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124 S. H. TAYLOR

and need the "news," and shall feel sensibly the want of your paper regularly on the road.

We intend tomorrow to enter upon the great waste wild that lies now west of us. I cannot tell you so that you can relish how we feel as we are about to go. Since we were here I have seen many go out, and I have seen no countenance free from evidences of strong emotion. Our departure is one of those hours occurring seldom in life, on which the past and the future press heavily. There are painful thoughts of those who are dear to us and with us; visions of sickness and pain that rivers of sympathy cannot relieve, and of death where death comes without any of the consolatory influences that Christianity and humanity can shed about the grave, and of the burial and desertion of precious remains on the desert, where the waves of empire will go over them as unheedingly as the sea goes over its dead ; and there are earnest thoughts of friends who are behind and whose passionate love will go after us as vainly as the wind and we know not how many, but there are many bitter repentings. Many regret that they are going though few can be induced to say so much; and many more, I apprehend, are conscious that they have not acted wisely in entering upon the enterprise.

We go out in a company of about 20 effective men three of them Methodist preachers 13 wagons and about 200 head of cattle. The determination is to observe the Sabbath strictly. We go well armed, but I believe generally trusting about as much in God as in our arms.

Horse trains went out on grain as early as April 18th, but companies with cattle did not go out trusting to grass until about ten days ago. It is considered barely safe now to go out with horses and depend on grass solely.

I have seen enough of "going to Oregon" to be enabled to give some advice to those who may hereafter go. We are now past a portion of the route that is acknowledged, in a wet season like the present, to try the ability of teams as fully as any part of it, and I have learned that the condition is more