to compare with this--but oh! would any sane human being
voluntarily go through with what I have endured on this journey,
in order to look upon this wonderful scene?"

The roads had now become so difficult that our wagon-train could
not move as fast as the lighter vehicles or the troops. Sometimes
at a critical place in the road, where the ascent was not only
dangerous, but doubtful, or there was, perhaps, a sharp turn, the
ambulances waited to see the wagons safely over the pass. Each
wagon had its six mules; each ambulance had also its quota of
six.

At the foot of one of these steep places, the wagons would halt,
the teamsters would inspect the road, and calculate the
possibilities of reaching the top; then, furiously cracking their
whips, and pouring forth volley upon volley of oaths, they would
start the team. Each mule got its share of dreadful curses. I had
never heard or conceived of any oaths like those. They made my
blood fairly curdle, and I am not speaking figuratively. The
shivers ran up and down my back, and I half expected to see those
teamsters struck down by the hand of the Almighty.

For although the anathemas hurled at my innocent head, during the
impressionable years of girlhood, by the pale and determined
Congregational ministers with gold-bowed spectacles, who held
forth in the meeting-house of my maternal ancestry (all honor to
their sincerity), had taken little hold upon my mind, still, the
vital drop of the Puritan was in my blood, and the fear of a
personal God and His wrath still existed, away back in the hidden
recesses of my heart.