A Lone Woman's Trip to Omaha and Beyond

FLATTERING myself that in these days of Woman’s Rights it would be safe and proper for me, a lone woman, to take a pleasure trip nearly two thousand miles in extent, with no protection save the five redoubtable initials of my name on my trunk, I started on the first of September for a small town in Nebraska.

Resolved that the whole expedition should be conducted by my own woman’s wisdom and will, — that not a jot of the credit of its success should be claimed by any of the lords and usurpers of creation, — I went, at the close of a short stay in New York, to the railroad office in Broadway, bought my tickets, and deposited them in my portemonnaie, with the air of a man who triumphantly pockets the proceeds of his first doubtful venture. For mine had been distressingly doubtful to some of my immediate friends, whose sanguinary visions of Apaches, Camanches, and Sioux forbade a surrender to my will until the last moment, when, as I confronted them with my railroad tickets in my pocket, remonstrance seemed no longer a virtue.

Offers from gentlemen to accompany me to the cars and see me off were rejected with as much disdain as was consistent with good breeding, and the companionship of a lady friend accepted, who kindly volunteered to perform the farewell office. I meant to make a thoroughly feminine job of it from beginning to end.

By some miscalculation, to be sure, we reached the Jersey Ferry, from Fifty-first Street, at about 10 A. M., instead of 4 A. M., as we ought to have done ; but this was an inadvertence which had nothing to do with the question of final success.

After the first amazement was over, I consoled myself with a book (for my friend was obliged to return), and with the thought that sitting upon my trunk in the gangway — for there was no ladies’ room on the New York side, and I did n’t know that there was on the other—was a good preliminary lesson in travel without the fatigue of jolt and jar. Passers-by, especially those who crossed the ferry to Jersey and returned again, finding me still there, looked somewhat interrogatively' at me, but I knew my own business, and this secured my self-possession.

Starting at 5 P. M. from Jersey' City, I felt as if the circumference of the earth had suddenly and indefinitely expanded for me ; for had I not, at last, cut adrift from dependence upon men and dashed into an independent arena, where a blunder in the beginning often makes a good ending? From New York to Harrisburg and Pittsburg all went merry as a railroad bell, everybody seeming bound to entertain and care for me as watchfully as if I had been labelled “ Glass — with care.”

One gentleman, in particular, who was bound for St. Joseph, Missouri, commenced with kindly inquiries about my journey, assuring me that he should have known me anywhere to be a Boston woman, which might be complimentary or not, depending somewhat upon his own latitude and longitude when at home, — on the question whether he were himself a Bostonian or a New-Yorker.

“ You are, of course, going to Chicago, and intend to take the short cut across the Slate of Iowa to the Missouri River ? ”

I answered : " No ; there is a new branch of the railroad, I believe, which takes me by the most direct route from St. Louis.”

“ How ?”

I did not exactly know how, but I believed it had been recently built to or from St. Louis, or from somewhere.

“ You ought not to go to St. Louis at all.”

“ Not if my tickets say so ? ”

“ But do they ? ”

Reluctant to exhibit them, I said : “ I bought them in Broadway, of a man who said this was the shortest, safest, and best route to my destination.”

“ If you please, I should like to look at your tickets. Perhaps I can help you.”

The slow, incredulous way in which he took the little envelope and opened it brought a flush to my face, as if he were responsible for any mistake about them.

Since Cleopatra’s day (if not before) it has “never been good to bring bad news.”

“ I am very sorry for you, madam, but — ”

“ I ’ll take my tickets, if you please, sir,” I said, very curtly, extending my open palm.

“ I am very sorry for you, madam, but these tickets ” — still holding them provokingly in his hand — “take you to St. Louis, thence to St. Joe, which involves four days added unnecessarily to your journey, and an additional expense in proportion. Besides it also involves steamboating from St. Joe to Omaha; and as the waters of the Missouri are very low at this time, what with sand-bars and snags it will be too tedious for you to bear in such insufferably hot weather as this.”

“ I will take my tickets ! ” and, as I deposited them hastily in my portemonnaie, I muttered : “ I might have known that any projected route between the Atlantic coast and the Pacific which left Chicago out must be a swindle.”

“ There is some truth in your remark, madam. Probably the man who sold you the tickets in New York was in the interests of this route.”

“Probably,” I replied, not yet restored to my first slate of self-complacency and self-reliance, and willing to change the responsibility of the blunder to New York. “ I always expect to be cheated in New York, but this is the first time I was ever caught napping there.”

I was assured that there was now no way of escape from St. Louis, and it began to look doubtful whether I should even survive snags and Sirius. This, then, was my first attempt to fly an independent flag in strange waters !

Perhaps I could n’t bear the journey in this insufferable weather; but I would try the experiment, I thought, though it were exchanging my right of suffrage for a life exile on a Missouri sand-bar. There would be no taxation there, and no complications about representation.

On the way from Cincinnati to St. Louis, my informant, seeing that I did not choose to take a sleeping-car, proposed to occupy a seat behind me, with a young gentleman from Annapolis, Md, whose acquaintance I had made the day before,—advising me to make a pillow of my travelling-shawl and waterproof, and sleep if possible, lest, with such a circuitous journey before me, I should be utterly exhausted before its close.

Somewhat humbled by my ticket experience, I tacitly consented to sleep, wishing I might not awaken until I reached Nebraska. I did awake, however, to find the passengers all astir around me ; and starting up and peering over and through the crowd, I discovered that my young Maryland friend, stretched apparently lifeless upon the seat, was the cause of the excitement. His sister, who, with her husband, Dr. M——, a surgeon in the Regular Army, had been indefatigable in their attentions to me, I saw was on the spot, which precluded the necessity of my offering my services, for the present at least; so I sat down to await the event.

My St. Joe friend—or St. Joe, as I shall call him — showed himself skilful and ready in the art of nursing. I could not help thinking how delightful it was to have made such an acquaintance, and how much people lost who did not travel.

The doctor soon discovered that his young brother-in-law had been drugged by some person or persons to him unknown, and that his wallet, containing five hundred dollars,—all the money he had with him, — was missing. St. Joe, ready for any exigency, promptly advised the doctor to run back, on an expected train, to the last station but one, where several well-dressed but doubtful-looking Virginians had left the cars. They had elicited the Marylander’s sympathy by claiming to have been, as well as he, in the late Rebel Army, and to have served in the same division. They and the young man had taken a parting cup together, and St. Joe was sure they were the guilty parties. But the suggestion was unheeded by the doctor, who determined to press on to St. Louis, where he could find comfortable quarters for his brother-in-law.

Revolving the matter in my own mind, I lamented the lack of shrewdness and wisdom perceptible in a man who was willing to eat or drink with a stranger on the highways of travel, and concluded with the supposition that this young man was unaccustomed to travelling. I had occasion to remember this afterward.

Wearied out with nursing, and anxiety as to the fate of the sick man, in whom symptoms of returning consciousness were at last manifest, the sister consented to retire to rest. Toward morning the brother became quiet and slept, though delirious whenever he awoke. After some persuasion, the doctor was induced by St. Joe to follow his wife and leave him in charge of his brother. A moment previous to his leaving, St. Joe stepped for a moment to a rear car to speak to the conductor, and on his return, he discovered under one of the recently vacated seats of our own car an empty wallet, which proved to be the sick man’s, thus surprising us all, and proving beyond a doubt that the contents were now irrecoverable, and that St. Joe was indispensable.

About this time I had found that a very valuable cameo which I wore in my travelling-sack was also missing. I remembered that as I prepared for sleep, the air being oppressively warm in the car, I had unfastened my sack at the throat, and thrown it back, with the cameo fastened for safe-keeping on the loose edge of the garment.

St. Joe seemed more disturbed, if possible, at my loss than I was myself, averring that it must have been taken of course during his absence, in the hurly-burly of excitement about our Maryland friend. He resorted to every means which his brain could conceive for its recovery, and so energetic was he in my behalf that the centre of attraction was soon changed to me, giving me a pleasant little episode of notoriety for the time. I began to suspect that people who did travel might lose something, as well as those who did not. But public attention was now diverted from me to yet another centre of attraction. St. Joe — innocent saint ! — had, in the commencement of the mêlée placed his portmanteau and travellingshawl in charge of a gentleman (for were they not all gentlemen, all honorable men?) whose acquaintance he claimed to have made only that morning, and the new acquaintance had been left — by mistake ? — at a back station, and St. Joe remained minus all his baggage.

By way of illustrating a subsequent event, let me say that I had failed in my attempts at Cincinnati to get a one hundred-dollar bank-note converted into more available funds, which left me penniless, in the practical sense of the word, and unable, of course, ter procure any refreshments on the journey, as I would not make my emergency known to my travelling companions, comparative strangers as they were. I have no doubt that St. Joe would have been very happy to “ change ” it, as there were advantages connected with such a brokerage which, it proved afterwards, were all in his line.

We did not reach St. Louis until one in the morning, though due at midnight.

“Where did I intend to stop ?” St. Joe inquired, just as “ Express ” made his appearance. I replied that Dr. and Mrs. M—— had kindly taken me under their protection, and they proposed stopping at the “ Planters’ House.” This was always his hotel, and he should accompany us.

“ Express ” was unable to make change, and St. Joe came to the rescue ; but “ Express ” was in a hurry, and would call for a settlement at the hotel, and I had no doubt that he would be as good as his word. There are some things in which men are true to their promises.

During my interview with “ Express,” St. Joe sat in the seat before me ; but, on the disappearance of this energetic functionary, he took the vacant one beside me. All was still in the car, our drugged friend sleeping, with only spasmodic starts and groans once in a long while.

St. Joe informed me that we should be unable to procure supper at St. Louis, so unseasonable would be the hour of our arrival, and, if I would share his lunch with him, — a very nice one, prepared on the way, — it would afford him great pleasure. No doubt of it.

As he opened a very neat-looking lunch-box, how tempting were the fresh cake and fruit to me after my long fast! I culled as daintily as possible a choice square of the cake, and tasted it. I imagined a peculiar taste and odor in it, which caused me to remember my previous wonder that any one should eat or drink with travelling strangers; and, in order to be consistent, I stealthily lowered my left hand, holding the cake, down at my left side, next to the window, and dropped the cake on the floor, not, of course, wishing for more.

After this impertinent interference of my bump of caution (small people are said to be impertinent) all my senses were wide awake. St. Joe, not dreaming that I had not eaten the cake, immediately took a sleepy sort of position, with his left elbow on the back of the seat, and, resting his head upon the bend as if for a nap, he swung his right arm carelessly round upon the seat, and brought his hand quite near my pocket, containing the note I had unavoidably exposed in my dealings with “ Express.”

My vigilant senses were all in arms now, and I coolly put my hand in my pocket, and, openly taking my purse from it, securely placed it in another portion of ray dress ; then, rising, I asked St. Joe’s permission to pass into the next seat, which was unoccupied.

Just before we reached St. Louis, he disappeared, I being in full possession of all my faculties and ray money. I saw nothing more of him until the next morning, when, as Mrs. M—— and I were hurrying through the hall of the Planters’ Hotel, at St. Louis, for the omnibus which was to take us to the cars, — the doctor and his brother preferring to walk, — an officer stalked authoritatively up to our friend and his “ day’s acquaintance ” who had decamped with his baggage, but who now stood by his side, and arrested them both. We could not wait to learn the result, but a gentleman who afterwards joined us in the cars informed us that the two men were accomplices, and notorious swindlers, pickpockets, and druggists, and that the detectives had been on their track for some time.

Between St, Louis and St. Joseph, where the doctor and his wife took their leave of me, nothing occurred to disturb the complacency of my self-gratulation at my shrewd escape from Western saints ; and I embarked on board the steamer Colorado, at nine o'clock on Saturday night, having left New York on Monday evening.

Reflecting that, but for my mistake, — which was real, if my saint did prove to be spurious,— I might have been at the end of my journey two days before, I did not receive very graciously the announcement that the water was so low, and the leviathan backs of the sand-bars making such uncertain channels for the tricky Missouri, that the captain would not venture to commence navigation against the current Until daylight.

I was tired and sleepy. But where was I to sleep ? That was the next question. The passengers had mostly come on board at dark and secured sleepingplaces, and there was not to be found a vacant berth or cot or strip of the floor sufficient for my purpose, if I had been willing to accept it. The clerk of the boat led me through the close, hot, sickly atmosphere of the cabin, navigating as crookedly between cots and stragglers asleep on the floor as if each were a snag or a “ bar,” and brought me to a passage-way at the stern of the boat, where the stewardess improvised a bed for me, the clerk apologizing in a gentlemanly way for not being able to do better for me that night. It was a pretty forlorn prospect ; but as I ascertained that an outer door could be opened from the passage-way, and that I could at least get plenty of air,— such as it was, — in spite of the clerk’s remonstrances and reminders of fever and ague, I threw it open, and cast myself, without undressing, upon nothing more than a square heap of old bedclothes, thankful that I was permitted to have even this to myself.

The mercury stood through the day at 89˚, and could not have been much lower at this hour ; a slight breeze drew in from the south, and almost parched my cheek with its hot breath charged with the light sand that came whirling in from the river bank.

I was so exhausted that I must have dropped immediately into a profound sleep, for I neither heard nor saw anything until I opened ray eyes, just after daylight, to discover that my door was shut close, and that a black woman, weighing at least two hundred pounds, was sleeping innocently at my side. I rushed for the door with such a desperate movement, that a looker-on would have supposed I intended instant suicide. But the waters of the " Big Muddy,” as the Indians call the Missouri, are not of a kind calculated to leave a clean record or restore one’s self-respect.

‘‘Good mornin’, missis ! Scuse me, but I had to gib up my bunk las’ night, and so I jis lays down here to rest me leastest bit. I reckon yer Boston, — hey ? ”

So Boston had done it, — that land of all sorts of liberties to the Southern negro.

We dropped passengers at the first and second landings, and now I could have a state-room. But by this time the thermometer had marked 91˚, and the dry, yellow sand was blowing in drifts from the shore and the sandbars, and sifting into every nook and cranny. It was impossible for us to remain in our close, hot state-rooms, and we all sat upright about the dusty saloon, speechless, and almost hopeless, the perspiration meandering in streams down our grimy faces, as muddy as the Missouri itself. Luckily, the large mirrors were so obscured that we could not see ourselves, but sat looking at each other, thanking our stars that we were not as our grimy neighbors were.

The water for drinking stood in the goblets on the table, like so many pretty mud-puddles ; the food was grittier than we were ; and as for edibility, it might as well have been all touched by the finger of Midas himself. Those large grasshoppers which are the pest of Western farmers were driving on board in swarms, from sand-bar and shore ; and, as they attached themselves to the viands on the table, many of us surrendered unconditionally. I heard one sensible man say, that he had been over the plains twice to Colorado, had been wrecked among the savages of the African coast, had travelled barefoot over the burning sands, and had served in McClellan’s preliminary campaign, but he had never experienced such a siege as this. It is consoling to know, when we are suffering, that we are bearing off the heaviest of the martyrs’ crowns, else the glory is inadequate ; and I was lifted up to such a pitch of gratitude to the man, that I should have been tempted to ask him for his photograph, if the sand and grasshoppers had permitted me to open my mouth.

Although we were detained by snags and “ bars,” yet, being successfully pried off with long poles, we did at last arrive at Omaha on Tuesday morning, — as woe-begone, unwashed, and unkempt a set of emigrants as ever debarked from a ship’s steerage. The soap and water of the Cozzens House will live in my memory always.

On Wednesday morning, at half past five, I took the stage, my destination being off the line of the great Pacific Railroad, and seventy miles beyond Omaha. The weather promised to be fair and hot, as on the preceding day, and I attired myself accordingly. When the stage rolled up to the hotel door, I found it to be a great, square, lumbering box, without springs, and with a square hole in it for a door. To this I was obliged to climb over wheels large enough for an ox-cart, which, reaching above the lower edge of the door, obstructed in a measure what place of ingress and egress there was. However, I climbed up the wheel and dragged myself into the instrument of torture, with the helping hand of a strong man within, who exclaimed at the top of his voice : " Hallo, if here ain’t one of our boat passengers ! Hallo, marm ! ”

It was the voice of—I judged—a burly farmer whom I remembered to have seen among the sands and grasshoppers of the steamer ; and, calling to mind Mr. Emerson’s words about the expressiveness of slang phrases, I almost longed, in my lone-womanness, to return the farmer’s cheery salutation in kind; but, remembering my Alma Mater, I subsided into a very proper,

“ How do you do, sir ? ” I was glad, before I reached the end of my journey, that I had not rustled the starch of my dignity in his face in return for his honest familiarity, for I had need of him.

A seventy miles’ ride over a prairie, with only one log hut and two other human habitations for shelter and cheer, — with six unknown men in and on the stage, and with no other woman for companionship, — was not the most inviting prospect. How did I know who or what these men were, and what might become of me ? Besides, we had been enlivened by the driver, as he dismounted to water his horses on the outskirts of Omaha, with the details of an occurrence which had taken place on a trip over this very route only the week before. The express and mail were carried by this same conveyance, and a band of highway robbers, who probably had ascertained this fact, waylaid the stage one night and demanded a general and particular surrender. As no one was armed, the passengers came to the conclusion that they had nothing to do but deliver up their money.

It so happened that there was little of value in the express that night, though only on the trip before there had been twenty thousand dollars. One man, less wise than the others, as he reluctantly handed over his money, said very vehemently, “ I know you and will expose you ! ” “ You will never have a

chance ! ” replied the leader of the robbers, and, drawing a revolver from his pocket, shot him dead. He then grasped each of the others by the shoulder, and turning them on the way of their route said : “ Go ! and the first man of you who looks behind him until he reaches that point yonder will be shot.”

I had nothing to do now that I was fairly launched upon the prairie, but to sustain my position of an independent woman as well as an indifferent air could do it. We had not been many hours on our way, before heavy drops of rain began to patter about us, which, in my ignorance of consequences, I rejoiced in, as the air would be cooled thereby and the dust laid. I watched the effects for a time with refreshing cogitations on the change, until I saw that the black mud was becoming so adhesive as to resemble a mixture of tar, charcoal, and Spalding’s glue, in equal proportions, and that it must soon be too much for our horses, especially on those steep, long pitches we were constantly ascending and descending. It was a rolling prairie, for I saw one of our passengers, who attempted to climb one of the pitches on foot, lose his hold and roll from top to bottom like a log.

It soon became necessary for all but me to leave the stage and walk up the “bluffs,” as they call them ; and as on every such occasion each man accumulated about a " quarter-section ” of government land upon his large, heavy boots, and brought it with him into the stage, you may imagine the condition of the floor and of my garments. Worst of all, in my certainty as to the signs of the weather in the morning, seeing it was but a day’s ride, I had packed my rubbers in my trunk and wore only thin gaiters ! I was quite helpless now, and, sitting in the stage, I eyed with no great cheerfulness the unrailed, rough, rickety-looking bridges, over “gulches” seventy feet deep in some places, while I reflected that I had no companions but those rude pioneers and the driver, of whom I knew nothing. In this state I arrived at about half past four at a half-way house (Knoudles’s Hotel), which proved to be a log shanty with two rooms. The stagewheels had become thickly tired with mud, that adhered in sipite of the driver’s efforts to remove it, and the step being in an equally slippery condition, a consultation was held as to the best method of getting me out. Nothing feasible offering at once, my burly friend came to my assistance. I had been impressed that he would be of use to me before I got through. He proposed drawing me through the square, ill-contrived stage-door, which did not swing on hinges, but slid up and down like a car-window. Fortunately for one of my weight, he was a man of magnificent proportions, and I saw no other way but to submit gracefully to the operation. Accordingly, as my receiver stood with open arms, I thrust out my head, and as much of my body as was consistent with equilibrium, and he pulled me through the opening and over the muddy wheels, — dragging skirts, boots, and all.

The Hotel Knoudles, kept by Missourians, contained a family with two heads, as I supposed; for a tall, bony, sharp-looking woman was certainly one head, and it was but fair to conclude that a robust-looking man who sat smoking a pipe in the corner, and whom she called her “ old man,” was the other, though the woman was plainly dominant that day. Six rather soiled, soggy-looking boys made up the remainder of the occupants of the two rooms of the Hotel Knoudles. As I had fasted since five in the morning, or rather since the night before, I hoped to find something here to sustain me on the rest of my dreary way, which bade fair to be, without any extraneous aid from imagination, a perilous one. I was wet and thoroughly chilled, and as I drew towards the stove I asked — being unaccustomed to either tea or coffee — if I could have a teaspoonful of ginger in a cup of hot water.

Hain't got no ginger,” replied the landlady, in a piping voice.

“ Have you any pepper ? ”

“ Hain’t got none of that neither. Can't you eat such victuals as other folks does ? ” —still louder and shriller. “Set up’t the stove nigher,”—almost in a shriek. And she betook herself to stirring the fire so sturdily that stove, " old man,” and pipe were threatened with instant overthrow, and the men instinctively broke the circle around them, and stood back panicstruck. Alter this stirring interlude, she planted herself before me, as near as she could wellapproach., and, with hands upon her hips and arms akimbo, she shouted once more, as if hailing a distant sail : " Say ! we 've got some pickled peppers. Them ’ll warm yer up.” And she grasped the back of my chair as if she intended to shake me out of it upon the floor. “ Ef yer ’I hist (hoist) I 'II fotch yer cheer up ter the table.”

However unintelligible her language was, I had no difficulty in discovering that she wanted my chair, and so I arose. When I was seated at the board, — or two boards placed side by side on four barrels, two at each end, and covered with an unbleached cotton cloth, which probably served for a sheet by night and table-cloth by day, — I found that the woman had by some witchcraft discovered my antipathies, and placed before me three articles which I never taste, — liver, onions, and potatoes fried in the same pan with the first two articles. In despair, I saw I must betake myself to dry bread, if I could find any ; for the cows had not “come up ” yet, and there was no sweet milk in the house. I found, on examination of the pile, a " job lot ” of Indian crusts, nibbled in scallops — probably by the boys or the mice — on all sides, and I presumed to ask if she had no other bread.

“ No : we hain't got no more meal in the house. Can’t you eat such victuals as other folks eats, no how? My old man oughter gone to mill to-day, but he’s sheered of rain and too shiftless to airn his salt.”

The driver, who sat on one side of me, told me in an undertone; that she was lovely compared with an unmarried sister of hers.

Spying from the window in front of me two handsome roosters in the yard, dripping like weeping willows in the rain, I concluded their families were not far off, and, as a last resort in my extremity, inquired if there were any eggs in the house. She hesitated, and while I was expecting an earthquake or a volcano in answer to my question, my burly friend, who had by this time become furious, suddenly dropped his knife and fork, and, turning round, shouted in the most unexpected and peremptory manner : “ Cook some eggs for this lady! Quick ! If you don't, I 'II search the house. I know you 've got some. Come, be quick about it ! ” To my great joy, a dozen eggs appeared, boiled very palatably, and on these and pickled peppers I made my first and last meal for the day.

Climbing once more through the door of that lumbering box, which threatened to loosen my flesh from my bones, by the shaking it gave me, I reflected tremblingly on the night before us, and the darkness which would soon shut out the world, and wondered if I should ever see the light of another earthlymorning.

We had not ridden many miles before we came, just after passing a shaky bridge, to one of those formidable hills, which made it imperative that the men should all dismount and scramble up on foot. There was no danger, such as one might have supposed there would be, of the stage running back into the ravine below, for the horses stuck too fast in the mud to allow of this (such was my theory); but there was danger that the coach could not be drawn to the top, and I began to be afraid that I might have to be pulled through that fearful hole again, and made to walk in thin prunellas, in the deep mud, up the hill from base to summit. But, after many unavailing attempts, the horses started, seemingly to the great satisfaction of the men.

Just at dusk, as we slipped and slid down the steepest hill yet, before going up another, on the verge of an intermediate bridge, the driver stopped his steaming horses and announced that my time had come. I had better not risk riding over the bridge ; it was bad enough at best, the rain and a recent train of freight wagons had displaced one or two of the planks, and this was the deepest *• gulch” of all. Having passed so many gulches seventy feet deep, I could not help thinking that a few feet more would n’t make much difference ; but my friend placed himself once more at my service, and, alighting, I hurried across the bridge as fast as the sticky and slippery mud on and under my soles would permit, and stood aside at the foot of the hill to see how the horses would make out. The driver had found a piece of board, fortunately dropped from a freight wagon and brought here by some passer who knew the emergencies of the place, for the first that should occur, and replaced one missing plank with it. The horses were sagacious enough to scent danger, and pricked their ears, pawed, and snuffed at the doubtful place as they came to it ; but, as if conscious that there was no alternative, they gave a spring, clearing the place and reaching land in safety, while the board, which broke in the middle, flew up at each end.

This was an adventure which added horror to the darkness that was enwrapping us like a funereal pall. I never before knew darkness so thick and substantial. The driver acknowledged that he literally could not see his hand before him, and that he must trust entirely to the instinct of his horses. True, they travelled over the road twice a week; but, although they might possibly keep the path with their own feet, how could we know when they were keeping the centre of the bridges, and when the wheels were on the very verge, within an inch of instant destruction ? Not a word was spoken, except by an uncouth Englishman, who said it was the first time in his life he had ever prayed.

We arrived, almost exhausted with fear and fatigue, at a station within fifteen miles of our journey’s end ; it seemed to me that nothing upon earth would induce me to travel farther, and every passenger endeavored to his utmost to dissuade the driver from any attempt to proceed until daylight; but the stage carried Uncle Sam’s mail, and the man’s orders were imperative. I was assured that the remainder of the road was not so rough, and was told by the new driver, whom we took here with a relay of horses, that he had driven over this portion of the road for three years, and that he never travelled without lanterns on his coach ; and so after a good supper, but with a heavy heart and weary head, I started again with all but one of the passengers with whom I had left Omaha.

I reached Bainbridge, our final stopping-place, at three after midnight — instead of nine before, when we were due, — much to the amazement of my friends, who were not expecting a lone woman at that hour of the darkest night ever known there.