I was born and reared in a cold climate; but when the mercury fell, the atmosphere lost its moisture; and while the wind was fierce and biting, it was dry. You can protect yourself against such cold; but when you come to face the cold, damp, fierce and penetrating winds that sweep over the prairies of Illinois and Iowa when winter is departing, they find you, and chill you through any kind or reasonable quantity of clothing. On account of snow-storms we stopped for a week, in the latter part of March, at a farm-house in the outer settlements of Iowa. The people were intelligent and refined. Our hostess had two lovely daughters, and we young men were at home. Prairie chickens were very abundant in the vicinity, and with my shotgun I more than kept the family supplied while there. Our hostess was a good cook and we lived high. A short distance away was a log school-house also used for a church, and we accompanied the family to church on Sunday. The minister was a Methodist circuit-rider; and while he was not an eloquent man and did not, like Wirt's blind preacher, in the wilds of Virginia, tell us with streaming eyes that "Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus Christ like a God," yet with force and emphasis he preached Christ and Him crucified for a sinful world. This was the first church service we had attended since leaving home, and it gave us all a touch of homesickness. As soon as the storm abated and the weather gave indications of more sunshine and less downpour, we bade adieu to our hostess and her fair daughters, and journeyed slowly onward over horrid roads towards Cainesville. We arrived at this bustling outfitting town on the 23rd of April. We found there a large number of persons and prairie schooners, but most of them were on a voyage to the gold-fields of California. By diligent inquiry I found seventeen wagons, with an average of four persons to the wagon, whose destination was Oregon. We agreed to cross the Missouri River on the 2nd day of May, and on the afternoon of that day we were all safely landed on the western shore. We were now beyond the realm of social constraint, conventional usage, and the reign of the law. It was interesting to me to note the effect of this condition upon a few men in our party. They seemed to exult in their so-called freedom. They spoke of the restraining influence of organized society as tyranny, and of the government of law as government by force. A meeting for organization was called for that evening. I was elected chairman, and in response to a request for my views, I said, that we on the morrow were to start on a journey of over two thousand miles through an Indian country; and while it was reported that the tribes through whose country we were to pass were at peace with the whites, yet it was a sound maxim, in the time of peace to be prepared for war; and that our safety, and that of our property, depended upon our strictness, watchfulness and