Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/429

Rh found a good horse to stand the trip as well as a mule. Horses need shoeing 1, but oxen do not. I had oxshoes made, and so did many others, but it was money thrown away. If a man had $500, and would invest it in young heifers in the States and drive them here, they would here be worth at least $5,000; and by engaging in stock raising, he could make an independent fortune. Milch cows on the road are exceedingly useful, as they give an abundance of milk all the way, though less toward the close of it. By making what is called thickened milk on the way, a great saving of flour is effected, and it is a most rich and delicious food, especially for children. We found that yearling calves, and even sucking calves, stood the trip very well; but the sucking calves had all the milk.

.—One hundred and fifty pounds of flour and forty pounds of bacon to each person. Besides this, as much dried fruit, rice, corn meal, parched corn meal, and raw corn, pease, sugar, tea, coffee, and such like articles as you can well bring. Flour will keep sweet the whole trip, corn meal to the mountains, and parched corn meal all the way. The flour and meal ought to be put in sacks or light barrels; and what they call shorts are just as good as the finest flour, and will perhaps keep better; but I do not remember of any flour being spoiled on the way. The parched corn meal is most excellent to make soup. Dried fruit is most excellent. A few beef cattle to kill on the way, or fat calves, are very useful, as you need fresh meat. Pease are most excellent.

The loading should consist mostly of provisions. Emigrants should not burthen themselves with furniture, or many beds; and a few light trunks, or very light boxes, might be brought to pack clothes in. Trunks are best, but they should be light. All heavy articles should be left, except a few cooking vessels, one shovel, and a pair of pot hooks. Clothes enough to last a year, and several pair of strong, heavy shoes to each person, it will be well to bring. If you are heavily loaded let the quantity of sugar and coffee be small, as milk is preferable and does not have to be hauled. You should have a water keg, and a tin canister made like a powder canister to hold your milk in; a few tin cups, tin plates, tin saucers, and butcher knives; and there should be a small grindstone in company, as the tools become dull on the way. Many other articles may be useful. Rifles and shotguns, pistols, powder, lead, and shot, I need hardly say are useful, and some of them necessary on the road, and sell well here. A rifle that would cost $20 in the States is worth $50 here, and shotguns in proportion. The road will be found, upon the whole, the best road in the world, considering its length. On the Platte, the only inconvenience arising from the road is the propensity to sleep in the daytime. The air is so pleasant and the road so smooth that I have known many a teamster to go fast asleep in his wagon, and his team stop still in the road. The usual