They
still could sing. In spite of the weariness and the dirt; the sometimes
violent breakup of those companies and trail organizations of which
they had been so proud; the slow increase of lawlessness as sickness
and death stalked the trains; they could gather in camp near the Fort
and entertain the traders and squaws with banjo and accordion, with
"Zip Coon," "Old Dan Tucker" and "Carry Me Back To Old Virginny."
Fort
Hall was out of the way to California and fortune; the air was loud
with praises of the wonderful new cut-off direct from Beer Springs to
the head of Raft River; yet many emigrants felt they could spare time
to rest weary legs and look at some new faces. Many cattle had died.
Many surviving animals were so weakened that their masters were making
the journey virtually on foot to save the beasts for that part of the
California Trail to come—the last and hardest trial of the great
adventure. Slowly, the Elephant of legend, the thing they went out to
see, the subject of all those jokes back home in Louisville, or Galena,
or St. Louis, was becoming in many minds a symbol of that great rock
wall ahead of them, the Sierra Nevada.
The
Fort was a disappointment. It was smaller than Laramie and more
dilapidated; a mere fur-trading station on the edge of a desert, a
discouraging sight after the lovely valley of Bear River. But letters
were written and posted there; clothing was washed and mended; a few
supplies were bought; and at last the teams were headed again westward.
A
burning sun and endless clouds of dust as you traveled down the valley
of the sluggish River Snake; more sun and more dust on the desert drive
to the thin thread of water meandering in the desert which was called
Raft River. All the strange ways to the golden country came together at
some point on that little stream: Hudspeth's illusory cut-off; the road
up from Salt Lake City; the road down from Fort Hall. On either side of
the bottom lands, tall hills rose abruptly and you found them made of
that flinty rock, hard and bleak and seemingly still glistening with
the light of the volcanic fires that made them, which would grow
increasingly terrible as the trail marched down the Humboldt River
toward the Sierra passes. It was hot. Many of the unfortunates who had
been stranded before your outfit came along, stood alongside the trail
and begged for clothing, for food, for a lift. It was hard to refuse;
harder to give when you knew what was still ahead and had so little for
yourself.
When
you came to Goose Creek valley on your way to the wells of the
Humboldt, your mind was prepared by weeks of anxiety, alkali dust and
misfortune to find an eerie quality in the columns and minarets of
volcanic rock. And it was there you saw, amid what Delano called "the
breaking up of the world," the breaking up of many men's hopes. Where
the trail led down a steep cliff, almost sheer, and the descent had to
be made by ropes—wagons, ironware, household goods were scattered about
derelict. The owners had saddled the failing mules, killed the cattle
for food and driven ahead desperately.
The
wells of the Humboldt gave rise to a strange and unsatisfactory river,
none too full, none too sweet, hemmed in by high and barren mountains
from whose flanks rose slender smoke columns to show that the thieving
Digger Indians were watching for a chance to raid and steal the animals
that stood between you and death in a desert. The trail ran, sometimes
along the banks near good grass, sometimes high up on naked spurs.
There were no trees. The sun beat down, the dust was blown in your face
by the constant west wind; always the dust in your food, in your drink,
chafing your skin. It was best to travel by night when others were
asleep and the restless wheels ahead were not churning up the trail.
There were almost three hundred miles of it; from the source of the
Humboldt to Lassen's Meadows.
