“ Where, a few years ago, men plodded on foot over vast and trackless wastes, seeking vainly for any conveyance, you are now in the tide of a thronging multitude, hurried away by the steam car on its iron track at a speed which the most closely scanned objects flit by you half unseen, and the still water in the pool by the way side, quivers as the ponderous train rolls over the trembling earth. ”

“ Several wagons seemed to have been in the train, and on either side of the plain tracks made by the wagon wheels in the loose sand were numerous bare-foot tracks. Following the trail into the mouth of the gulch, we found where the wagons had been burned, only the ruins being left among the ashes. We found no human remains, yet the evidences were plain that a small train of immigrants had been taken here not a great while before, and that they had perished at the hands of their blood-thirsty captors, not one having escaped to recite the awful tale of horror. ”

“ They are naturally too slow to travel with oxen, but if they are quick, their hardiness renders them far superior. We cannot rely much upon cows for draught. We make nothing of "break- ing in" a cow nor, in fact, anything else but they are of little service. A young man, who feels himself rather smart, seizes a cow by the horn with one hand, and with the other on her neck to hold her, lets her splurge for a minute or two, when she finds she is fast, and allows herself to be quietly led into the yoke, and in an hour is drawing as if proud of her new mission. ”

“ Mr. Thurston writes to Mr. Wyeth, "That Dr. McLaughlin has, since you left the country, rendered his name odious to the people of Oregon." (That I have rendered my name odious to the people of Oregon, is what I do not know.) And "By his endeavors to prevent the settlement of the country, and to cripple its growth." I say I never endeavored to prevent the settlement of the country, or to cripple its growth, but the reverse. If the whole country had been my own private property, I could not have exerted myself more strenuously than I did to introduce civilization, and promote its settlement. ”

“ To the reported outrage on an American citizen I beg to give the most unhesitating and unqualified denial. None of her Majesty's ships have ever been sent to convey the chief factor or any other officer of the Hudson's Bay Company to San Juan for the purpose of seizing an American citizen, nor has any attempt ever been made to seize an American citizen and to transport him forcibly to Vancouver's Island for trial. ”

“ There are painful thoughts of those who are dear to us and with us; visions of sickness and pain that rivers of sympathy cannot relieve, and of death where death comes without any of the consolatory influences that Christianity and humanity can shed about the grave, and of the burial and desertion of precious remains on the desert, where the waves of empire will go over them as unheedingly as the sea goes over its dead ”

“ The day is not far distant when, if the general government shall do its duty in the matter, Oregon will be inhabited by a hardy, industrious, and intelligent population, and the enterprise of our citizens find a new channel of trade with the islands of the Pacific, the western coast of this whole continent, and perhaps with Eastern Asia. Notwithstanding the many obstacles at present in the way of the settlement of this territory, emigrants are rapidly pouring into it, and only demand of government that protection which is due to all our citizens, wherever they may choose to reside. ”

“ By this time men's natural wants have become strong, and what- ever their habit may have been, the appetite for strong drink is overwhelmed by the desire for "good cold water." As the clear liquor comes up silvery and sparkling, rolling up the white, beautiful sand, and flowing off, to revive and refresh all the thousands that come, even the drinker forgets his whisky, and pays some passionate tribute to the "blessed good water." ”

“ On the north, directly abreast, is to be seen, in a good atmosphere, a dim trace of highlands, fading away immediately at the right and left, so far away is it and at the south, three miles off, is the Platte, indicated by its dark cottonwood groves, and between them you look on in that direction, and there, as forward and back of us, the vast plain stretches away, we know not how far, for it is beyond the reach of our vision. ”

“ No climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hard industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people; a people who are still, as it were in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. ”

“ Their stores and offices are all in little log buildings, that would be a disgrace to almost any Wisconsin farm, and would not be allowed to stand a week in any Wisconsin village. I have not seen a school house, nor a church, in the town, nor indeed have I in any other Mormon settlement. There is not in the city, a trace of taste, pride, enterprise or public spirit. Wherever the Mormons have established themselves in this country, you can see the clearest evidences that society is sinking rapidly downward. ”

“ The first white men to set foot in the valley of whom we have any authentic record, were some French Canadian trappers who were trapping for furs for that great British monopoly the Hudson's Bay Company. These men made their way into the valley and set their traps along the river, but the Indians stole the traps, and the trappers always spoke of them as the rogues; the river was the river of the rogues and the valley the valley of the rogues. Old pioneers have assured me that this is the way by which the river, the valley and the Indians came by the name. ”

“ And Monday morning we feel as we used to, refreshed for another week of toil on the road another week of the journey of life another week of the labor of self control, and of effort to make the most of the enjoyment of the social and domestic relations. ”

“ Russia is the only sheet iron, that, in a stove, will last through. An excellent substitute for a stove when no baking is to be done, is a sheet of iron like a stove top, to be put over a fire hole in the ground, a common means of cooking, and one which the traveler soon learns to make and use. It is just as good as a stove for every purpose but baking. Every one needs flannel under clothing here. In regard to supplies of clothing for the future, every one is convinced that anything not needed for the road, costs a great deal more than it comes to. ”

“ Unless a horse weighed so many hundred pounds and was so many hands high, the Oregon and California Stage Company would not so much as look at him. They were all matched horses and I recall especially the sorrels and the grays. There were long trains of travel stained immigrants with their weary ox teams. Think what the feelings of these people must have been when they crossed the Siskiyou mountains and beheld far below them the promised land, the Rogue River Valley, lying like a beautiful garden between the mountain ranges. ”

“ I am satisfied that there is not in the northern part of these states, an inland town equal, in any respect to Janesville or Watertown. No man can open his eyes, and keep them open, during opportunities for observation, without being satisfied that Wisconsin is very far superior for all purposes of civilization, to the region lying south of it—and that it is destined to the support of a far more powerful community. ”

“ We are 16 miles by the summit of the South Pass, actually descending towards the level of the common earth though descending very slowly indeed, and through a region of little feed and less water. We are 7640 feet above the level of the sea, our guide books say, and almost to the line of perpetual snow. The Wind River range of mountains, abutting on our right, loom out almost over our trail with their sides white with snow down almost to our level. The wind comes cold from them, and the moment the sun's heat is obstructed, the air feels like that of a winter day. ”

“ Twenty and more years of frontier experience in the region which was then a borderland between the French settlements to the north and the English settlements to the south developed for him a magnificent physique, courage absolutely without fear, and an almost superhuman knowledge of Indian customs and wood-craft, but at the same time, unfortunately, an illicit trade carried on in this borderland, by others and perhaps to some extent by him, seems to have aroused and educated some of the less noble instincts of his mind. ”

“ I am by no means of the opinion that all that is human, or of value to civilization, is to be found in the Anglo-Saxon race, or even in the white race; but that the slow and painful struggles and ponderings of the other races are also to be wrought into the final perfect expression of humanity in society, art, literature and religion. ”

“ In the first place we must bear in mind a remark of Mr. Smith's, and that is that the most of the Indian names we have incorporated into our own nomenclature are more or less altered. He says that white men always like to change the original Indian somewhat. This is no doubt true. Such a disposition arises partly from the white man's egotism, which rejoices in showing that he can make a thing wrong if he pleases, and especially that an Indian name has no rights which he is bound to respect; and it arises in part from the white man's ignorance. ”

“ I would advise any man intending to cross this state, to go down below Rock Island before crossing the Mississippi. The Indians had a trail striking from a point there, to the Bluffs, keeping a series of "divides" forming the water shed of the Missouri and Des Moines. The road from Dubuque by Cedar Rapids, that from Lyons by Iowa City, and all the others, strike right west or south west from the Mississippi into this ridge, and keep it. The Mormons, when they went to Salt Lake, took it on the Mississippi, and made the best road, now called "the Mormon Trail," that the ground will admit of. ”

“ Cattle should, in no case, be halted where there are alkaline salts on the surface. This is the great curse of the upper Platte, the Sweetwater, and all streams flowing through the great waste from the Summit west to the base of the Bear mountains. The low grounds are every where more or less covered with saleratus, and thousands feed and herd their cattle in it for three to four weeks of time. They have the alkaline principle constantly in their grass, and to some extent in their drink, and even the dust they inhale is impregnated with it. ”

“ We are all either well or better, and in good spirits intending, with some dozen other families, to leave to-morrow for Kanesville. In poddling through the mud after my cow, I saw a little of going to Oregon, and if there is any truth in the saying that a "bad beginning makes a good ending," we have a good reason to hope for a successful ending.
I expect to write you from Kanesville, [1] which we do not intend to leave till about the 5th of May. Everywhere there are families and crowds of cattle Oregon bound. ”

“ The poor Indians are fully aware of the rapidity with which, as a people, they are wasting away, on this account they could not be persuaded to fix a time, beyond ten years to receive all of their money and pay for their lands, saying that they should not live beyond that period. They are fully sensible of the power of the government, admit that they can be killed and exterminated, but say that they cannot be driven far from the homes and graves of their Fathers. They further told me that if compensation for their lands was much longer withheld, the whites would have the lands for nothing. ”

“ We left Watertown Wednesday morning, and my family reached here Sunday, and I on Monday—65 miles—after wading through 40 miles of mud almost to the wagon axle. At the Fort, the first night, one of my cows made her escape, and I did not overtake her until I had got back within 81⁄2 miles of Watertown. I then hurried on and overtook my family at night at Milton, in mizzling rain and sozzling mud. Although the cow had traveled 55 miles since 7 o'clock of the day before, and without rest and with little food, she was again missing in the morning. ”

“ The man whose name is associated with this road, will live in the memory of men, forever; at least he ought to.
I have been over northern Illinois and 150 miles, or so, into Indiana—over a region that I traveled 15 years ago. On every hill and valley and stream, the Anglo-Saxon has, in this little time, written his character in signs that a half century of barbarism could not efface. After leaving the lake region and going south into Indiana, although the setment [settlement] dates back far anterior to that of central Wisconsin, the improvement is much less marked. ”

“ It is known that many of the islands in the Pacific have already been settled by Americans, and trading houses established, by which a large and profitable business is carried on with the Indian tribes on the northwestern coast of America, and with the East Indies and China. There is nothing to prevent trading establishments in Oregon from ultimately securing a large share of this trade, and adding much to the wealth and prosperity of the whole union. ”

“ A few, very few, trout are in the creeks, and some salmon live to get up here from the sea, but so bruised and beaten about by the drift in the swift streams, that they are unfit to eat. Of game on the wooden slopes the deer are really "too numerous to mention." Back a few miles in the mountains, the black, brown and grizzly bears are abundant. The grizzly is one of the noblest animals in the world more powerful and more fearless than the tiger. ”

“ Chimney bluff, 10 miles ahead, is a tunnel shaped mass of clay, perhaps 170 feet high, of really fine shape, and its center being a shaft probably 60 feet high and seemingly not more than four feet in diam- eter. They are both entirely naked of vegetation and the rains are slowly washing them down. The gutters in the surface of the court house bluff, give to its walls, at a distance, the appearance of a great columnade, and the effect is so great that you almost look for human forms about it and among its columns. ”

“ Our experience, though it be that of but a single train, has so convinced our company of the economy and expediency of resting on Sunday, that I think our irreligious men, if traveling by themselves, would from policy, do as we have done. We have been on the road six days less than four months a time sufficient to test whether our teams need such a rest, and whether the rest is given them at the expense of time. ”

“ In winter the temperature ranges in the neighborhood of zero to 14 degrees below seldom, perhaps never, freezing in the day time, and only now and then nights. Nobody thinks of such a thing as feeding cattle in the winter. You sometimes see a little stack of hay designed for a working team in time of emergency but this is not common. It is expected that teams will go right along through the winter, plowing and keeping fat on the new growth of grass which is now green and fine. The old Spanish trail and the present inland commercial route, is through this valley, from California to Oregon. ”

“ It is quite easy to believe that in line with increasing international interdependence in trade and cooperation for the best utilization of the earth's resources for human purposes this second voyage of the Co- lumbia may in time to come have larger meaning as an achieve- ment in the evolution of trade than as an exploit of discovery laying the basis for national territorial expansion. These fur trading ventures to the northwest coast of America were the natural expansion of the New England activities in cod fisheries on the banks of New Foundland and in the whale fisheries in the South Sea. ”

“ The wings are naked, like bare brick walls, but between them the sides seem a little sloping and are grassy, with the summits covered with scattering dwarf cedars, that, at the distance of our trail, look like men, and really appear like guardsmen looking at us as we pass. ”

“ Gary and that when he thus gets his family so they can be comfortable that he can attend to his work better, spending more hours in labouring among the people, than if he were to move from circuit to circuit leaveing his children without school, family without comfortable quarters exposed as they must be in the Country at present. There is a force in these reasons which you cannot feel so powerfully as myself. I know of no better plan than to urge the principle that every man to live in and about his work and then if exceptions occur, why, endure them as best you can. ”

“ If we were all holy men of God labouring as faith- fully for Christ as once we did for Satan and as industriously as our obligations to his dying love imperiously demand a flame of piety would be kindled in this valley that would burn with Millennial Glory, But it is to be feared we are not. I have some reason to suspect that the Methodism of this country is not in every respect the Methodism of the discipline. ”