tell a tale more thrilling and more fascinating than
any of ancient pilgrimage, trailed over plains and rug-
ged hills of desolation, often with a miserable road,
or with no road at all ; and exposed to tornadoes fierce
enough to demolish a caravan, followed by ravenous
wolves and croaking ravens, harrassed by savages,
keepijig watch by night, and sweating and swearing
by day ; suffering from scurvy and fever engendered
by salt unwholesome food, and from cholera brought
up the river from New Orleans, and which clung to
them until dissipated by the sharp air of the elevated
regions 500 miles distant. Over the boundless prairies
they straggled, up in to the rarified air that stifled men
and beasts, down into waterless, sandy sinks ; across
sage brush plains efflorescent with alkali, over salty-
white flats caked hard as stone, through blinding dust,
and into heaps of sand-like drifted ashy earth where
the animals sank to their bellies ; resting by cooling
springs, or thirsting beside fetid and acrid waters;
winding along the banks of sluggish water-courses,
fording brackish brooks, swimming ice-cold rivers, ex-
posed now to the unbroken rays of a withering sun,
and now to chilliing hail-storms, hurricanes, and suffo-
cating sand-blasts; sometimes miring in mud, some-
times choked in impalpable dust which saturated hair
and clothes, filled eyes and nostrils, and made these
emigrant trains look like caravans emerging from an
ash storm on the plains of Sodom.
But what were these temporal miseries beside the eternal reward that awaited them beyond the Sierra, which, from its eastern slope, so grimly frowned on those who came so far to tamper with its treasures? Blessed faith 1 thouo;h material and transient in its promised joys, it was none the less immortal What though credence be but a fata morgana, happiness a phantom, and flattering hope be fed by night on dreams and by day on mirage ; what though imaginary shapes take on reality, and thouglit spends itself in midnight apparitions and fantastic aerial visions, faith and hope
