Hurry, was the word! We wasted no time.
Our party consisted of four persons—a
blacksmith sixty years of age, two young lawyers, and
myself. We bought a wagon and two miserable old
horses. We put eighteen hundred pounds of provisions
and mining tools in the wagon and drove out of Carson
on a chilly December afternoon. The horses were
so weak and old that we soon found that it would be
better if one or two of us got out and walked.
It was an improvement. Next, we found that it
would be better if a third man got out. That
was an improvement also. It was at this time
that I volunteered to drive, although I had never driven
a harnessed horse before and many a man in such a
position would have felt fairly excused from such
a responsibility. But in a little while it was
found that it would be a fine thing if the drive got
out and walked also. It was at this time that
I resigned the position of driver, and never resumed
it again. Within the hour, we found that it would
not only be better, but was absolutely necessary,
that we four, taking turns, two at a time, should
put our hands against the end of the wagon and push
it through the sand, leaving the feeble horses little
to do but keep out of the way and hold up the tongue.
Perhaps it is well for one to know his fate at first,
and get reconciled to it. We had learned ours
in one afternoon. It was plain that we had to
walk through the sand and shove that wagon and those
horses two hundred miles. So we accepted the
situation, and from that time forth we never rode.
More than that, we stood regular and nearly constant
watches pushing up behind.
We made seven miles, and camped in the desert.
Young Clagett (now member of Congress from Montana)
unharnessed and fed and watered the horses; Oliphant
and I cut sagebrush, built the fire and brought water
to cook with; and old Mr. Ballou the blacksmith did
the cooking. This division of labor, and this
appointment, was adhered to throughout the journey.
We had no tent, and so we slept under our blankets
in the open plain. We were so tired that we
slept soundly.
We were fifteen days making the trip—two
hundred miles; thirteen, rather, for we lay by a couple
of days, in one place, to let the horses rest.
We could really have accomplished the journey in ten
days if we had towed the horses behind the wagon,
but we did not think of that until it was too late,
and so went on shoving the horses and the wagon too
when we might have saved half the labor. Parties
who met us, occasionally, advised us to put the horses
in the wagon, but Mr. Ballou, through whose iron-clad
earnestness no sarcasm could pierce, said that that
would not do, because the provisions were exposed
and would suffer, the horses being “bituminous
from long deprivation.” The reader will
excuse me from translating. What Mr. Ballou
customarily meant, when he used a long word, was a
Copyrights
Roughing It from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
