The Awakening of the Desert. Julius C. Birge

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СКАЧАТЬ ladies' expressions of deepest regret that they had been compelled to disturb his comfort. But they were thankful for a harbor of refuge.

      It was a great involuntary shower bath they had taken. One end of the Deacon's wagon was wet in the morning. When the day began to dawn, the sky was clear and bright. The Doctor then made many trips between the two camps. The dry clothes of the ladies which he excavated from the trunks in their wagon were transported in chunks, here a little and there a little, but in his clumsiness and ignorance of woman's requirements he seemed unable to produce the right articles. There were too many of one kind of garment or too few of another to clothe his family fully, in the conventional manner. As he tucked a tight bundle of white or colored goods under the Deacon's wagon cover, after but a moment of delay there came back through the canvas many sounds of distress indicating the conviction that everything in the trunks was topsy-turvy and that garments were strung along his entire pathway. It was fully two hours before a full complement of apparel had been transported the half mile between the camps, so that the feminine members of the Brown family were able to emerge from under the wagon cover. Scattered around in the wagon there remained for future rescue many mysterious garments, diaphanous or bifurcated, all entirely out of place in the Deacon's apartment, but possibly of some use in the future society life in Denver. When the sun had dried the surface of the ground, these and some others found elsewhere were collected, and the girls now arrayed in town clothes, having filed back to their camp soon appeared to be taking an inventory of what are conveniently termed dry-goods but which were now very wet. In the meantime the boys, jumping upon horses, rode in the direction taken by the storm; and here and there, caught upon stunted grubs or bushes, were found various articles. One of the straw hats had been carried fully two miles. During the forenoon both camps had the appearance of laundry establishments, a multitude of garments being spread out to dry in the sun.

      CHAPTER VIII

      Jack Morrow's Ranch

      ON a following night we camped on what for the lack of a better word I would term the shore of the so-called Plum Creek. There was naught in it of what is generally regarded as the chief characteristic of a creek, to-wit, water; but it had one feature that is proper for a creek, and that was a gully, which we regarded as unnecessarily deep, but which was absolutely dry. I was informed, no plums have ever been known to grow on its treeless margins. I remember, indeed, having read in later Nebraska agricultural reports that twenty varieties of wild plums are native to the territory, but that they are so similar one to another that none but an expert can distinguish or classify them. They may grow on the river islands, though I observed none on our course.

      Near the waterless creek was a newly built stage station, known also as Plum Creek. The station formerly on its site had been destroyed by the Indians, one in each of the two preceding years. Such was the history of nearly all the stations along the Platte.

      A few miles west of Plum Creek, we became satisfied that somewhere along there we should cross the one-hundredth meridian, which had figured prominently in the literature of the day as approximately defining the border of the American desert, beyond which undefined line there was no hope for the agriculturist. Fremont had described the country as "a vast, arid desert, impregnated with salts and alkali."

      Mr. Holton, in an address before the Scientific Club in Topeka, as late as the year 1880, is reported to have said that, "Commencing at the Rocky Mountains and extending eastward toward the Missouri, and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Northwestern part of the United States, lay the great American desert of thirty years ago," and, he added, "the geographies of that day were right."

      As I rode from day to day far back upon the uplands, I, too became convinced that they were right.

      "The stinging grass, the thorny plants,

      And other prickly tropic glories,

      The thieving, starved inhabitants

      Who look so picturesque in stories,"

      about constitute the impression received by one observer

      Somewhere along this belt we certainly passed by slow gradation into a still more arid country having an exceedingly scant vegetation, in which the stubby, spiny, prickly types were prominent. The buffalo grass, having a short, rounded blade resembling the needles of a pine tree, and which cured like hay in the dry air, was very nutritious for the stock, but even where it grew, its small brown bunches covered but little of the soil. I have observed, and it is generally conceded, that the eastern prairie grass has of late each year spread westward, because "rain follows the plow."

      Across that seemingly forbidding expanse, tens of thousands of Mormon emigrants had passed, to reach another desert equally inhospitable, where the "soil was impregnated with salts and alkali." Hundreds of trains had transported the families of gold hunters to California and the Pike's Peak region, and now we were watching the tide of migration still press westward along this trail, but as far as I could discern, not one person of all these voyagers had deigned to pause and leave his impress upon this land. Their pathway was marked only by the bleaching bones of horses and oxen that had perished in thousands by the wayside; and these bones were nearly all that those travelers left behind. This slumbering, inert expanse must slumber on, until some one shall find and develop its springs of life.

      On the evening of June 22nd, our national flag was seen in the west, streaming out from the staff at Fort McPherson, a post named in memory of our general who fell in front of Atlanta. The station was known also as Cottonwood. As we passed on to where we camped beyond it, we observed three small buildings made of cedar logs, also a quartermaster's building, and a small barracks of the same material. Three adobe barns were in the rear. In one of the buildings was the sutler's store, an institution that was always present at every post, where supplies both wet and dry were obtainable. The agreeable fragrance of cedar induced us, at a considerable sacrifice of money, to purchase a small log to carry with us for fuel, as we had become weary of being scavengers of refuse material for our fires. On investigation we learned that two companies of U. S. Volunteers, and two companies of U. S. Cavalry, were then stationed at the post, for protection against the Indians.

      At night the mosquitoes proved themselves to be the most ferocious and blood-thirsty creatures we had as yet encountered. Hoping to secure some immunity from their attacks, a few of us decided to sleep in the tent and in it start a dense smudge produced by some coarse, semi-combustible material, on the generally accepted theory that those insects could be driven out by smoke. While this process was going on, we sat outside on the smoky side of the camp, hoping there to obtain some relief. As additional protection, the smokers lighted their pipes and cigars in the confident belief that their troubles were over for a time; but when we counted five large, long-legged mosquitoes perched serenely upon a single lighted cigar, in addition to the uncounted insects encamped on the face of the smoker, we concluded that the smoke habit was not offensive to those impertinent marauding pests. On lying down in our tent we were suffocated with the smoke, the only chance for respiration being to put our noses out from under the canvas, where they became instant centers of attack from fresh invaders. There was little sleep to be had that night, and we determined that, in the future, we should camp on higher lands back from the river, whenever it was practicable.

      At this post, as at Kearney, a reorganization of trains had to be made. As illustrating the average composition of these trains, from the records made at the post, we found that there preceded us in one day, three trains equipped as follows:

      Captain J. S. Miller, 42 men, 3 women, 7 children, 33 oxen, 25 revolvers, 15 guns. Destination, Denver.

      Captain Harmon Kish, 30 men, 20 ox wagons, 8 guns, 23 revolvers. Destination, Denver.

      Captain S. M. Scott, 34 men, 32 wagons, 34 revolvers, 20 guns. Destination, Salt Lake City.

      This number of trains in one day was doubtless above the average.

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