ross this great sea of
rolling green. This line could be seen many miles to the front and rear
so far that the major portion of it seemed to the observer to be
motionless.

This immense concourse of travellers was self-divided into trail
families or travelling neighborhoods, as it were; and while each party
was bound together by local ties of friendship and affection, there
still ran through the entire procession a chord of common interest and
sympathy, a something which, in a sense, made the whole line kin. This
fact was most touchingly exemplified one day in the region of the Blue.

I was driving across a bad slough, close behind a man who belonged to
another party, from where I did not know. Himself, wife and little
daughter lived in the covered wagon he was driving. The piece of ground
was an unusually bad one, and both his wagon and mine being heavily
loaded, we stopped as soon as we had pulled through, in order that the
horses might rest; our wagons standing abreast and about ten or twelve
feet apart. In the side of his wagon cover next to me was a flap-door,
which, the day being fine, was fastened open. As we sat our loads and
exchanged remarks, his little girl, a beautiful child, apparently three
or four years old, came from the recesses of the wagon-home, and
standing in the opening of the door, looked coyly and smilingly out at
her father and myself. She made a beautiful picture, with her curls and
dimples, and, as I didn't know any baby talk at that time, I playfully
snapped my fingers at her. The thought of moving on evidently came to
the father very suddenly, for, without any preliminary symptoms and not
realizing that the little one was standing so nearly out of the door, he
swung his long whip, and, as it cracked over the horses' backs, they
gave a sudden lurch, throwing the little girl out of the door and
directly in front of the hind wheel of the heavily laden wagon, which,
in an instant had passed over the child's body at the waist line, the
pretty head and hands reaching up on one side of the wheel, and the feet
on the other, as the middle was pressed down into the still boggy soil.
The little life was snuffed out in the twinkling of an eye. The mother,
seeing her darling fall, jumped from the door, and such excruciating
sobs of agony I hope never to hear again. But why say it in that way
when I can hear them still, even as I write? It seemed but a moment of
time till men and women were gathered abou