mals being managed entirely by use of the ox-whip and
the "ox-word." The whip was a braided leathern lash, six to eight feet
long, the most approved stock for which was a hickory sapling, as long
as the lash, and on the extremity of the lash was a strip of
buckskin, for a "cracker," which, when snapped by a practiced driver,
produced a sound like the report of a pistol. The purpose of the whip
was well understood by the trained oxen, and that implement enabled a
skillful driver to regulate the course of a wagon almost as accurately
as if the team were of horses, with the reins in the hands of an
expert jehu.

An emigrant wagon such as described, provided with an oval top cover
of white ducking, with "flaps" in front and a "puckering-string" at
the rear, came to be known in those days as a "prairie schooner;" and
a string of them, drawn out in single file in the daily travel, was a
"train." Trains following one another along the same new pathway were
sometimes strung out for hundreds of miles, with spaces of a few
hundred yards to several miles between, and were many weeks passing a
given point.

Our commissary wagon was supplied with flour, bacon, coffee, tea,
sugar, rice, salt, and so forth; rations estimated to last for five or
six months, if necessary; also medical supplies, and whatever else we
could carry to meet the probable necessities and the possible
casualties of the journey; with the view of traveling tediously but
patiently over a country of roadless plains and mountains, crossing
deserts and fording rivers; meanwhile cooking, eating and sleeping on
the ground as we should find it from day to day.

The culinary implements occupied a compartment of their own in a
wagon, consisting of such kettles, long-handled frying-pans and
sheet-iron coffee pots as could be used on a camp-fire, with table
articles almost all of tin. Those who attempted to carry the more
friable articles, owing to the thumps and falls to which these were
subjected, found themselves short in supply of utensils long before
the journey ended. I have seen a man and wife drinking coffee from
one small tin pan, their china and delftware having been left in
fragments to decorate the desert wayside.

We had some tents, but they were little used, after we learned how to
do without them, excepting in cases of inclement weather, of which
there was very little, especially in the latter part of the trip.

During the great rush of immigration into