The boy travellers in the Far East : adventures of two youths ... - Library

40
THE BOY TRAVELLERS.
like coffee after milk lias been added ; and was once said by Senator Ben-
ton to be too thick to swim in, bnt not thick enough to walk on.
Now they had a long ride before them. The Union Pacific Eailway
begins at Omaha and ends at Ogden, 1016 miles farther west. It con-
nects at Ogden with the Central Pacific Railway, 882 miles long, which
terminates at San Francisco. As they rode along they had abnndant time
to learn the history of the great enterprise that unites the Atlantic and'
Pacific coasts, and enables one to travel in a single week from Xew York
to San Francisco. The Doctor had been over the rente previously ; and
he had once crossed the Plains before the railway was constructed. Con-
sequently, he was an excellent authority, and had an abundant store of
information to draw from.
" The old way of crossing the Plains and the new way of doing the
same thing," said Doctor Bronson, "are as different as black and white.
My first journey to California was with an ox- wagon, and it took me six
months to do it. Now we shall make the same distance in four days."
" What a difference, indeed !" the boys remarked.
"We walked by the side of our teams or behind the wagons, we slept
on the ground at night, we did our own cooking, we washed our knives
by sticking them into the ground rapidly a few times, and we washed our
plates with sand and wisps of grass. Wlien we stopped, we arranged our
wagons in a circle, and thus formed a 'corral,' or yard, where we drove
our oxen to yoke them up. And the corral was often very useful as a
fort, or camp, for defending ourselves against the Indians. Do you see
that little hollow down there?" he asked, pciinting to a depression in the
ground a short distance to tlie right of the train. " Well, in that hollow
our wagon-tram was kept three days and nights by the Indians. Three
days and nights they stayed around, and made several attacks. Two of
our men were killed and three were wounded by their arrows, and others
had narrow escapes. One arrow hit me on the throat, but I was saved by
the knot of my neckerchief, and the point only tore the skin a little.
Since that time I have always had a fondness for large neckties. I don't
know how many of the Indians we killed, as they carried off their dead
and wounded, to save them from being scalped. Next to getting the
scalps of their enemies, the most important thing with the Indians is to
save their own. We had several fights during our journey, but tliat one
was the worst. Once a little party of us were surrounded in a small
' wallow,' and had a tough time to defend ourselves successfully. Luckily
for us, the Indians had no fire-arms then, and their bows and arrows were
no match for our rifles. Nowadays they are well armed, but there are