Page:Recollections of My Boyhood.djvu/19

 pouring rain, and the bellowing thunder. For a minute I was dazed and could not realize the situation, and before I had fairly recovered my senses. Uncle Mack picked me up and put me into the hind end of a covered wagon, and I well remember scrambling around in there among pack saddles, etc. I remember no more of this night, but in the morning the little river had overflowed its banks and the encampment was flooded.

The next object that seems to have claimed my boyish attention and a place on the tablet of memory, was Independence Rock. It was just beyond a small stream which seemed to wind around its base. We passed quite near it and though I can now see the picture of it on the pages of memory, I cannot describe it in a way satisfactorily to myself, but it looked to be oval on top and in the highest part quite smooth and slick, as I imagined, so that a person would slide off it. It was of a light gray color, as high as a house at the middle, tapering down both ways, and as long as a city block.

A man by the name of Lovejoy came to us some where in this part of the country, telling what I thought was a very funny story. He was traveling with a party of trappers, he said, and they had camped in the neighborhood of Independence Rock. Mr. Lovejoy went to explore and examine it, and while there he was marking his name on the rock and just as he was writing "joy" a party of skulking Indians captured him. They took him to the encampment of his party and sold him to his friends for ammunition and tobacco. Mr. Lovejoy was a very clever and good looking young man and wore a slouch hat. He joined our party and came through to Oregon.

It seems that the next object that made a lasting impression on my memory as we traveled westward was Fort Laramie, of the American Fur Company. I remember seeing the fort as we approached it. It looked white and that is about all I remember about it.

I think we were now traveling through the country of the Platte rivers, a country of level plains it now seems to me and very little timber. We saw many herds of buffalo, some grazing quietly on the prairies, and others marching, and moving and bellowing, and the great herds making a roaring noise as they tramped along, a half mile or a mile away.