dust and the myriad buffalo gnats, and can the more easily sympathize with those hundred mothers, often forced to travel on foot with little and well-nigh helpless children pulling at their skirts. As I think, I can but say, "O the pity of it!"
Mr. Applegate remarks:
"There was no time to pause and recruit the hungry stock, or to hunt for the withered herbage, for a marauding enemy hung upon the rear, and hovered on our flanks, and skulked in ambuscade in front. The road was strewn with dead cattle, abandoned wagons, and every article of household goods, even the sacred keepsakes. The failing strength of teams, required shorter couplings so as to save a few pounds. An ox or a horse would fall. Men would remove the yoke or harness, and secure a substitute from the almost equally tired animals in the corral."
Oh, it is well for the sons and daughters of these states of the Pacific, as well as the tourist in his parlor car, as they look upon flower-decked meadows, waving wheat-fields, orchards, and homes of comfort, with beauty everywhere, to remember the heroic deeds of heroic men and women who won for them this grand inheritance.
When the immigrants reached Fort Hall they met Captain Grant, who made the old appeal: "Leave your wagons, impossible to take them, no wagon-road to Oregon." He showed them the many wagons already left as proof of his statement. But here comes Whitman, who says, "Men, you have with incredible hardship brought your wagons
