young oak, saw a girl of twelve or thirteen going from the house to a near by spring for water. If my thought had been given voice it would have been, "There, Johnny Minto; there goes your wife that is to be." I felt something akin to shame at my prompt thought, but the reader must understand that my mind had been nurtured on a diet of Scotch and English ballads, the lines of one of which moved it now:
"The farmer's boy grew up a man, and the good old farmer died,
And left the lad the farm he had, with the daughter for his bride."
"Evil to him who evil thinks." The girl lived in perfect freedom and was not asked in marriage until late in May of 1847. In July of that year we were married. The boy, though he had worn the declaration of his intention to become a citizen near his heart for some months, felt this day for the first time that he was an American, and among Americans who did not question his right to be one of them.
The Oregon trail, over which I shall attempt to conduct my readers, was much more than the wheel tracks of laden wagons. It was made, at first, and is yet worth writing about on account of the spirit and object of the people who traveled it. It will be my purpose to give incidents illustrating this spirit as we traveled. However, I will give first a little side light on the life at home of those with whom it was my good fortune to be cast—the old and the young of the family seeming already something like father and mother and brothers and sisters to me. From Mrs. Morrison's own lips I learned that the journey for which she was bending all her energies in preparation, was not in her judgment a wise business movement; but "Wilson wished to go," and that settled the question with her.
Late upon this first day of my introduction to the fam-
