than they found it, for they used the wealth to
build cities, to cultivate farming-lands, and to plant orchards and
vineyards where the mining-camps used to be.

HOW POLLY ELLIOTT CAME ACROSS THE PLAINS

This is the story of a little girl who in 1849 rode all the way
from Ohio to California in an emigrant wagon. Polly Elliott has
grandchildren of her own now, but she remembers very well the spring
morning when her father came home and said to her mother, "Lizzie,
can you get ready to start for the land of gold next week?" She hears
again her mother saying, "Oh, John, with all these little children?"
She says her father answered by swinging her, the eleven-year-old
Polly, up to his shoulder and calling out, "Here's papa's little
woman; she'll help you take care of them," as he carried her round the
room, laughing.

This was "back East," as Polly Elliott, now Mrs. Davis, says,--in
Ohio, where they had a pretty white house set round with apple and
peach orchards all white and pink that May day. Her mother cried
because they must leave the house, and because they had to sell all
their furniture and the stock except Daisy, the pet cow, and Buck and
Bright, the oxen, who were to draw the wagon. A round-topped cover of
white cloth was fixed on the big farm-wagon. Then they piled into it
their bedding in calico covers, a chest or two holding clothes and
household goods, a few dishes and cooking things, and plenty of flour,
corn meal, beans, bacon, dried apples and peaches, tied up in sacks.

Polly says she supposed the trip would just be one long picnic, while
the four children thought it fine fun to "sit on mother's featherbed
and go riding," as they said. So they started off for California.
A long, long ride these emigrants had before them; a weary trip,
plodding along day after day with the patient oxen walking slowly and
the burning sun or pelting rain beating down on the wagon cover. There
was a train of other wagons with them, some pulled by horses but more
by yoked oxen, and the men walked beside the animals and cracked long
whips. A few men were on horseback, but all kept together, for Indians
were plenty and were often hiding near the road, watching for a chance
to cut off and capture any wagons lagging behind the party.

Day after day, Polly told me, they travelled westward to the setting
sun. They left the orchards and shady woods of Ohio and Indiana far
behind them, and crossed the wide prairies of Illi