14 EARLY DAY STORIES. 



CHAPTER II. 



Start from Home in Genesee County, Mich. — Journey on 

 Foot to LaSalle, 111. — Down the Illinois River to St. 

 Louis — Up the Missouri to St. Joseph — Hire Out to 

 Drive Team — Journey With Ox Team from St. Jos- 

 eph to Sarpy's Landing. 



This and seven following chapters will be mostly a 

 record of the writer's personal experiences on a journey 

 from central Michigan to Sarpy's Landing (now Bellevue, 

 Neb.) ; and thence over the Overland Trail to the Pacific 

 coast during the spring and summer of 1852. It is given 

 for the purpose of making it clear and plain to the readers 

 of the present time, how things looked in the western coun- 

 try at that early date, and how people traveled in those 

 days, and what opinions about this country were held at 

 that time. The reader will be able to make his own com- 

 parisons between things as they were then, and are now, 

 and to draw his own conclusions. It is not expected that 

 anything of very great importance will be recorded, there 

 is nothing strange or wonderful to tell, but it is believed 

 that the contrast between the past and the present will be 

 wonderful to contemplate, and almost unbelievable, because 

 of the changes that have taken place. In 1852 there was 

 not a railroad west of the Mississippi river — Kansas City 

 was a little village then called Westport — St. Paul and 

 Minneapolis, if they existed at all, were mere "villages,'* 

 and Omaha was not on the map. Western Iowa was a 

 thinly settled frontier country, only partly surveyed, and 

 was the extreme limit of civilization — it was the jumping 

 off place on a journey to the west. 



