Part 11 (1/2)
But the recent rains had so swollen the stream that it was rus.h.i.+ng by, a swift and rapid torrent two hundred and thirty yards wide. The river could not be forded. Several mounted men entered it to swim their horses across, and thus to act as guides or leaders for the rest. The remaining animals were driven in, and all got safely across excepting the three oxen, who being more clumsy swimmers, were borne down by the current and again landed on the right side. The next morning, however, they were got over in safety.
Lieutenant Fremont had adopted the precaution of taking with him a portable India rubber boat. It was twenty feet long and five feet broad.
It was placed in the water, and the carts and the baggage were carried over piecemeal. Three men paddled the boat. Still the current was so strong that one of the best swimmers took in his teeth the end of a rope attached to the boat and swam ahead, that, reaching the sh.o.r.e, he might a.s.sist in drawing her over. Six pa.s.sages were successfully made and six carts with most of their contents were transported across. Night was approaching, and it was very desirable that everything should be upon the other side before the darkness closed in.
”I put,” says Lieutenant Fremont, ”upon the boat the two remaining carts.
The man at the helm was timid on the water and, in his alarm, capsized the boat. Carts, barrels, boxes and bales were, in a moment, floating down the current. But all the men who were on the sh.o.r.e jumped into the water without stopping to think if they could swim, and almost everything, even heavy articles, was recovered. Two men came very near being drowned. All the sugar belonging to one of the messes was dissolved in the water and lost.”
But the heaviest calamity of all was the loss of a bag containing the coffee for the whole company. There is nothing so refres.h.i.+ng to a weary mountaineer, as a cup of hot coffee. Often afterwards these travellers, overcome with toil, mourned the loss of their favorite beverage.
Kit Carson had made such efforts in the water, that in the morning he was found quite sick. Another of the party also was disabled. Lieutenant Fremont, on their account, and also to repair damages, decided to remain in camp for the day. Quite a number of the Kansas tribe of Indians visited them in the most friendly manner. One of them had received quite a thorough education at St. Louis, and could speak French as fluently and correctly as any Frenchman. They brought vegetables of various kinds, and b.u.t.ter. They seemed very glad to find a market for their productions.
The camping-ground of the party was on the open, sunny prairie, some twenty feet above the water, where the animals enjoyed luxuriant pasturage. The party was now fairly in the Indian country, and the chances of the wilderness were opening before them.
About three weeks in advance of this party, there was a company of emigrants bound to Oregon. There were sixteen or seventeen families, men, women and children. Sixty-four of these were men. They had suffered severely from illness, and there had been many deaths among them. One of these emigrants, who had buried his child, and whose wife was very ill, left the company under the guidance of a hunter, and returned to the States. The hunter visited the Fremont camp, and took letters from them to their friends.
Day after day the party thus journeyed on, without encountering anything worthy of special notice. They had reached the p.a.w.nee country. These savages were noted horse-thieves. The route of the surveyors led along the banks of a placid stream, about fifty feet wide and four or five feet deep. The view up the valley, which was bordered by gracefully undulating hills, was remarkably beautiful. The stream, as usual with these western rivers, was fringed with willows, cottonwood, and oak. Large flocks of wild turkeys tenanted these trees. Game, also, of a larger kind made its appearance. Elk, antelope and deer bounded over the hills.
A heavy bank of black clouds in the west admonished them, at an early hour in the afternoon, to prepare for a stormy night. Scarcely had they pitched their tents ere a violent wind came down upon them, the rain fell in torrents and incessant peals of thunder seemed to shake the very hills. It so happened that the three who were to stand guard on that tempestuous night, were Carson and the two young gentlemen Brandt and Benton.
”This was their first night on guard,” writes Lieutenant Fremont ”and such an introduction did not augur very auspiciously of the pleasures of the expedition. Many things conspired to render their situation uncomfortable. Stories of desperate and b.l.o.o.d.y Indian fights were rife in the camp. Our position was badly chosen, surrounded on all sides by timbered hollows, and occupying an area of several hundred feet, so that necessarily the guards were far apart. Now and then I could hear Randolph, as if relieved by the sound of a voice in the darkness, calling out to the sergeant of the guard, to direct his attention to some imaginary alarm.
But they stood it out, and took their turn regularly afterwards.”
The next morning, as they were proceeding up the valley, several moving objects were dimly discerned, far away upon the opposite hills; which objects disappeared before a gla.s.s could be brought to bear upon them. One of the company, who was in the rear, came spurring up, in great haste, shouting ”Indians.” He affirmed that he had seen them distinctly, and had counted twenty-seven. The party immediately halted. All examined their arms, and prepared for battle, in case they should be attacked. Kit Carson sprang upon one of the most fleet of the hunting horses, crossed the river, and galloped off, over the prairie, towards the hills where the objects had been seen.
”Mounted on a fine horse, without a saddle,” writes Lieutenant Fremont, ”and scouring, bareheaded, over the prairies, Kit was one of the finest pictures of a horseman I had ever seen. He soon returned quite leisurely, and informed them that the party of twenty-seven Indians had resolved itself into a herd of six elk who, having discovered us, had scampered off at full speed.”
The next day they reached a fork of the Blue river, where the road leaves that tributary of the Kansas, and pa.s.ses over to the great valley of the Platte river. In their march, across the level prairie of this high table-land, they encountered a squall of rain, with vivid lightning and heavy peals of thunder. One blinding flash was accompanied by a bolt, which struck the prairie but a few hundred feet from their line, sending up a column of sand.
A march of about twenty-three miles brought them to the waters of the majestic Platte river. Here they found a very delightful place of encampment near Grand Island. They had now travelled three hundred and twenty-eight miles from the mouth of the Kansas river. They had fixed the lat.i.tude and longitude of all the important spots they had pa.s.sed, and had carefully examined the geological formation of the country.
They were working their way slowly up this beautiful valley, to a point where it was only four miles wide. Here they halted to ”noon.” As they were seated on the gra.s.s, quietly taking their dinner, they were alarmed by the startling cry from the guard, of ”All hands.” In an instant everybody was up, with his rifle in hand. The horses were immediately both hobbled and picketed, while all eyes were directed to a wild-looking band approaching in the distance. As they drew near they proved to be a party of fourteen white men, returning on foot to the States. Their baggage was strapped to their backs. It was indeed a forlorn and way-worn band. They had, on a trapping excursion, encountered but a constant scene of disasters and were now returning to St. Louis, utterly impoverished.
They brought the welcome intelligence that buffaloes were in abundance two days' journey in advance. After a social hour, in which the two parties feasted together, the surveyors mounted their horses, and the trappers shouldered their packs, and the two parties separated in different directions. Lieutenant Fremont mentions an incident ill.u.s.trative of the homeless life which many of these wanderers of the wilderness live:
”Among them,” he writes, ”I had found an old companion on a northern prairie, a hardened and hardly-served veteran of the mountains, who had been as much hacked and scarred as an old _moustache_ of Napoleon's Old Guard. He flourished in the soubriquet of La Tulipe. His real name I never knew. Finding that he was going to the States, only because his company was bound in that direction, and that he was rather more than willing to return with me, I took him again into my service.”
The company made but seventeen miles that day. Just as they had gone into camp, in the evening, three Indians were discovered approaching, two men and a boy of thirteen. They belonged to the Cheyenne tribe, and had been off, with quite a numerous band, on an unsuccessful horse-stealing raid among the p.a.w.nees. Upon a summit, they had caught a glimpse of the white men, and had left their companions, confident of finding kind treatment at the camp-fires of the pale faces.
They were invited to supper with Lieutenant Fremont's mess. Young Randolph Benton, and the young Cheyenne, after eying each other suspiciously for some time, soon became quite intimate friends. After supper one of the Cheyennes drew, upon a sheet of paper, very rudely, but, as it afterwards appeared, quite correctly, a map of the general character of the country between the encampment and their villages, which were about three hundred miles further west.
The two next days the party made about forty miles. ”The air was keen,”
writes Lieutenant Fremont, ”the next morning at sunrise, the thermometer standing at 44 degrees. It was sufficiently cold to make overcoats very comfortable. A few miles brought us into the midst of the buffalo, swarming in immense numbers over the plains, where they had left scarcely a blade of gra.s.s standing. Mr. Preuss, who was sketching at a little distance in the rear, had at first noticed them as large groves of timber.
In the sight of such a ma.s.s of life, the traveller feels a strange emotion of grandeur. We had heard, from a distance, a dull and confused murmuring, and when we came in view of their dark ma.s.ses, there was not one among us who did not feel his heart beat quicker. It was the early part of the day when the herds are feeding, and every where they are in motion. Here and there a huge old bull was rolling in the gra.s.s, and clouds of dust rose in the air from various parts of the bands.
”Shouts and songs resounded from every part of the line, and our evening camp was always the commencement of a feast which terminated only with our departure on the following morning. At any time of the night might be seen pieces of the most delicate and choicest meat, roasting on sticks around the fire. With pleasant weather, and no enemy to fear, an abundance of the most excellent meat and no scarcity of bread or tobacco, they were enjoying an oasis of a voyageur's life.”
Three buffalo cows were killed to-day. Kit Carson had shot one, and was continuing the chase in the midst of another herd, when his horse fell headlong, but sprang up and joined the flying band. Though considerably hurt, he had the good fortune to break no bones. Maxwell, who was mounted on a fleet hunter, captured the runaway after a hard chase. He was on the point of shooting him, to avoid the loss of his bridle, a handsomely mounted Spanish one, when he found that his horse was able to come up with him.
The next day was the first of July.