extremely wild and impressive.

About dark a sallow-faced fellow descended the hill on horseback, and
splashing through the pool rode up to the tents. He was enveloped in a
huge cloak, and his broad felt hat was weeping about his ears with
the drizzling moisture of the evening. Another followed, a stout,
square-built, intelligent-looking man, who announced himself as leader
of an emigrant party encamped a mile in advance of us. About twenty
wagons, he said, were with him; the rest of his party were on the
other side of the Big Blue, waiting for a woman who was in the pains of
child-birth, and quarreling meanwhile among themselves.

These were the first emigrants that we had overtaken, although we had
found abundant and melancholy traces of their progress throughout the
whole course of the journey. Sometimes we passed the grave of one who
had sickened and died on the way. The earth was usually torn up, and
covered thickly with wolf-tracks. Some had escaped this violation. One
morning a piece of plank, standing upright on the summit of a grassy
hill, attracted our notice, and riding up to it we found the following
words very roughly traced upon it, apparently by a red-hot piece of
iron:


MARY ELLIS

DIED MAY 7TH, 1845.

Aged two months.