By Noah Brooks

During the ten years immediately following the discovery of gold in California, the main-traveled road across the continent was what was known as the Platte River route. Starting from Council Bluffs, Iowa, a town then famous as the "jumping-off place" for California emigrants, the adventurers crossed the Missouri by a rope ferry and clambered up a steep, slippery bank to the site of the modern city of Omaha. The only building of any considerable dimensions in the early fifties was a large, unpainted, barn-like structure, which, we were proudly told, was to be the capitol of the Territory of Nebraska, the Territorial organization of which was authorized by Congress in 1854.

The trail from the Rocky Mountains to Salt Lake valley grew more and more difficult as we approached the rocky fastnesses of the Wahsatch range of mountains, that defends the land of the Latter-Day Saints on its eastern border. Leaving the valley and skirting the northern end of Great Salt Lake, the route followed the general course of the Humboldt, crossed the dreadful desert which takes its name from the river, and we finally caught sight once more of civilization in Honey Lake valley, at the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada. Here the trail began a toilsome ascent of the gigantic mountain wall, and scaling the roof of the world, as it seemed to us, slid down into the valley of the Sacramento through the wooded ridges of the Plumas mining region.

The average cost of a journey to California in those days did not greatly vary whether one took the water route by the way of Cape Horn or the land route by the trail just described. In either case the emigrants usually clubbed together, and the cost per man was therefore considerably reduced. A party of overland emigrants, supplied with a team of horses or oxen,—preferably the latter,—and numbering four or five men, were expected to invest about five hundred dollars for their outfit. This included the cost of provisions, clothing, tent, wagon, and animals, and a small sum of ready money for emergencies by the way. The necessaries of life were few and simple. The commissariat was slender, and included flour, dried beans, coffee, bacon, or "side-meat," and a few small stores—sugar, salt, baking-powder, and the like. In those days the art of canning goods had not been invented, and the only article in that category was the indispensable yeast-powder, without which bread was impossible. The earliest emigrants experimented with hard bread, but soft bread, baked fresh every day, was found more economical and portable, as well as more palatable.

But, after all, beans and coffee were the mainstay of each well-seasoned and well-equipped party. In our own experience, good luck (more than good management) furnished us with enough of these two necessaries of life to last us from the Missouri to the Pacific. The coffee, it should be explained, was bought in its green state, and was browned and ground as occasion required. That variety of pork product known as side-meat was a boneless slab from the side of a mast-fed porker, salted and smoked. In western Iowa and Missouri we usually found this meat corded up in piles after it had been cured. Corn-meal, that beloved staff of life on the Western frontier, was an unprofitable addition to the stores of the emigrant. It was not "filling," and its nutriment was out of all proportion to its bulk. Hot flour bread, made into the form of biscuits, and dipped in the "dope," or gravy, made by mixing flour and water with the grease extracted from the fried bacon, was our mainstay.

Does the imagination of the epicure revolt at the suggestion of so rude a dish? To hundreds of thousands of weary emigrants, trudging their way across the continent, spending their days and nights in the open air and breathing an atmosphere bright with ozone, even ruder viands than this were as nectar and ambrosia.

The evolution of cooks, teamsters, woodsmen, and herders from the raw materials of a party of emigrants was one of the interesting features of life on the Great Plains. Here was a little company made up of a variety of experiences and aptitudes. Each man's best faculty in a novel service must be discovered. At the outset, none knew who should drive the oxen, who should do the cooking, or whose ingenuity would be taxed to mend broken wagon or tattered clothing. Gradually, and not altogether without grumbling and objection, each man filled his own proper place. No matter if the members of the party were college-bred, society men, farmers' sons, or ex-salesmen; each man found his legitimate vocation after a while. The severest critic of another's work was eventually charged with the labor which he had all along declared was not rightly performed by others. By the time the journey was fairly undertaken, the company was manned in every section as completely as if each worker had been assigned to his place in a council of the Fates. It was just and fit that he who had steadily derided the cooking of every other should show the others how cooking should be done; and common consent gave to the best manager of cattle the arduous post of driver. There was no place for drones, of course, for this was a strenuous life. Before the continent had been crossed the master spirits had asserted themselves. It was an evolution of the fittest.

I have said that these assignments to duty were not accomplished without grumbling and objection. Indeed, the division of labor in a party of emigrants was a prolific cause of quarrel. In our own little company of five there were occasional angry debates while the various burdens were being adjusted, but no outbreak ever occurred. We saw not a little fighting in the camps of others who sometimes jogged along the trail in our company, and these bloody fisticuffs were invariably the outcome of disputes over divisions of labor.

It should not be understood that the length of time required to traverse the distance between the Missouri and the Sacramento was wholly consumed in traveling. Nobody appeared to be in a feverish haste to finish the journey; and it was necessary to make occasional stops on the trail, where conditions were favorable, for the purpose of resting and refitting. A pleasant camping-place, with wood, water, and grass in plenty, was an invitation to halt and take a rest. This was called a "lay-by," and the halt sometimes lasted several days, during which wagon-tires were reset, ox-yokes repaired, clothes mended, and a general clean-up of the entire outfit completed preparatory to another long and uninterrupted drive toward the setting sun. If the stage of the journey immediately before us was an unusually difficult one, the stop was longer and the overhauling more thorough.

A day's march averaged about twenty miles; an uncommonly good day with favorable conditions would give us twenty-five miles. The distances from camping-place to camping-place were usually well known to all wayfarers. By some subtle agency, information (and sometimes misinformation) was disseminated along the trail before us and behind us, and we generally knew what sort of camping-place we should find each night, and how far it was from the place of the morning start. So, when we halted for the night, we knew pretty accurately how many miles we had covered in that day's tramp.

Of course riding was out of the question. We had one horse, but he was reserved for emergencies, and nobody but a shirk would think of crawling into the wagon, loaded down as it was with the necessaries of life, unless sickness made it impossible for him to walk. In this way we may be said to have walked all the way from the Missouri to the Sacramento. Much walking makes the human leg a mere affair of skin, bone, and sinew. We used to say that our legs were like chair-posts. But then the exercise was "good for the health." Nobody was ever ill.

Grass, wood, and water were three necessities of life on the trail. But these were sometimes very difficult to find. Usually one or two of the party went on ahead of the rest and looked out a suitable camping-place where those essentials could be found. Fuel was sometimes absolutely unobtainable, possibly a few dry weeds and stalks being the only combustible thing to be found.

Emigrants who were dependent upon open fires for cooking were often in very hard case. We were fortunate in the possession of a small sheet-iron camp-stove, for the heating of which a small amount of fuel was sufficient. This handy little apparatus was lashed to the rear end of the wagon when on the trail, and when it was in use, every sort of our simple cookery could be carried on by it with most satisfactory results. When we were obliged to camp for the night on wet ground after a rain, the flat-bottomed camp-stove, well heated and light, was moved from place to place inside the tent until the surface on which we must make our bed was fairly dry. Sometimes, however, we camped down on the damp ground; and sometimes, before we learned the trick of digging a ditch around the tent when signs of rain appeared, we woke to find ourselves lying in puddles of water. In such a case it was better to lie in the water that had been slightly warmed by the heat of one's body than to turn over into a colder stream on the other side. These experiences were novel and interesting; nobody ever suffered seriously from them.

In the matter of the necessaries of life, we had times of plenty and times of scarcity. There were places where our cattle were knee-deep in wild, succulent grasses, and there were times when they had nothing but the coarse and wilted sheaves of grass carried along the trail from the last camp. Flour, coffee, and bacon never failed us; and there were times when we had more fresh meat than we could eat. In the buffalo country, of course, we had the wholesome beef of that then multitudinous animal in every possible variety. In the Rocky Mountain region, antelope, prairie-dogs, black-tail deer, jack-rabbits, and occasionally sage-hens gave us an enjoyable change from our staple diet of bacon and bread. The antelope were very wild and timid, and no one thought of chasing them; they were brought down by stratagem. A bright-colored handkerchief fastened to a ramrod stuck into the ground was a lure which no antelope could resist. A small drove of these inquisitive creatures would circle distantly round and round the strange flag: but ever drawing nearer, sometimes pausing as if to discuss among themselves what that thing could possibly be, they would certainly come at last within gunshot of the patient hunter lying flat on the ground; a rifle-ball would bring down one of the herd, and the rest would disappear as if the earth had swallowed them.

In the heart of the buffalo country the buffaloes were an insufferable nuisance. Vast herds were moving across our trail from south to north, trampling the moist and grassy soil into a black paste, and so polluting the streams and springs that drinking-water was often difficult to obtain. The vastness of some of these droves was most impressive, in spite of the calamitous ruin they left behind them. As far as the eye could reach, the surface of the earth was a heaving mass of animal life; the ground seemed to be covered with a brown mantle of fur. As we advanced along the trail, the droves would quietly separate to our right and left, leaving a lane along which we traveled with herds on each side of us. From an eminence, looking backward and forward, one could see that we were completely hemmed in before and behind; and the space left for us by the buffalo moved along with us. They never in the least incommoded us by any hostile action; all they asked, apparently, was to be let alone.

The buffalo is not the clumsy animal he looks in captivity or in pictures. It is a fleet horse that can overtake him; and to see him drop into a wallow while on a keen run, roll over and over two or three times, and skip to his feet and away with his comrades with the nimbleness of a kitten, is a sight to be remembered.

Although we traveled a part of the time through what was known as a hostile Indian country, we were never molested by the red men. Friendly Indians came into our camps to beg, to pilfer, or to sell buckskins and moccasins. Before us and behind us were several attacks upon caravans, the victims usually being few in number and unprepared for a skirmish. But while we were in the region deemed dangerous from Indians we massed in with other companies of emigrants, so that we were seldom less than one hundred and fifty strong; a regular watch was kept by night, and the wagons were parked in a circle which could be used as a defense in case of an attack.

In the course of weeks, the camp, wherever it might be pitched, took on the semblance of a home. The tent was our house; the rude cooking-and eating-apparatus and the comfortable bedding were our household furniture, and the live stock about us was our movable property. Except in the most trying and difficult straits, evening found us busy with household cares and amusements. Our neighbors were changeable, it is true, but we often found new and pleasant acquaintances, and sometimes old friends from whom we had been separated for weeks would trundle up and camp near us.

One of the famous landmarks to which we had looked forward with great interest was the Devil's Gate of the Rockies, through which we passed before beginning the climb of the backbone of the continent. It was a far more impressive spectacle than the pass. The gate is double, and through one of its tall, black portals murmurs the Sweetwater on its way to join the North Platte. The trail lies through the other fissure, trail and stream being only a few hundred rods apart.

Two days from Fort Bridger we entered Echo CaÑon, one of the most delightful spots which I remember on the long, long trail. The caÑon is about twenty miles long, and could be readily traversed in a single day; but we loitered through it, so that we were more than two days in its charmed fastnesses. On each side of the route the cliffs tower to a great height, marked with columnar formations and clouded with red, white, yellow, and drab, like some ancient wall of brick and stone. The crests of these towers are crowded with verdure, and here and there are trees and vines that line the caÑon and climb upward to the flying buttresses of the rocky walls. A delicious stream of water crosses and recrosses the trail; and while we were in the caÑon, grass and fuel were abundant. To make our comfort complete, great quantities of wild berries hung invitingly from the bushes by the sides of the way. Silvery rivulets fell from the walls of the caÑon, and wild vines and flowers in great variety bloomed against the buttresses and donjon-keeps of the formations through which we threaded our way.

Crossing the Weber, we entered one more caÑon, and suddenly, one afternoon, emerging from the mouth of Emigrant CaÑon, we looked down upon one of the fairest scenes on which the eye of man has ever gazed—the Great Salt Lake valley. It was like a jewel set in the heart of the continent. Deep below us, stretching north and south, was the level floor of the valley. Far to the westward rose a wall of mountains, purple, pink, and blue in the distance. Nearer sparkled the azure waters of the Great Salt Lake.

The route from the city of the Saints lay around the northern end of the lake, but, in order to reach the road to Bear River, we were obliged to cross a few fenced fields, and this involved long parleys with surly owners. We passed through a string of small towns on our way up to the main-traveled trail, the last of these being Box Elder, now known as Brigham City. Box Elder was a settlement of about three hundred people, and boasted a post-office, a blacksmith's shop, a trading-post, and a brewery. At this last-named establishment we bought some fresh yeast, which served us a good turn in breadmaking for many a day thereafter. We bought new flour in Salt Lake City at a fair price, having skimped ourselves on that article for some time on account of the exorbitant cost of it at the trading-posts on the trail. At Fort Bridger, flour was thirty-five dollars a barrel, and bacon was one dollar a pound.

We were now approaching the edge of the Great Desert, which, stretching from the Bitter Root Mountains, in northern Idaho, to the southern boundary of Arizona, interposed for many years a barrier that was supposed to be impassable to the hardy emigrant. Now came long night marches and dreary days spent in traversing a region intolerable with dust, heat, rocky trails, and sideling hills.

The last day's drive in the desert was the hardest of all. Twenty miles lay between us and the Honey Lake valley. It was to be traveled in the night; and as the numerous trains and caravans swept down into the plain from the point of rocks on which I was sitting, waiting for our wagons to come up, it was pathetic to note the intentness with which this multitude of home-seekers and gold-seekers set their faces westward. There was no haste, no fussy anxiety, but the vast multitude of men, women, and children who had left all behind them to look for a new life in an unknown land trooped silently down into the desert waste. The setting sun bathed the plain in golden radiance, and eastward the rocky pinnacles of the ranges through which we had toiled were glorified with purple, gold, and crimson. It was a sight to be remembered—as beautiful as a dream, hiding a wilderness as cruel as death.

Honey Lake belied the sweetness of its name. It was a small sheet of muddy water, but emptying into it was a sparkling river, or creek, known as Susan's River, which, meandering through an emerald valley and watering many a meadow, gave unwonted beauty to a scene the like of which had not been gazed upon by the toil-worn plainsmen for many a day. Here, too, we got our first glimpse of the Sierra Nevada.

After the privation and poverty of the desert, the wild abundance of the forests of the Sierra was luxury indescribable. We camped by crystal waterfalls with rank and succulent grasses all about us; overhead were the spreading branches of noble pines, and our camp-fires were heaped with an extravagance of fuel. But we soon found how hard it was to climb the mountain-range; and when, after a day's solid rest and comfort, we reached the crest of the ridge, we saw that the trail pitched almost perpendicularly over the sharp backbone of the Sierra. Two or three trees that grew by the place where the track led to the brink were scarred and worn nearly through by ropes that had been wound around them to let down the heavy wagons into the abyss below. The cattle were taken out of the teams and driven down through the undergrowth of thickets; and then, making a rope fast to the rear axle of each wagon, one wagon at a time was carefully lowered down the steep declivity.

That arduous labor over, we passed through the "Devil's Corral" and camped in Mountain Meadows, a very paradise of a spot, in which it seemed as if we were surrounded by every luxury imaginable, albeit we had nothing but what uncultivated nature gave us.

The vale of the new Eldorado was tawny and gold with sear grass and wild oats. In the distance rose the misty mountain wall of the Coast Range; nearer a heroic outline of noble peaks broke the yellow abundance of the valley's floor. This was the group known as Sutter's Buttes, near the base of which was Nye's Ranch (now Marysville), the goal of our long tramp. Dogtown, Inskip, and a little host of other mining hamlets, claimed our attention briefly as we swept down into the noble valley, on whose farther edge, by the historic Yuba, we found our last camp.

Here we met the wave of migration that earlier broke on the shores of the Pacific. In the winter of 1849-50 two hundred and fifty vessels sailed for San Francisco from the ports of the Atlantic States; and their multitudes of men were reinforced by other multitudes from other lands. In a single year the population of the State was augmented by an influx of more than one hundred thousand persons, arriving by sea and by land.