You have all read my story of
crossing the plains. I even did that in a comparatively easy and
unheroic fashion. I only wish, my dear girls and boys, that we had
with us some one of the brave and energetic men and women who made
that terrible journey at the risk of their lives. The history of the
California Crusaders, the thirty thousand or more emigrants who
crossed the plains in '48, more than equals the great military
expeditions of the Middle Ages, in magnitude, peril, and adventure.
Some went by way of Santa Fe and along the hills of the Gila; others,
starting from Red River, traversed the Great Stake Desert and went
from El Paso del Norte to Sonora; others went through Mexico, and,
after spending over a hundred days at sea, ran into San Diego and
gave up their vessels; others landed exhausted with their seven
months' passage round the Horn; and some reached the spot on foot
after walking the whole length of the California peninsula.'
'What privations they must have suffered!' said Mrs. Howard. 'I
never quite realised it.'
'Why, the amount of suffering that was endured in those mountain
passes and deserts can never be told in words. Those who went by the
Great Desert west of the Colorado found a stretch of burning salt
plains, of shifting hills of sand, with bones of animals and men
scattered along the trails; of terrible and ghastly odours rising in
the hot air from the bodies of hundreds of mules, and human creatures
too, that lay half-buried in the glaring white sand.
Pages:
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193