30 EARLY DAY STORIES. 



miles from the Missouri river to the Willamette valley of 

 Oregon, who thought the country west of the crossing of 

 the Elkhorn amounted to anything or would ever amount 

 to anything as a farming country, I do not remember of 

 his speaking of it in my presence. The prevailing, prob- 

 ably the unanimous opinion was, that the country to the 

 Elkhorn crossing was beautiful, rich and fine. West of 

 that it had grass, would produce pasture and hay for stock, 

 and might some day be used for that purpose, but not in 

 the near future. The thought was that th^re were better 

 places — far better, than the flat, treeless, uninviting valley 

 of the Platte, with its shallow, muddy river, its swarms of 

 mosquitoes and green head flies, its stretches of wet, swampy 

 ground, its prairie dog towns and its rattlesnakes. I found 

 out afterward, but did not know it then, that prairie dogs 

 never locate where the soil is poor, and that rattlesnakes 

 always abound where there are prairie dogs, for the young 

 of the prairie dogs make excellent food for the rattlesnakes. 

 Just seventeen years and three days after we crossed 

 the Elkhorn, June 1, 1852, I located my homestead on 

 Cedar Creek, one hundred and twenty miles above the Elk- 

 horn crossing, in what afterwards became Antelope county 

 — I am not dreaming — it is so. 



Had we left the valley of the Platte and taken time to 

 examine the low, undulating rolls and valleys that make 

 up the highlands between the Platte valley and Maple 

 creek, to the north of Fremont or had we looked over the 

 valley of Shell creek north of Columbus, or followed up 

 the valley of the Beaver from where Genoa now stands, 

 we would have beheld a lovely and rich country, than which 

 there is no better in Nebraska, or anywhere else. But we 

 did not do this ; we were cautioned not to leave the trail, 

 to keep together, and not to go far from the wagons, and 

 besides there was no time for investigation. The Indians 

 were thought to be dangerous — some of them were in sight 



