I have fooled away a good deal of time, and it is getting late, so I will just say what I intended to in the beginning. We are all either well or better, and in good spirits intending, with some dozen other families, to leave to-morrow for Kanesville. In poddling through the mud after my cow, I saw a little of going to Oregon, and if there is any truth in the saying that a "bad beginning makes a good ending," we have a good reason to hope for a successful ending.
I expect to write you from Kanesville,[1] which we do not intend to leave till about the 5th of May. Everywhere there are families and crowds of cattle Oregon bound.
I know not what to say to those who gave us such touching evidences of their regard. Please say to them as you meet them, that we find as yet, and I believe we shall find, the parting with our dear friends there, the most painful feature in the undertaking in which we have entered.
Yours, &c.,
S. H. Taylor.
[Watertown Chronicle, July 6, 1853]
Council Bluffs City, May 24, 1853.
Friend Hadley—Yesterday the 23d, after 47 days, mostly on one of th worst roads in the world, we arrived at this place, and with about 300 people and 1000 head of cattle, kept back and dammed up by floods and broken bridges, "sat down before the town." The season has been wetter than any that has preceded it for many years, and all the late companies are from eight to fifteen days behind their time. The tide, however, has been up to its flow and swept on. Ten thousand strangers have been here in a month, and are gone again, and the town begins to be desolated and still. It is built of log cabins, one story high, on both sides of a street running about 60 rods down the bottom of a ravine, between high, dirty clay hills, where it can neither see nor be seen. There are perhaps a half dozen two story buildings in the place, all devoted to gaming, the only business that can afford to live in them.
- ↑ What is now a northern portion of Omaha was originally called Kanesville.
