They still had hard times before them, for towards spring the buffalo again disappeared; the greater part of their meat had been spoiled, owing to there not being sufficient sun to dry it thoroughly; and when they resumed their journey they had nothing to carry with them, and had a desert before them without game of any kind. We pass over what they suffered. Hunger and thirst were their portion, and Indians assaulted them at times, and many miraculous and hair-breadth escapes they had from these enemies. CHAPTER VI |THE trail to Oregon, followed by traders and emigrants, crosses the Rocky Mountains at a point known as the South Pass, where a break in the chain occurs of such moderate and gradual elevation as to permit the passage of wagons with tolerable facility. The Sweetwater Valley runs nearly to the point where the dividing ridge of the Pacific and Atlantic waters throws off its streams to their respective oceans. At one end of this valley, and situated on the right bank of the Sweetwater, a huge isolated mass of granitic rock rises to the height of three hundred feet abruptly from the plain. * On the smooth and scarped surface presented by one of its sides, are rudely carved the names and initials of traders, trappers, travelers, and emigrants, who have here recorded the memorial of their sojourn in the remote wilderness of the Far West. The face of the rock is covered with names familiar to the mountaineers as those of the most renowned of their hardy brotherhood; while others, again, occur, better known to the science and literature of the Old World than to the unlearned trappers of the Rocky Mountains. The huge mass is a well-known landmark to the Indians and mountaineers; and travelers and emigrants hail it as the halfway beacon between the frontiers of the United States and the still distant goal of their long and perilous journey. * Independence Rock. (Ed.)