After making the north shore of the river on the primitive ferry shown above, the
trail left the Platte and crossed the barren ground, amid sagebrush and
prickly pear bushes, in thirst and weariness, that lay between the
Platte and the Sweetwater Rivers. It was intensely hot. Carcasses of
dead cattle were numerous. Worn-out, abandoned animals wandered about,
shifting for themselves.
Then
suddenly, when any water would have been welcome, you stumbled over the
Sweetwater, eighty feet wide, a running stream that by comparison with
the muddy and insipid Platte seemed like the veritable waters of
salvation. At the crossing, standing up lonely in the undulating plain,
was Independence Rock (below), its walls carved and painted with the names of those who had passed that way before you.
