The culinary implements occupied a compartment of their own in a wagon, consisting of such kettles, long-handled frying-pans and sheet-iron coffee pots as could be used on a camp-fire, with table articles almost all of tin. Those who attempted to carry the more friable articles, owing to the thumps and falls to which these were subjected, found themselves short in supply of utensils long before the journey ended. I have seen a man and wife drinking coffee from one small tin pan, their china and delftware having been left in fragments to decorate the desert wayside. We had some tents, but they were little used, after we learned how to do without them, excepting in cases of inclement weather, of which there was very little, especially in the latter part of the trip. During the great rush of immigration into California subsequent to 1849, from soon after the discovery of gold until this time, the usual date at which the annual emigrants started from the settlement borders along the Missouri River was April 15th to May 1st. The Spring of 1857 was late, and we did not pull out until May 17th, when the prairie grass was grown sufficiently to afford feed for the stock, and summer weather was assured. At that time the boundary line between the "States" and the "Plains" was the Missouri River. We crossed that river at a point about half-way between St. Joseph and Council Bluffs, where the village of Brownville was the nucleus of a first settlement of white people on the Nebraska side. There the river was a half-mile wide. The crossing was effected by means of an old-fashioned ferryboat or scow, propelled by a small, stern-wheeled steamer. Two days were consumed in transporting our party and equipment across the stream; but one wagon and a few of the people and animals being taken at each trip of the ferryboat and steamer. From the landing we passed up the west shore twenty miles, seeing occasionally a rude cabin or a foundation of logs, indicating the intention of pre-empters. This brought us to the town of Nebraska City, then a beginning of a dozen or twenty houses, on the west bank. Omaha was not yet on the map; although where that thriving city now stands there existed then a settlement of something over one hundred persons. From Nebraska City we bore off northwesterly, separating ourselves from civilization, and thereafter saw no more evidence of the white man's purpose to occupy the country over which we traveled. There was before us the sky-bound stretch of undulating prairie, spreading far and wide, like a vast field of young, growing grain, its monotony relieved only by occasional clumps of small trees, indicating the presence of springs or small water-courses. Other companies or trains, from many parts of the country, especially the Middle States, were crossing the Missouri at various points between St. Louis and Council Bluffs; most of them converging eventually into one general route, as they got out on the journey.