EARLY DAY STORIES. 17 



ate at a table during the whole time. We slept in a house 

 or barn, nearly every night, paying for the privilege, what- 

 ever the charge might be which, if any, was always small. 

 Sometimes when it was pleasant we slept in the little tent. 

 There was a good deal of rainy weather and sometimes the 

 roads were muddy, but generally we had a good time and 

 at small cost. The trip down the Illinois by boat we thought 

 very fine and enjoyed it much, as it was the first trip we 

 had ever made on a river steamboat. The steamboat stop- 

 ped at every town along the way to take on or discharge 

 passengers or freight, and as we were going down stream, 

 the boat always made a turn in landing so as to bring the 

 bow of the boat up stream. This is always the way with a 

 river steamboat, to land with the bow up stream. 



At St. Louis we shipped on another and much larger 

 steamboat for St. Joseph, Mo., which was to be our starting 

 point for the journey by the Overland Trail. Our boat was 

 heavily loaded with passengers, wagons, mules, horses, oxen 

 and supplies, all bound for Oregon or California. Among 

 the passengers were man}^ women and children. The pas- 

 sengers were mostly from Illinois with also quite a sprink- 

 ling of emigrants from Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee. 

 Of course we took deck passage and fed ourselves, and we 

 also had a bale of hay and some oats for the pony. Many 

 of the emigrants had their wagons and supplies on board, 

 but no stock of any kind, intending to buy oxen or mules 

 on their arrival at St. Joseph. 



It was a tedious journey up the Missouri river. Many 

 times the boat ran aground and had to back off down 

 stream and seek a different and deeper channel. Some- 

 times the boat would stick fast for two or three hours, and 

 then spars had to be rigged as levers, and the force of the 

 engine applied by means of ropes and pulleys to push it 

 off the sand bar. At Westport, now Kansas City, a large 

 number of passengers disembarked, and a great amount of 



