Page:Route Across the Rocky Mountains with a Description of Oregon and California.djvu/152

Rh company be entirely made of of pack-men, who intend to make the journey in as short a time as practicable. Where a company carries their provisions, packed on mules, they can generally make the trip about a month sooner, than those who go with wagons can, and therefore the quantity of provisions should be proportionately reduced; one hundred and fifty pounds of flour will be an abundant supply for a packman. Other articles of provision should be taken in the same proportion with the flour, excepting meat, which should be something less. The quantity of meat should be such, that it could be made to last conveniently, five months. There is scarcely ever a year, in which emigrants will not be able to kill some game between the point where they first come to the Platte River and the summit of the Rocky Mountains, and by taking sufficient meat with them from the States to do, by stinting themselves a little, they may expect to obtain enough from the Buffalo to complete an abundant supply, but beyond this they should not trust to the fortune of the hunter.

From the moment in which the emigrants leave the Western settlements, they should be exceedingly careful of every morsel that may be used with propriety for the support of life. Persons who have been always accustomed to the overflowing abundance of food so bountifully bestowed by Providence upon our country, are very apt to be a little careless in this particular. They are almost sure to acquire habits of wastefulness, which, though they be of little consequence in a land of plenty, if they be not laid aside on the prairie, may cause the traveler to look back repentingly, upon the numerous littles which have been daily thrown away, and which, had they been saved, would have prevented the want consequent upon such neglect. Atoms make Mountains; and a little daily waste, in the course of five or six months, will amount to something very considerable in the eyes of a hungry man, when he is surrounded by a desert country where no food can be obtained.

It will be necessary, of course, for families to have wagons, and little companies of three or four young men, will generally find it more comfortable and convenient to travel in that manner. Every thing can be carried with far more ease and less exposure, than on the backs of mules; neither are the things carried so liable to accident. After the provisions, the means of conveyance, wagons, teams, &c., are of the next importance. Wagons should be selected with the greatest care; those should be taken which are made out of the best material, well put together, and properly