The DeLamar nugget. [volume] (DeLamar, Idaho) 1891-1900, 1892-02-08
ON A SALT MARSH
Our Experience While Occupying
Government Land.

Some years ago my husband, baby
and 1 were in one of the far western
states living in sort of pioneer fash
ion while trying to make successful a
business newly started by himself.
We had lately come from New York,
where we had friends and good home
and lots of comfort and many luxuries.
But Philip, my dear husband, wasn't
satisfied with our easy life there. he
was too proud to be merely a well-paid
clerk in my fathers thriving store, and
he even foolishly imagined that he
owed his position more to charity on
account of his marrying me than to the
real merits he possessed.
Besides he was ambitious to be rich
and his own master, so neither he nor
myself took much pleasure in our hap
py circumstances. We wanted to jump
from the frying pan into the fire,
though we didn't think so, and soon,
after couple of years spent in discon-
tent as to our future, we determined to
ego west" and grow up with the coun-
try.
was strong, brave and energetic
young woman when we reached the
wild western town where we located,
and looked upon the hardships we
. were undergoing before we became
wealthy and great as very romantic
and delightful
And so did Philip. Although he was
ever careful not to make my burden
heavy he never spared himself in the
big undertaking before us.
But his business didn't grow fast
enough to suit his high aspirations and
he was continually looking out for
some new scheme for making money.
One night, after baby was asleep and
we sat cozily before the fire, he told me
of some immense salt meadows still
further west which the government
was dividing into large tracts and CIV
ing them to settlers. ''Now," he said,
with beaming face, IF we should To-
cate on one of these tracts before they
are taken and live there for a few
years, we could then be the owners of
property that will certainly become
very valuable in time, as the country
grows in it's neighborhood. Then we
can sell out and go back to New York
with fortune"
If had discouraged the idea then l
know he would have dropped it.
But was even more sanguine of the
results than he, and fell in with the
scheme at once, only advising that we
should hold on to our present bust
ness, too, and endeavor to run both,
which he gladly agreed to.
In a months time he had his shanty
erected on our salt marsh tract, and
thither we went with the necessary
household effects in a prairie wagon,
baby and all.
The weather was warm and beau
tiful when our hopeful little family of
squatters arrived on our dominion,
which was to be our fortune, and the
rough and rather frail log cabin looked
like a palace to my ambitious and ro-
mantle eyes.
Twas in the center of our big tract,
and the saline deposit, covering the
marsh for miles and miles, glistened
and sparkled in the bright sunlight
like the first light fall of snow used to
when on the green meadows about the
Ola homestead III our udIlNe edS1SIu
state.
Not another domicile but our own
could we see, nor hill, nor even bit
of woods. All was wide, dreary, dead
jlevel-white mostly with salty scum and
black and bare in spots with what
looked like dried mud, such as the bot
tom of pond discloses when the water
is drawn off.
Not sign nor a sound of life save
the dismal croalSings of the lonely frogs
was there to our knowledge for many
miles around.
We were in desert uninhabitable
apparently for man or beast, sure to
stSrve if our supplies were not often
renewed; with no protection from the
deadly tornadoes in summer and the
forty -degree-bel billiards. in
the winter save our little mud-plastered
log shanty.
What place for a woman and
baby
But the prospective fortune we would
have to travel home with, and the