Lift, through perpetual snows, their lofty and luminous summits.
Where the gorge, like a gate way,
Opens a passage wide to the wheels of the emigrant’s wagon.”

PLATES.

The Start from Missouri River.
Nebraska Landscape with Prairie Fire.
Morning at Chimney Rock.
Camp at Scott’s Bluffs.
Laramie Peak from the Black Hills.
Ford of the Green River.
First Glimpse of the Valley.

Captain John D. Holladay.

THE PIONEER TRAIL.

THIS day, within the hour, I took from its place of concealment “An Old Sketch-Book.” It lies before me now, I turn its leaves and live once more a past experience. Well, well! How vividly this book brings to me again those stirring days! Why, these are days gone by this quarter, yes, nearer this half century! How unexpectedly we sometimes come upon the past—turn it up, as it were, from the mold of time as with the plow one might bring to light from out the earth some lost and forgotten thing. This book, with its buckskin covers, revivifies dead hours, makes me live again those times when life for me was new; or, if not exactly that, brings them back in memory as reminders of times and conditions now passed away forever.

The book is a reminder, old, battered, dusty, yet truthful, of what an ox-team journey across the western plains and over the Rockies was in the years that are gone.

The book so long neglected, now so full of interest, received hard usage in those former days. Before it lay at rest so long, gathering dust and cobwebs about it, like a true pioneer it was made to rough it in this world. It learned to withstand the brunt of many a hard encounter. Master and book were companions on a long and toilsome journey.

Inside and out; yes, the leaves and the covers all tell tales. This buckskin was drenched many a time by the thunder-storms of Nebraska and Wyoming; by the sleet and snow that fell upon the mountains. Between these sheets of variously-toned gray paper, close to the binding, are little waves of red, gritty stuff, contributions, on some windy day, from the sand hills of the Platte Valley, or the Big Sandy Creek (the poetic Glistening Gravel Water of the Indians), or from “The Three Crossings” of the Sweetwater, or the wearisome piece of road leading from Platte to Platte—North and South—over the ridge and down into Ash Hollow. One end of the book has been submerged in water, a reminiscence, no doubt, of the fording of either the Platte, the Sweetwater, the Big or Little Laramie or the Green River farther on. O, there are many emotions revived within me by a sight of the book; they crowd upon me thick and fast! These crisp, gray leaves of sage, where did they get between the leaves? It was, I believe, on one cool September night, at Quaking Asp Hollow. I remember that then great bonfires were blazing around our camp, and the red tongues of flames showed by their light, wild groups of dancers—the ox-punchers performing strange antics; a fantastic dancing supposed to be under the patronage of Terpsichore; or, at least, some more western muse; a something, as I recall it now, between that of our modern ball-room and the Apache Ghost-Dance.

Remarkable that those sketches can suggest to me so much! Yet it is that which is unseen that fills me with amaze. Turning over the leaves it all comes back. “The Journey” is no longer a dream; it becomes again a reality; I go over the long, long plodding, the slow progress of seemingly endless days. Not only do I look upon the scenes which were transferred to the book, but, through sympathy, on others also that, for want of time, were left unsketched. Incidents of many kinds thrust their memories upon me. Sometimes the experiences recalled were pleasurable; sometimes they were sad. But mirthful or tragic, pathetic or terrible, I go over them again, and the twelve hundred miles, nay, the fifteen hundred, considering the circuitous route that we were compelled to follow, pass before me like a moving panorama. Prairies, hills, streams, mountains, canons, follow each other in quick succession—all the ever-changing prospect between the banks of the Missouri River and the Inland Sea.

The Start from Missouri River.

How rapidly we have grown! What was once but dreams of the future first changed to reality, and then sank away until now they are but dreams of the past. No more the long train of dust-covered wagons, drawn by the slow and patient oxen, winds across the level plains or passes through the deep defile. No more the Pony Express or the lumbering stage-coach bring the quickest word or forms the fastest transport between the inter-mountain region and “The States.” How hard it is to understand the briefness of time that has passed since this great interior country was practically a howling wilderness, inhabited by bands of savage Indians and penetrated only by intrepid trappers or hunters! As we are now whirled along over the Laramie Plains, the Humboldt Desert, or through the Echo or Weber Canons, reclining on luxuriously cushioned seats, and but a few hours away from the Atlantic or Pacific seaboards, we can scarcely realize it. Surely the locomotive plays a wondrous part in the destiny of modern nations. Without its aid the country through which we are about to pass might have become as was surmised by Irving, the cradle of a race inimical to the higher civilization to the East and West. Now we behold it a land giving promise of future greatness, where peace, wealth and happiness shall go hand in hand, and where already it is well-nigh impossible for the youth of today to fully comprehend the struggles and privations of its pioneer fathers.

The sketches, the greater number, are roughly