nois and
Missouri also. When they came to rivers they drove through shallow
fording-places, where Polly and the children used to laugh to see the
little fishes swimming round the wagon wheels. Sometimes the rivers
were deep, and the wagons were ferried over on a flatboat that was
fastened to a wire rope, while oxen and horses swam through the water
behind them. If it did not rain, the children and all were happy, and
it did seem like a picnic. But Polly says she never hears the rain
pouring nowadays as it did then, and that there were many times when
they were wet and cold and miserable, and because the wood and ground
were wet they could not even have a fire.

At night the teams were unhitched and the wagons left in a circle
round a big camp-fire, where supper was cooked. Polly says her mother
used to bake biscuits in an iron spider with red-hot coals heaped on
its iron cover, and these biscuits with fried bacon and tea made
their meal. They always cooked a big potful of corn-meal mush for
the children, and this, with Daisy's milk and a little maple sugar or
molasses, was supper and breakfast too. Then the women and children
cuddled up in the wagons for the night, while men slept, wrapped in
blankets, around the camp-fire or under the wagons, with one always on
guard against danger from prowling Indians or wolves.

Every man or boy carried a rifle or shotgun, and killed plenty of
game. Deer and antelope were always in sight after they crossed the
Missouri River, and the meat was broiled or roasted over the coals of
their campfire. Wild turkeys and prairie-chicken tasted much better
than bacon, Polly said, and she learned to cook them herself.

When the emigrants reached Nebraska, they were in the "buffalo
country," and great herds of big, shaggy, brown or black buffaloes
were feeding on the grassy plains. The animals were larger than oxen,
and the Indians depended upon the flesh for food and the thick, warm
skins for robes or blankets. The emigrants shot thousands of buffalo
cows and calves, and what meat could not be eaten at once was cut
into long strips and hung in the sun or over the fire to dry. This
was called "jerking" the meat. On jerked buffalo or venison and flour
pancakes many emigrants lived all the way across. Game was so plenty
and so easy to shoot, that by stopping a few days, a good stock of
meat could be laid in while the oxen were resting. So they travelled
through Nebraska, and for weeks and weeks