They visited at home for five weeks. “We talked,” says Dr. Flint, “until our vocal chords could stand the strain no longer and were glad to start west.” CHAPTER V DRIVING SHEEP ACROSS THE PLAINS On March 8, 1852, the cousins began the long return journey by rail, horseback, emigrant wagon and foot that ended just ten months later at San Gabriel, in Southern California. Dr. Flint, at the end of his diary, sums up the distances as follows: “Today closes the year 1853, and one year from the time we left San Francisco on the steamship Northerner; in which time we have traveled by steamship 5,344 miles. By railroad 2,144 miles. I have, by steamboat on Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, 1,074 miles. On horseback and on foot 2,131 miles, making a total of 10,693 on a direct line between points reached.” This diary is said to have especial historical value because the author put down daily specific facts of cost, distance and conditions of travel. Many accounts of the overland trip are but memories. As I have read the journal I have been impressed with the idea that while it took vision, health and character on the part of the young pioneers to accomplish their object, the burdens came only day by day and would not be refused by the vigorous young grandsons whom I know now, were the same rewards offered for enterprise and endurance. The railroad journey from Boston to Terre Haute, the western terminus of the road, was a very different one from that of today, taking then a week instead of a few hours. They went down from Anson and Norridgewock to Boston where they exchanged their “money at Suffolk Bank for their bills, as they were good anywhere West, and none others were.” Leaving Boston at 8 A.M., an all day ride took them to Albany, where they spent the night at the Delavan House. They went on early the next morning to Buffalo, which was reached at 11 P.M. Here they “put up at the Clarendon House. Tired. Sleepy.” At eleven in the forenoon they left for Cincinnati, reaching Cleveland at 8 P.M., Columbus at 4 A.M., where they changed cars, and arrived at their destination late at night, after a thirty-six hour ride in day coaches. They rested at Cincinnati until the next afternoon, when they went over to Dayton for the purpose of making an early start on the last lap of the railroading. The entry for March 16 reads: “Called at 2 o’clock A.M., went aboard cars at 2-1/2. No breakfast, nor could we get a mouthful until we arrived in Indianapolis, at 2-1/2 o’clock P.M. The R. R. was new, rough and no stations by the way. Arrived in Terre Haute about 5 P.M.” Here they stopped for a week at the Prairie House. They organized their firm of Flint, Bixby & Co., in which Benjamin, who had been longer in California, had four parts to three each for the others. They wrote letters, bought three horses, fitted saddles to them, and, on March 19th, started west for Paris, Illinois, over “roads as bad as mud can make them.”