ire for gold. It was said that
California had a milder climate and that pleasant homes could there be
made, and the long, cold winter avoided.

They placed some of the best men in position to manage for the whole.
The outfit was placed on a steam-boat and transported to Kanesville, on
the Missouri River above Council Bluffs. Some of the company went with
the goods while others bought teams and wagons in Western Missouri and
drove to the appointed place. Kanesville was a small Mormon camp, while
Council Bluffs was a trading post of a few log cabins on the river bank,
inhabited mostly by Indians. There was no regular ferry at either place,
and our party secured a log raft which they used to get their wagons and
provisions across, making the oxen swim.

They asked all the questions they could think of from everyone who
pretended to know anything about the great country to the west of them,
for it seemed a great undertaking to set out into the land they could
see stretching out before them across the river. Other parties bound the
same way, also arrived and joined them. They chose a guide who claimed
to have been over the road before. When all were gathered together the
guide told them that they were about to enter an Indian country, and
that the dusky residents did not always fancy the idea of strangers
richer than themselves passing through, and sometimes showed out some of
the bad traits the Indians had been said to possess. It would therefore
be better to organize and travel systematically. He would divide the
company into divisions and have each division choose a captain, and the
whole company unite in adopting some rules and laws which they would all
agree to observe. This arrangement was satisfactorily accomplished, and
they moved out in a sort of military style. And then they launched out
on the almost endless western prairie, said then to be a thousand miles
wide, containing few trees, and generally unknown.

These Illinois boys were young and full of mirth and fun which was
continually overflowing. They seemed to think they were to be on a sort
of every day picnic and bound to make life as merry and happy as it
could be. One of the boys was Ed Doty who was a sort of model traveler
in this line. A camp life suited him; he could drive an ox team, cook a
meal of victuals, turn a pan of flap-jacks with a flop, and possessed
many other frontier accomplishments. One day when Doty was engaged in
the duty of cooking fla