again this morning and started. We have had a
very cold day, so much so that we needed great coats and mittens, and I
have suffered more with cold than on any day since I started. We had a
smart shower in the morning, which was welcome. The country on this
day's drive looks like a huge buffalo pasture, the ground being covered
with buffalo chips like a farm-yard. The emigrants before us have been
slaughtering them without mercy. We counted eight fresh slaughtered
ones within one mile distance. We were informed to-day that McPike &
Strother's train lost 25 mules and horses in a stampede last night. We
crossed the south fork of the Platte this afternoon. It is about three
fourths of a mile wide here, which is the south or lower ford, but we
had to travel in the river at least a mile and a half, the wind and
current sweeping us down the river, so that our course lay in the form
of a half circle. The water was about up to our wagon boxes, one of
them taking water a little. This crossing is one of the exciting scenes
of this journey. When we crossed, the river was filled with wagons,
men, mules and horses, extending quite across the river. One of our
wagons got stuck in the quick-sand which frightened the horses, but
frightened the driver more. Being on horse back myself, I rode back to
assist the driver, but in our endeavors to start the wagon we had our
doubletree broken, owing to which accident I had to go ashore and send
back a spare team to help them out, but before the team reached the
wagon, and within a few minutes after I had reached the shore, the
driver came ashore, bearing in hand a tin lantern, that being (in his
fright) the only thing which he could find of value, to save out of the
drowned wagon, which, as he supposed, would be soon buried in the
quick-sand. However, after awhile, the wagon came safely ashore, when
the driver had the satisfaction of depositing his tin lantern in a
place of safety again in one of the boxes in the wagon. He did not
relish much being said after that about crossing the Platte, it was a
disagreeable subject, decidedly. Some of the teams were towed through
the river with long ropes, with 20 or 30 men dragging at them ahead of
the mules and horses, up to their middles in the water. One man was
riding horse back when his horse stumbled off from a sand bar into deep
water, and horse and rider both went out of sight; a dozen of us
started immediately for him, but before we had got to him