Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1859-08-02
0Qortestrr Daily Spp.
GREELEYs OVERLAND JOURNEY.
LARAMIE TO SOUTH PASS.

vi tuS pOStt Out no one else could
Tor would afford me a shelter on any terms,
SO made virtue of necessity and applied to
Capt. Clark who at once assigned me a room
there being few troops at this post at pres
ent-and for the five days | remained there |
slept between floor and a root, after five
weeks experience of the more primitive meth
DDS of keeping cold and storm at bay l was
treated with more than spitality-with gen
erous kindness--by Capt. Clark, Lieuts. Has
coll and Follett and DR.. Johns-and yet the
long tarry became at length irksome, because
had already lost too much time, and was
most anxious to be moving westward Final
ly, the mail stage from the East hove in sight
on the morning of June 30, but halted Just
across Laramie River all day, repairing coach,
and 1t was z. NJ. when it started-I alone
perched on the summit of its seventeen mail
bags as passenger-he who had thus far filled
that exalted post kindly giving way for me,
and agreeing to take instead the shower wag-
on that was to follow next morning. We ford
ed the swollen Laramie two miles above the
fort, in the last vestiges of twilight-and the
usual trouble with mules turning about in mid
stream, tangling up the team and threatening
to upset the wagon-but overcame it after a
while, got safely out, drove on fifteen miles to
Warm SPRING. fountain which throws out
half water enough for grist mill, all which is
drank up by the thirsty sands through which
IL taxes ltS course before IL can reacn the
Platte, only three or four miles distant We
camped here till daylight, then lost two hours
in hunting up our mules, which had been
simply tied in pairs and allowed to go at large
in quest Of the scanty grass of that region.
They were found at last, and we went ON our
way rejoicing
| shall not weary my readers with journal
of our travels for the last four days. Hitherto,
since left civilized Kansas, l had traversed
routes either newly opened or scarcely known
to the mass of readers but from Laramie |
followed the regular California and Oregon
overland trail, already many times described
and by this time familiar to hundreds OF thou
sands. Suffice it, that, for over two hundred
miles from Laramie, it traverses a region sub
stantially described in my notes my journey
from the buffalo range to Denver and from
Denver to Laramie region for the most part
rainess in summer and autumn, yet one whose
soil Of more or less sandy clay, lacking support
from ridges Of underlying rock, has been more
scanned and gouged and quilted and washed
away by the action of1Oods and streams than any
other on earth-a region of bluffs, and buttes,
and deep ravines, and intervales, and shallow
alkaline lakelets, now mainly dried up, and
streams running milky, even when low, with
the clay quilted from their banks and set off
to render the Missouri a river Of mud, and to
fertilize the bottoms of the lower Mississippi.
Occasionally, but not so frequently as south
of Laramie, the clay hills hardened into rock
by some alchemy OF Nature, present the pen
pendicular fronts and ruinous castle-aspects al
ready described-in few instances, the scan
ty creeks which make their way from the
mountains to the North Platte or the Sweet
water run through narrow canons of such
rock but usually each creek has washed out
for itself wide valley and the bluffs or
buttes, where they exist, are distant many
miles on one side if not on both. In few
places, the mountains are so near that their
thiny scattered, stunted, scraggy yellow
pines are plainly scen-are even close beside
us; but usually the prospect is composed of
rolling prairie very scanulJ grassed and often
thickly covered for miles on miles by the ev-
erlasting Sage-bush of this desoate region.
This is not an anomaly as might be supposed
the stem lives for years. perhaps centuries.
though the shoots and leaves die every Au
tumn Another shrub, less common, but
which often thicky covers hundreds Of acres,
is the Greasewood-a low prickly BUSH
growing in punches like the Sage-busl, and
leoking like bad imitation of the English
priSet Besides these two miserable shrubs,
the dry land, other than the mountains, for
hundreds Of miles, produces a very little
burnt-up grass in patches, and a good many
ilfavored weeds of no known or presumed
L
erly tributaries have at intervals shred of the
eternal cottonwood of the Plains, much Of it
the more scrubby and worthless species
known as bitter cottonwood with very little
of the equally worthless boX-elder-and that
is all. But 40 miles this side of Laramie,
we leave the Platte, which here comes from
the south, and strike nearly forty miles across
a barren divide to its tributary, the Sweetwa-
ter, which we find just by independence Rock,
several low mountains Of almost naked rock
around it, having barely soil enough in their
crevices to support a few dwartish pines.
Five miles above this is the Devils Gate-a
passage of the Sweetwater through a perpen-
dicular canon some % feet wide and said to
be 600 feet high-a passage which must have
been cut while the rock was still clay. Here
a large party of Mormons were caught by the
SHOWS of Winter while on their way to Salt
Lake some years since, and compelled to en-
camp for the Winter, so scantily provided
that more than hundred of them died OF
hunger and hardship before Spring. Many
more must have fallen victims had not
supply train from Salt Lake reached them
early in the spring. And here is a fountain
of cold water--the first that | had seen for
more than hundred miles, though there is an
other on the long stretch from the Platte to the
Sweetwater which is said to be good, but drove
of cattle were making quite too free with it
when we passed, Here the weary crowds Of
emigrants to California were to gather yester-
dry for a celebration of the GLORIOUS" Fourth,
and was warmly invited to stop and partici-
pate, and now heartily wish / had since l
find that all our haste was in vain.
1t was midnight of the Sd when we reached
the mail-route station known as the Three
Crossings, from the fact that so many fordings
of the Sweetwater there considerably larger
than at its mouth forty miles or more below
have to be made within the next mile. We
had been delayed two hours by the breaking
away of our two lead-mules, in crossing deep
water-course after dark-or rather by the
frutIess efforts of our conductor to recover
them. had been made sick by the bad wa
ter had drank from the brooks we crossed
during the hot day, and rose in not very pa
trotic certainly not joyful mood, unable to
eat, but ready to move on. So we started a
little after sunrise, and, at the very first cross
ing, one of our leadmules turned about and
ran into his mate, whom he threw down and
tangled so that he could not get up, and III
minute another mule was down and the two
in imminent danger of drowning. They were
soon liberated from the harness and got up,
and we went out but just then an emigrant
on the bank esped a carpet-bag in the water
mine, of course-and fished it out. An exam
ination was then had, and showed that my
trunk was missng-the boot OF the stage hav-
ing been opened the night before on our arriv-
al at the station, and culpably left unfastened.
We made nasty search for the estray, but
without success, and after an hours delay, our
conductor drove of, leaving my trunk still in
the bottom OF Sweetwater, which is said TO be
ten feet deep just below our ford. | would
rather have sunk thousand dollars there. Eff