"Our day's march was slow but steady--only stopping when necessary to rest the teams; and although we considered ourselves in danger, we found it quite enjoyable, more particularly after _we_ and the _grass_ got dry, so that we could walk with ease. We had counted on having a fine night's rest in spite of our scant bed-clothing, as we were all _dry_, but we were disappointed. A slow, steady rain fall through all the long night, completely saturating almost every article of bed-clothing, and every person in the company. In that comfortless rain we drank some milk, ate a crust or two, and traveled on through the long, wet swamp grass, and the swamps themselves, in wading which two or three of us became quite accomplished. By noon of that day, which was Thursday, we came to a wood, fifteen or sixteen miles east from a settlement on the river, which was about twenty miles from home. "Our progress had been very slow--without any road, the grass so wet and the teams so heavily loaded. Still we could not but feel that the God who had led us during these long days, would neither suffer us to perish in this prairie wilderness nor be taken by savages. At this place we stopped for the remaining half day, killed a beef, and luxuriated on meat roasted on sticks held over the fire. We also baked bread in quite a primitive style. The dough being first mixed in a bag--flour, water, and salt the only ingredients--and moulded on a box, it was made into thin cakes about the size of a hand-breadth, placed on forked sticks over the fire, to bake if possible, and to be smoked most certainly.