ous
pile of big boulders in some places and solid rock in others. These
roads have been cut into the rock and are scarcely wider than the wagon
track, and often we could look almost straight down seventy-five feet,
or even more, on one side, and straight up for hundreds of feet on the
other side.

And in the canons many of the grades were so steep that the wheels of
the wagons had to be chained in addition to the big brakes to prevent
them from running sideways, and so off the grade. I rode down one of
these places, but it was the last as well as the first. Every time
the big wagon jolted over a stone--and it was jolt over stones all
the time--it seemed as if it must topple over the side and roll to the
bottom; and then the way the driver talked to the mules to keep them
straight, and the creaking and scraping of the wagons, was enough to
frighten the most courageous.

In Confederate Gulch we crossed a ferry that was most marvelous. A heavy
steel cable was stretched across the river--the Missouri--and fastened
securely to each bank, and then a flat boat was chained at each end to
the cable, but so it could slide along when the ferryman gripped the
cable with a large hook, and gave long, hard pulls. Faye says that the
very swift current of the stream assisted him much.

The river runs through a narrow, deep canon where the ferry is, and at
the time we crossed everything was in dark shadow, and the water looked
black, and fathoms deep, with its wonderful reflections. The grandeur of
these mountains is simply beyond imagination; they have to be seen to
be appreciated, and yet when seen, one can scarcely comprehend their
immensity. We are five hundred miles from a railroad, with endless
chains of these mountains between. All supplies of every description are
brought up that distance by long ox trains--dozens of wagons in a train,
and eight or ten pairs of oxen fastened to the one long chain that pulls
three or four heavily loaded wagons. We passed many of these trains on
the march up, and my heart ached for the poor patient beasts.

We are to have one side of a large double house, which will give us as
many rooms as we will need in this isolated place. Hal is in the house
now, with Cagey, and Billie is there also, and has the exclusive run of
one room. The little fellow stood the march finely, and it is all owing
to that terrible old wagon that was such a comfort in some ways, but
caused me so much misery in others. The