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14.

As it is not likely that any people will ever again cross the plains with a wagon train and as but few are living who ever experienced that mode of travel I may be pardoned for mentioning minor incidents and chronicling details of our experiences which would be omitted were not those days forever gone and already nearly forgotten. We were generally up with the dawn and, breakfast soon over, the advance moved out upon the road followed by the train which steadily unwound? from its corrals. If the conditions were favorable we halted for an hour or more in the middle of the march for the day unsaddled and grazed the horses while we had a light lunch of a biscuit, bits of bacon and half an onion. Of all vegetables the potato and onion are the most essential on the march. We generally reached camp from 2 to 4 o'clock in the afternoon and had our dinner toward 6 o'clock. Where antelope abounded on the plains and ducks or fish in the river we went in quest of them after reaching camp. We found the old fashioned "Dutch oven" the best cooking utensil in existence for general purposes. A round hole a little larger than the oven was dug in the ground with a little side trench for a draft and in and over the hole the fire was built to cook the dinner. A favorite dish for breakfast was baked bean, made by first parboiling the beans and then placing them in the oven the previous night in quantity sufficient to half fill it and then sticking several small ?