Part 7

Some are "persuaded" into emigration. They start on the journey reluctantly, clinging to the old, familiar places. They have no day-dreams to lure them—no heart for the transplanting. From regard to others they join the restless tide that sots toward the West. Others take the "Western fever" as readily as their husbands, and clothe the stern realities of removal with a roseate hue, seeing only ease, comfort, competency in prospective. But when, at the end of their journey, they take up their abode in a wild prairie,—

"Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide, wide sea"

of vegetation, and dead-level monotony; no churches, no school-houses, scarcely a neighbor to speak to, friends and kindred far away,—how the thermometer of the feelings goes down! how the air-castles vanish!

But if you think either of these classes make poor pioneers, you mistake.

There was Mrs. S., a practical, matter-of-fact person, unsusceptible to the love of adventure or of change. Submit any scheme to her, and, however dazzling it might be to an ardent nature, she looked at it in the light of fact, reckoning up the pros and cons with mathematical coolness. When, therefore, her husband became excited by accounts of the cheap lands, sure to rise, the fertile soil and healthful climate of Minnesota, she was calm. When he suggested emigrating, she was unmoved. Toil, deprivation, disappointment were invisible to his enthusiasm, but to her they stood revealed as verities, and to argue with her was useless. Indeed, looking at their present condition, why should she be in haste to abandon it for a life both new and dubious? Their pleasant home, with its broad acres and fine buildings, they owned. Educational privileges were excellent. Her husband was honored with office in church and state. But the more Mr. S. talked about a removal, the more his zeal was inflamed. The wife saw that his happiness was bound up in the matter, and more than that, his health, perhaps. Often prostrated by acute disease, he had been recommended to try the climate of the Northwest as a remedy. This consideration turned the scale in his favor. The homestead was sold, the furniture, farm implements, &c., advertised for sale at public auction. The avails of these, together with the "first payment" on the house, were to furnish the money for use in the new home.

Mr. S., however, after all his pleading, felt a little disheartened, when, the very night before the appointed sale, his goods took fire and burned up. But the wife had decided to go, and this untoward event did not discourage her. As they were to travel by their own conveyance, the emigrant wagon was made ready, and, with bedding, food, and cooking utensils packed, poultry-crate lashed behind, and the children aboard, they started on their "thousand miles'" journey! The first day all went "merry as a marriage bell," but at night, Mr. S. came down with ague and fever. He was utterly prostrated, and proposed to give up the expedition and return.

"No!" replied the wife, who had assumed the office of driver, "I am not going to drive these horses back again and he laughed at by the neighbors! Besides, if Minnesota will cure you, you need more than ever to go there now, and 'I' shall not give up till we are there."

She kept her word; becoming coachman, doctress, nurse, cook, and guide.

She selected the camping-place at night, groomed the horses, took care not only of the babies, but of her husband. It was she that inquired the route, led the horses safely around "sloughs," and forded bridgeless streams, and, at last Mr. S. being still helpless, she picked out a "claim" on the frontier, and a valuable one it was, combining water, grassland, plowing, timber, and nearness to a young town. She made their temporary shanty comfortable as possible, until, his payments coming in and his land rising, he was able to build a framed house. Not a word of complaint, reproach, or discouragement passed her lips through all this, nor did sickness and danger appall her.

An incident will illustrate her self-possession. There had been occasional depredations by the Indians. Still further on the frontier a bloody massacre of whites had taken place, and women were carried off captives. There were rumors of further trouble, as the savages were concentrating in force, and, mounted on their ponies, they could make a long sweep in a night.

One day alone, Mrs. S. stood before the looking-glass attending to her toilet. The cabin door was open, and her back toward it. Suddenly, she saw in the mirror the reflection of an Indian entering. Before she could turn herself, he had glided across the room in his soft moccasins, and laid hold of her. She gave no sign of terror, however—always the proper conduct in dealing with savages, as they respect courage, and suspect some hidden "power" behind it. He gently seized her long, flowing locks, remarkable for their luxuriant beauty, and measuring them with his arm, uttered an admiring exclamation, then released her, and departed as he came!

Mrs. N., another Western woman, was also quite a heroine. She was hostess of the first tavern at which the stage left me on arriving in Minnesota. It was a rough log-house. There was in process of building a small framed addition to it. Before this was a cellar, dug in anticipation of another "raising." Across this excavation we had to walk on a narrow plank to gain admittance to the house. The doctors I had left behind cautioned me not to sit or sleep in a current of air. That night, in company with a clerical friend, who felt quite merry at the aspect of things, I slept with the stars full in sight through the roof, while the winds sighed, and whistled, and moaned, and frolicked in and out the apartment, as the humor suited them. However, the next morning found us both, to our surprise, invigorated by the air baths we had taken.

At breakfast, I felt a little anxious to know how our merriment over hotel-life in Minnesota had been received by our landlady, who must have heard some of our criticisms. She impressed me as a lady of culture, and took our remarks as a matter of course. We soon learned something of her history. Her husband was from the East, a man of some property. He made his claim where I now found him, when there was scarcely a cabin in the region, confident that the site was a good one for a town. It was a wild, lonely spot, on the margin of a foaming stream, and between huge, shaggy bluffs, crowned with forests, in which the Indian and the wild beast roamed. Aside from the fish and game which abounded, all their supplies were brought from some trading point on the Mississippi. When her husband was on his long journeys for this purpose, she was sometimes left alone.

"Did you not feel discontented under such circumstances?" we asked.

"Not in the least. My husband thought it best to remove here, and that was enough. What was best for him, was best for me!"

"But were you not troubled by the Indians?"

"Yes, at that time, very much. They were afraid of our workmen, and would behave very well when a few white men were around, but they always endeavored to impose on us when unprotected."

"What did you do at such times?"

"Put on a bold face, and let them see that I did not fear them. I am astonished at the nerve I had. One day my husband was away. Quite suddenly a Sioux came into the house, and, without saying a word, took a seat. Another followed, and another, until a dozen had entered. Perceiving that I was alone, they commenced searching the house for plunder; examining boxes, trunks, and barrels. I had, however, by way of precaution, concealed what I could, and they did not find much. But they soon grew saucy and turbulent, and what added to my apprehension was, the fact that the leader of the party was half intoxicated. Still, as they had no arms, I thought I could manage them. After a time the chief chanced to see my husband's rifle, hanging overhead. It was loaded and capped. He started to get it. I divined his object, and started too, and as he was taking it down, I said, sternly,—

"Put that rifle back!"

"He made a taunting gesture, and I attempted to wrest the rifle from him. We struggled,—I with the strength of desperation, for I well knew it would be a dangerous weapon in his hands, besides it was my only protection. None of his followers interfered while we contended for the mastery, but my courage led him to suspect that help was at hand, and, still grasping the gun, he asked,—

"'White man coming back "bime-by?"' A question which meant, Will he be long in coming? I quickly replied,—

"No. White man coming back bime-by 'quick!' This startled him, for he knew he had provoked retaliation, and hastily leaving, followed by his troop, they mounted their ponies, and drove off at full speed.

"I had also," said she, "a little adventure with the wolves. One day, feeling lonely, I spent the afternoon at a neighbor's. On my return at dusk, there had been a light fall of snow. When nearly home, I noticed that a large gray wolf was stealthily following me. I entered the door and closed it instantly; but, would you believe me, that creature, being very hungry, I suppose, sat watching on the door-step all that long winter's night! He fled next morning at the approach of a settler."

[Illustration: I NOTICED A GREY WOLF. Frontier.]

There was Mrs. L., too, a little butterfly of a woman, who had always been happy in New England. Her husband was a hard-working man, and took great pride in beautifying the cottage he had built. It was not paid for, however, and at length he wearied somewhat of the toil needed to clear it of pecuniary encumbrance. Hearing of the cheap lands of the West did not lighten his burden, and he decided to emigrate. She joined in the project with alacrity, for her fancy painted a prairie home as a garden of delights. She reached their El Dorado under most forbidding circumstances. It was in late autumn, when the landscape stretched away bloomless and sear, and the cold rains were falling. It was indeed dismal without, and the cramped, uncouth log-and-mud house which received her as boarder, compared illy with the tasteful dwelling she had left behind. What a revulsion of feeling was hers! She wept for weeks, and refused to be comforted.

Some of the settlers thought her case hopeless—that she would never do for the West, mere New England doll that she was! But she had her cry out; and, like a true woman, when her husband, apparently moved by her grief, and homesick himself,—yet secretly glad of a pretext, offered to give up and return, she resented it!

"Go back!" she exclaimed; "no, I shall not be ready to return until our Massachusetts friends see that we have been successful in coming out, and have been profited by the change." And of all busy women, Mrs. L. became one of the busiest. Henceforth it was smiles and work with her, and her quiet laugh and cheerful face made sunshine of darkest days.

Often her little figure might be seen tugging her baby across the prairie to a neighbor's, to collect rare seeds, or bargain for hens. Her faculties were ever on the alert, devising something to make home comfortable; nor did snow, rain, loneliness, or sickness diminish her zeal. Neuralgia, aggravated by exposure, low diet and miasma, often prevails on the frontier. I have seen the hardiest pioneers writhe in agony, completely unmanned by it—never at such times venturing into the open air. Mrs. L. did not escape the disease. But what was my astonishment, on one of those doleful days in November, when a drizzling rain, driven by a cold wind, "sent mildew into the bones," to see Mrs. L. perched on the top of a load of lumber, drawn by oxen. Her face was bound up as if nursing the toothache, and she told me, with a ringing laugh, that she had ridden twenty-four miles at that snail's pace, and had had three teeth extracted!

Mrs. Myers, too, was another heroine whom I unexpectedly met, leading almost the life of a recluse in the deep gloom of a humble forest home. It was on this wise. Passing through the shaded path of heavy-timbered land, on K— River, in a journey which I made on horseback, I came to the brink of a roaring torrent where stood a mill. As I was looking for a place to feed my horse, a man came forward, extended his hand, and said,—

"How do you do, Mr. D.? What brought you away up here? Don't you know me? My name is Myers, of P—, Massachusetts." But what a change a few months of another climate and new habits had wrought in my old friend. From the pale, almost effeminate dealer in dry goods, he had grown to be bushy-whiskered and portly, his cheeks fairly shaking with fat.

"Do you live here?" I asked.

"Yes; came here last fall, with my wife, and wintered among the bears and wolves, making shingles. You see," said he, alluding to his weighty appearance, "I have been a 'gainer' by it. Never knew what it was to have an appetite before. The cold last winter made me ravenous; and though we had no market, you see we did not exactly starve. But, come, my wife will want to see you; the face of an old acquaintance will be next to going home again."

A low, snug shanty of oaken boards, just large enough to admit in its one room a bedstead, stove, table, and a few home-made chairs, was Mrs. Myers's empire—quite in contrast with her Eastern style. She was a gentle, lady-like person, had been a successful teacher before marriage, and was an accomplished musician. She cordially greeted me, saying,—

"I shall make no apologies. I am too glad to see a human being in these wilds, to care for aught else. Since we came here, not a person has been at our place, save the few who chanced here for shingles, all strangers to me, and such a long, cold winter I never experienced. Until the snow melted, late in the spring, we were quite alone."

"Were you not homesick and gloomy?"

"Only once, and that was the last of February. It had been an almost uninterrupted succession of storms. It was nothing but snow, snow, snow. We could not get out for any purpose, and our supplies were running low. We seemed to be completely shut away from the world—the only living creatures, save a neighbor in the cabin at the extremity of the woods, that we knew of, being a pack of wolves that sometimes swept by. On one occasion, my husband estimated that there were not less than thirty in the pack. That was a dismal time; and one stormy day, when the air was filled with snow, and the winds were sighing through the trees, my heart sank within me. And I rather suspect," said she, archly glancing at her husband, "that Mr. Myers did not feel much bettor than I did. Just then, when I felt like giving up entirely, I heard a little song—a clear, cheerful piping of a bird. You can not tell how it thrilled and cheered me. I looked from the window to see from whence the sound came, and there, right on the corner of our dwelling, sat the tiniest creature, caroling just as if it was June. This gave us both fresh courage. Said I to husband,—

"'If that wee bit of a thing can sing, much more can I!' and I struck up a hymn of praise to God, to which a certain bass voice made an excellent accompaniment. We felt better, and that's the last of the blues with us; though of course we had some hard rubs, and had to endure some things that in New England would have made us cowards. As, for instance, when our house fell down."

"Fell down! how did it happen?"

"You look astonished. I don't wonder at it. You see, when we came, husband could get nothing but green oak boards to build a temporary shelter with. And what with the shrinking, and the wrenching by the winds, and the snapping of the nails by the frost, one dark, stormy night, after we had been asleep some time, we were awakened by a strange noise. Looking about, how were we astonished to find that the boards had fallen apart, leaving us without protection! Hurriedly putting on our clothes, we had to scamper for the cabin I have spoken of for shelter till morning, when husband went to work and put this up, which has served us thus far."

Another case occurs to me.

On the south side of a little grove, at the very outpost of immigration, was Charles Wallace's log-house. He was from a thriving manufacturing town in Massachusetts. His business as a journeyman carriage-maker had enabled him to provide comfortably for his young family, and pay something annually toward the house in which they dwelt. It was true he had to work steadily and hard, and made what some would call slow progress toward competency; still the house was eligible property, neat, commodious, modern, and the little garden back of it yielded a bountiful supply of vegetables for the table. School, also, and religious privileges were all that could be wished.

Mr. Wallace was a thoughtful, reading man, of real worth and Christian principles, but very diffident. Men less well-informed, of sounder intellect, blest with self-esteem, and put-yourself-ahead-ativeness, would cut quite a figure in the eyes of an admiring public, while he, modest soul, was passed by unnoticed, unappreciated by the discriminating crowd. He had, however, a noble, generous heart, and glowing desires to be of use as a disciple of Him who went about doing good. These dispositions and aspirations, however, were repressed by his confirmed habits of self-distrust, and he was therefore often dissatisfied with his manner of life. He had read much of the spiritual destitutions of the great West, and came to think that if he could once be established where calls for laborers in the world's harvest were urgent, and laborers were few, that among new faces he could break the fetters of self-distrust, and do something for God and humanity. Moreover, one dull business season his employer failed, owing him quite a sum, which could not be collected. Now he turned his face towards the setting sun in good earnest. But the wife, how could he bear to tear her away from scenes so dear to her, and kindred more precious than life itself! He well knew the struggle it would cost her to leave New England, with its prized privileges, congenial society, and domestic comforts. She was one of those dear, loving creatures that love on, and love ever; the very trees, rocks, and rivers of her childhood and youth would cling to her affections with a deep grasp, and father, mother, brothers, sisters, how could she part from them for the distant and unknown West! He could scarcely hope for her consent to go, but had it cheerfully, whole-heartedly, yet with irrepressible tears and many forebodings, of which she did not speak.

Mr. Wallace had a clerical relative in Minnesota, who had influenced him in his decision to remove there; and that his family might go at once to some definite point, or home of their own, he wrote to the clergyman, commissioning him to purchase for him a farm. He did so. But on Mr. Wallace's arrival, it fell so far below his expectations that he sold it at a sacrifice, and went forth prospecting, locating at length where this account found them. It was late in the fall ere he could begin to build his cabin; the old settlers' story as to the mildness of the winters in that climate relieved his anxiety, however. The winter, nevertheless, set in early, and proved to be one of the coldest on record. He was overtaken without due preparation as to provisions. Nor was it otherwise with his neighbors, all new comers, like himself. The rigors of the prairie made it perilous to venture from home, and our emigrants, fresh from the abundance of the East, were brought to most wretched fare. Mr. W. was physically rugged, knowing nothing of the horrors of dyspepsia; and if there was only a sufficiency for the table, it mattered not to him what it was. Not so, unfortunately, with the invalid wife. There was little, at best, that she could eat that suited her diseased condition, and those very articles it was impossible to procure. One who was, providentially, an inmate of the household through the terrors and deprivations of that winter, says,—

"I had read of the rigors of the frozen North, and here I had a taste of them. For months, in the most sheltered nooks, and on the sunniest roof-sides, the snow gave no signs of thawing, while from morn till night, on the frosty atmosphere, luminous pillars, and circles, and mock suns witnessed to the intensity of the cold; and the nights,—O, 'such' nights! why, you could 'hear' it freezing, freezing; the swine in their pens piled and crowded together, quarreling for the warmest place, uttering incessantly cries of distress, with which mingled the sharp reports, like the discharge of pistols, of the oaken shingles on the roof, as the nails that secured them burst. I don't know how we got through that winter. Mrs. W. had courage, endurance, was free-hearted to a fault, but the commonest articles had to be dispensed with. The mills were so remote that the corn stored in the attic could not be turned into meal, greatly as it was needed, save by the slow and imperfect process of grinding in a coffee-mill, suspended against the wall. Mr. W. was anxious and low-spirited enough, poor follow, frequently bursting out into bitter reflections on himself for bringing his wife to such a place.

"And, indeed, how she was kept alive was a miracle; certainly she ate nothing, or next to nothing. Then, however, did woman's marvelous self-forgetfulness and fortitude shine out. Not a word of discontent or of depression ever escaped her lips. She was uniformly peaceful and hopeful, at least in the presence of the household, and her mild, sweet voice was often employed in singing some hymn of holy trust and cheer. I was ever admiring her spirit and wondering at her conduct. Yet that she was keenly alive to the situation of affairs, and that she suffered the pangs of unsatisfied hunger,—not having diet suited to her needs,—we were obliged to think. An incident impressed me deeply.

"Once, after retiring to rest, I awoke while yet it was dark, and overheard, in the apartment adjoining mine a low, suppressed whispering. It was Mrs. W. wrestling in prayer for strength according to her day. She had taken that hour to seek 'Him who giveth power to the faint,' that none but God might hear. Night after night did she thus pour out her soul in agonized supplication, yet on her face not a shade of anxiety could be discerned through the day.

"Often did Mr. Wallace, during the trials of that winter, and afterwards, resolve to return to Massachusetts.