on this trip. Of all the country I saw from Indiana, through, or after I got through, there was none suited me like Central Illinois, and I have not changed my mind. There was government land in Illinois to enter at that time.