There is frequent mention of William C. Johnson, who, with his bride Mary, left the party with whom they had been traveling and added their wagon to ours. Mrs. Johnson, the only woman in the train, contributed to the general comfort by baking bread for them all, and on gala days making apple pie or doughnuts.
This comparatively small group of men and wagons, with much stock, made conditions somewhat different from those recently pictured in the “The Covered Wagon,” and yet this film has made real to many the hazards and fatigue, the courage and the heartbreak, the manner of life and travel that were common to all who crossed the plains.
The route chosen by my people differed from that picture in that it lay altogether north of the Platte River, but they encountered many lesser streams across which their stock must swim.
From the first of June until the middle of July they were on the prairies; from then on they were in the Rocky Mountains until the first of September, when they came down into the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. By the first of October they were well under way again, following the Fremont Trail to San Bernardino, a journey of three months. I have given a brief report of their route; the diary is full of interesting details of daily happenings, of the type of country through which they passed, of the things that grew by the wayside and of the various animals they encountered. Comments on the landscape give a hint of the love of beauty in the writer, but, being a New
