OREGON BOUND 1853 133
groves are heavy and apparently fine. The Loupe also is well timbered along its immediate margin. They will both be settled 100 miles above their confluence, and a great com- munity will grow up there. Unless the Pacific railroad, or some other collateral influences interfere, there will be, in "our day," a city of 10,000 people at the mouth of the Loupe. In spite of that or anything else, a city will be there, and soon. Let the Indian title be extinguished and the Yankees get hold of the Platte, Elkhorn and Loupe Valleys, and there will be from the Missouri up, a mighty state, second in moral power to but one in the north-west your own.
The alkali has an effect to injure the hoofs of our cattle to such an extent that they wear tender, and crack badly in the heel, and we have much trouble in consequence. Tell your readers who may hereafter come over these plains, to be pre- pared with little thin plates of iron for ox shoes, and flat headed nails to secure them ivithout fail.
July 3 We had hoped to be at Ft. Laramie that we might pass the 4th there to-morrow but the lameness of our cattle delayed us and we are fifteen miles short. I trust that to- morrow about when your folks are sitting down to their inde- pendence dinner, we shall be driving up to Ft. Laramie.
We have been troubled much by the lameness of our cattle. While the wet season has given us abundant forage, it has aggravated this serious evil. The wetness of the alkaline sur- face renders the principle more active and fatal, and the feet of our cattle have been subject to its influence until the hoof fails to answer the purpose of a hoof. In spite of close and constant care, one in seven of all our cattle has a hoof worn through, or a heel cracked deeply and badly. This is a great evil on the north side of the Platte. Oiling the hoof once or twice a week has been in ordinary seasons a very good pre- ventive, and it would be well for emigrants to be supplied with it for the purpose though this season it has failed of the end. We have used alcohol with a better result. Its effect is to harden the hoof and fortify it against wearing, every emigrant
