Page:Recollections of My Boyhood.djvu/14

 This was often done and we thought we could see covered wagons and Indians scalping women and children. How little we guessed of what the future held in store for that train of courageous people. Little did we dream of the weary days and weeks and months of that long and toilsome march towards the land of the setting sun, a test of courage of soul. I give here a list of names of heads of families and of young men considered old enough to do a grown man's work. This is a copy made from the original roll which was made by a young man of the party, J. W. Nesmith, afterwards Senator from Oregon. There were several hundred in the train, men, women and children, who started on that half year's journey in the spring of 1843 into an unknown country, down through the valleys, across the trackless plains, and over lofty mountains, always on the watch for savage foes; with a courage almost sublime they toiled on towards the promised land, and in the end,