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Show ' Jut then my liiis'it j cinie near anU sjut "Don't won,, lil cji? back atiti awh'V. and he ami Sim dtlibeitely turned turn-ed ttuir backs on us, u uok alter Uif ' This is ju-st like then, id h le wl!ere me ami myS ni saw the ghiwti fa wafon once." the nwlK!,","-'sw-; 'i lit! tell ns ab. in j; ftcla nL-cl tin-y tin-y Uiij;cr nicn:!-e of uur party aa uc state I oiiitlves ah.jut loaiitlie com- ' ins; -enl?. i 1 here isn't niiKlitu ufl. but have; i never been able to ui.dt-tsund t- i J "We were giiinp to s.,!t Late Citv one j ! fall with a load of liuittr and cheese to ' exchanse lor housthulj supplies, and I were driving rather Ute, hoping tt, i reach Nephi. for ti.cte xt h-J ',me oJ liiends to camp with. "It was a very dark tii.nt- anft we were soniewhese b;iween l'le place they used to call Chicken Creek, and Nephi, when we both aw Coming to'vaids us. looming lme through the sot rounding gloom, the juK proportion ol a coveted wagon. 'The team, on account "f th d.ok-ness. d.ok-ness. was not so pl.iinly J ceinable, Ir.n the driver I saw plainly. "We heard no s.Hiiuis ufilriving, hut did not remaik lliat until aiie'war Js, for the wngon was so cljse utr"' us, and made no movement tu tiini out ol the toad, tna my son l ulled h'S horse, sharply to the right to avokl a coll sion with the other waon, and. plump we went, into a mud In.le uu to the hubs. "There we camped, autlnever aw or heard a breath ol ihe wagon Ironi the minute we dropped into tlnnmd hole," "How do you accoaiit fotiif" 1 asked. "I've told the t:n audits your shate to account fjr it," sl-.e replied lauhin; I'erh ips you think we touk our situation sit-uation rather too piiilisophii:ally. Well we d.d; but a psts at will get used to anything they tell me, even bein hanged 1 will tell the story and leave you, as the mother-in la did me, "To ace juiiI for the iinaco iiniable." To be c,mliitti far as the top 1 1 the ranvon; ?i d tliev 'll itched on two ofthe.l own teams., taking ours ofl and h.tciaia.; it tehiiid the wagon. Aiy hdsliand protested that seemed i hardly fair, t ) their own horse-,; but ' they leplitJ that thev wuld not take up thd line of march unt l t tie next d.y and that out team uld ful l tiisaigh h.ud work fiotn the to, of trie I canyon to the next stopping place, if it I was, all down hill. We reached the summit at last, a well denned back bone, and bade our kind Danish friends good by, and have never had the pleasure of shaking hands with them since. While a hall was made to harness our team, I walked dow n the road to place where the timber fell apart and gave me an nbroken view to westward. The labled splendor of the magnificent magnifi-cent old world beyond the sea, surely could not rival the emotionless grandeur of the live parallel ranges of mountains that lay to the west, stretching their fixed ouilaies north and south, tach line, more dimly and heavenly "blue" as Ihey rectdi-d westward, showed theii peaks and curves against the peait gi .iv of the sky. The Ireedom of N it'.ire, the unbounded unbound-ed spirit ofjustice.cl .veils in raounta nous couutties, and that is whv tlie Swiss people never would be made slaves. It was so easy to divide mysell from my disagreeable surroundings, to imcriv forget them, w hile I drank in the (u 1 and glorious inspiration of the scene 1 photographed the picture upon my m ild so that lean call it up at will, and feel again the thrill of awe and delight that 1 experienced then, any where and at anv tune. Over it all the spirit ol peace brooded like a fathei's blessing and I tore myself awav from it with reluctance, to be once more a traveler in a vale of tears, or mud. Ol course as we had now reached the summit, and had nothing to do but go down hill, we thought there was only clear sailing ahead ol us, and we accordingly accor-dingly all climbed into the wagon. We were however quickly undeceived The road was really worse on this side of the bridge, and the adv antae given us in the downhill grade only made it about even. It was eight miles to the next stage station and twenty-six to the next settlement, settle-ment, our destination, though there were lauches betwee.i. It reallv seemed as though we would be obliged to walk eveiy foot of the way, or camp out; and we trudged along as mer ily as miglU be for a unle or so, w hen we came to a marshy fiat, whose black ooze and water stretched itself out in all duections, running to the foot of abrupt rocky bluffs on either side so that we could not drive around it, and it looked as though it would be impossible tn find even a loot path lliat would avoid it Before the Advent of Eailroads. BY MRS. ELLEN JAKEMAN. Written for the Kkcisthk. (CONTINUED.) It took Some time to get started next morning, it was so cold; and besides that I took advantage ot a house and a kind hostess, to bake a fresh supply of bread. Mr. Reeoe, was ii.aluced to take a team and help us along live miles, but urgent need of his presence in another direction prevented his going farther. The Reece team was hitched on right in front of our own, and thus doubled, the team walked right along, and the women and children got in and rude! but the men walked, Mr. Reece, as well as Sam and my husband. At the end of the brief bright dream of that five miles, Mr. Reece, with two fifty ol our cash in his posession, turned back, and I heard Sam say as the money mon-ey changed hands, "There goes some mote bilky money." Ol course Jones balked occasionally, ar.d we had to walk, and as we wee still going higher and higher, it did not get anv wanner. For about three miles we managed to keep on the travel and when the summit was still as much as that distance ahtad of us, the wa on sank into a mud hole up to the hubs, and the hoises c .uld not pull il out. If they had pulled true, 1 don't think thev could have moved it, but old Blond was almost as bad now as Jones, and ttiey rushed up 111 the collar and pulled one at a time, in a way that threatened the harness with separation, and their-efforts their-efforts were, of coutse, worse than use less. It was almost noon, so we built a fire and h id diniiei; tue team was taken off and led, and the men were discussing a method of lifting the wheels by leverage, lever-age, at the end of a pole. Sam grumbled a little because theie were no fences in the vicinitv, where he c uild get a pole ready cut and savjsas atA ltufe VJ1.' tt tst.tjfcHd to ell. ju Uiiwr his ax and go upon the hill side for a lever; i am told by those of long and wide experience, that there is a charm about a pole ''snouged" Irom another man's fence that makes it invaluable. We didn't stop to see the wagon pried out of the mud, but Ifasurelv took up our line of march. Looking backward, one of the chrtdien remarked that the wagon looked to her like it had formed a nucleus, where all the mud and tiredness tired-ness within a hundred miles m glit form a city. This quaint conceit was the result of The wagon road was there, spread out over its entiie width, each place where a wagon had crossed feoked like a twenty inch plow had cut a fuirow for each wheel. Theie were other spaces whose con dilion was painfully suggestive of wagons wag-ons having been pried out with a pole. it is said thai Csar paused on the banks of the Rubicon.aiid this is,I belitve considered by historian, a verv tnetito-rion tnetito-rion act; and 1 wonder if the Rubicon presented the painful posibilities to him that th.s extended mud bole did to 11s We paused on the brink ol the nuid-hole nuid-hole to take a last fond faiewell of eaith, sky, and each otliti; for it looked like one of those kind generally desti.bed as bottomless. At least I can give no belter reason for the pause, for go tin ..ugh it we must, unless we were willing to stay light there lor six weeks lor the mud to r 1 y up and uiiii side of the space was jusi as; bad as the other, and a good deal worse. "I swun to man!'1 said Sam, standing on the very edge of a high tussock ot rass and balancing himself on his heels i we ever Ret i 1 h tr we'll be hung upfer tne night sure."' 1 "Well we've got to make the attempt," said my husband, walking moodily up and down the edge, to discover, if possible, pos-sible, a place less bad than the rest. Having selected the spot where they intended to drive through, Ihey tried to start the team, but Jones reared straight ' up in the harness, snorting wildly. Thev whipped, and coaxed and swore, and dragged at tae bits, but all to no purpose, Jones was determined that he would not go into the bog. Can't you try another ear charm on him mam? "Sam said sarcastisally to the mother-in-law, who was Hipping around as chipper as an English sparrow, making mak-ing forty suggestions to the minute, and begging them not to whip him. 'The horse is no fool, Sam, or we ' would punch a hole in his ear with a shoe punch," she said with not a trace , of ill humor, but it was too much for 1 Sam, and he made no further remaik for - at least fifteen minutes. I "Try putting a rock in his ear! Try tveing his tail to the double-tree! Try reading the serai lairy story of the "Old Bee man;"aiid forthwith they proceeded to name each of us. the men at the wagon, the horses, and the wagon itself, for a character in that story. I shall not tell you what they called us, for we who sojourn here in your midst would in all probability wear the names forever more. But I don't mind telling you what they called the mother-in law, and Jones. Siio was the "Scissor-jawed-clipper," and he "The Languid Youth." Then they began to play the story, and it so amused them that they quite forgot where we were, and what our circumstances, and had a jolly good old time. vVe had walked perhaps a mile, when on turning an angle in the canyon, we came ucjon a busy scene of life. There blindfolding him!" the lady suggested without taking breath. Just then, as on several other occasions, occas-ions, when all hope of getting him to start had been given up, Jones started ofl. No guiding hand was upon the lines, and, as if possessed by some spirit of mischief, he made straight for the deepest, deep-est, softest mul, and we stood by in silent, helpless horror and saw that wagon sink, sink, sink; until the box rested on the soft ooze and the horses were belly deep , floundering vainly to find footing- Both men.regardless of consequences, jumped in. just as uld Blond with a long groan of resignation and consent, resigned re-signed himself to what would soon have been a muddy grave. Oh I dont know how they got the horses out, but they did get them out. The strongest feeling that comes back to me when Irecall that episode is the intolerable disgust 1 felt at being debarred de-barred by the skirts I wore from giving were two good camp fires, three wagons and teams, and twj huge piles of Hour sacks stacked up by the road side. Several men were also moving about, or cooking by the fire, and they seemed as surprised to see us as we were to see them. We at once guessed that they were San Pete teams. For one reason they were loaded with dour, and another their horses were so fat ,and so they were. The Ireedom of out door life, and the rights of travelers, made it perfectly proper for us to approach them, and to enter into conversation, which we did. Traveler's greetings having been t x-changed, x-changed, we entered into mutual explanations. They were going out to the mines with loads of Hour; but whether to Pioche or Frisco, I do not now remem ber; they had broken a wagon and had sent it back two days before for repairs at the nearest blacksmith shop, and were waiting its return to continue their journey. The speaker cast a rueful glance at the pile of sacks where they lay neatly piled up, and said: "Them flour sacks have half busted a-loading them and unloading them. To save a cent or two on a hundred of flour, our millers in San Pete will put their flour into mosquito mos-quito netting, or something with as little strength." The mother-in-law, again in an emergency emer-gency came gallantly to the front. "I tell you what we'll do," she said, them the help they so much needed, and thatl would so willingly have given them. They led those miserable horses out on the other side of the mud hole. Now if any Utah artist wants a subject for a tragic painting heie it is; "Wagon, in which were all our worldly pesessions in center, sunk in the mud up to the box; men and horses on one side, women and children on the other, and unable to unite their scattered forces; mountains, evergreens, etc etc. "I say" called Sam across the muddy expanse, "here's a go! Jones knew more about that blame mud hole than the whole dog-on pile of us, dident he?" "What are you going to do now?', we shrieked back to him. For Sam stood on the edge of the mud facing: us, and holding Jone's bridle, while my husband had led old Blond several rods to a sheltered dry spot, and was rubbing the mud off him with wisps of cedar bark, and examining examin-ing him critically.lor the poor fellow was trembling and groaning as though on the point of dissolution. "I don't know. Have you folks got any matchrs?,, A hasty search revealed the fact that we had none. "Then I,d advise you not to build a fire," said Sam. "We'll build one soon and you can warm looking look-ing over at it." for we had explained our situation, we'll mend your sacks, t you'll take a team and go back and b.ing our wagon up." This proposition seemed to meet with great favor with our San Pete friends, and they took their horses and went back on the road, and the mother in-law produced from a cavernous pocket, thread, needles and thimbles, and we lell to mending sacks. I never remember putting a patch on anything with a more .-w illing heart in mv life. Tney returned with the outfit before the sack mending was completed, but we insisted on finishing t. Not to be outdone in kindness, they ' expressed a determination to see us as .... . . . . |
