r for more than a month after we had crossed it.

How many people this army comprised cannot be known; the roll was never
called. History has no record of a greater number of emigrants ever
making so long a journey as did these pioneers. There must have been
three hundred and fifty thousand in the years of the great rush
overland, from 1843 to 1857. Careful estimates of the total migration
westward from 1843 to 1869, when the first railroad across the continent
was completed, make the number nearly half a million.

The animals driven over the Plains during these years were legion.
Besides those that labored under the yoke, in harness, and under saddle,
there was a vast herd of loose stock. A conservative estimate would be
not less than six animals to the wagon, and surely there were three
loose animals to each one in the teams. Sixteen hundred wagons passed us
while we waited for Oliver to recover. With these teams must have been
nearly ten thousand beasts of burden and thirty thousand head of loose
stock.

Is it any wonder that the old trail was worn so deep that even now in
places it looks like a great canal? At one point near Split Rock,
Wyoming, I found the road cut so deep in the solid sandstone that the
kingbolt of my wagon dragged on the high center.

The pioneer army was a moving mass of human beings and dumb brutes, at
times mixed in inextricable confusion, a hundred feet wide or more.
Sometimes two columns of wagons, traveling on parallel lines and near
each other, would serve as a barrier to prevent loose stock from
crossing; but usually there would be a confused mass of cows, young
cattle, horses, and men afoot moving along the outskirts. Here and there
would be the drivers of loose stock, some on foot and some on horseback:
a young girl, maybe, riding astride and with a younger child behind her,
going here and there after an intractable cow, while the mother could be
seen in the confusion lending a helping hand. As in a thronged city
street, no one seemed to look to the right or to the left, or to pay
much attention, if any, to others, all being bent only on accomplishing
the task in hand.

The dust was intolerable. In calm weather it would rise so thick at
times that the lead team of oxen could not be seen from the wagon. Like
a London fog, it seemed thick enough to cut. Then again, the steady flow
of wind through the South Pass would hurl the dust and sand like fine
hail, sometimes with force enough