Volumes could be written of life on the Plains and yet leave the story not half told. In some matter before me I read, "found a family, consisting of husband, wife and four small children, whose cattle we supposed had given out and died. They were here all alone, and no wagon or cattle in sight"—had been thrown out by the owner of a wagon and left on the road to die. In a nearby page I read, "Here we met Mr. Lot Whitcom, direct from Oregon—. Told me a great deal about Oregon. He has provisions, but none to sell, but gives to all he finds in want, and who are unable to buy." These stories of the good Samaritan, and the fiendish actions of others could be multiplied indefinitely, but I quote only extracts from these two, written on the spot, that well illustrate the whole. Mrs. Cecelia Emily McMillen Adams, late of Hillsboro, Oregon, crossed the Plains in 1852, and kept a painstaking diary, and noted the graves passed, and counted them. Her diary is published in full by the Oregon Pioneer Association, 1904. I note the following: "June fourteenth. Passed seven new made graves. June 15th. Sick headache, not able to sit up. June 16th. Passed 11 new graves. June 17th. Passed six new graves. June 18th. We have passed twenty-one new made graves today. June 19th. Passed thirteen graves today. June 20th. Passed ten graves. June 21st. No report. June 22nd. Passed seven graves. If we should go by all the camping grounds, we should see five times as many graves as we do." This report of seventy-five dead in 106 miles, and that "if we should go by all the camping grounds we should see five times as many graves as we do," coupled with the fact that a parallel column from which we have no report was traveling up the Platte on the south side of the river, and that the outbreak of the cholera had taken place originally in this column coming from the southeast, fully confirms the estimate of 5,000 deaths on the Plains in 1852. It is in fact rather under than over the actual number who laid down their lives that year. I have mislaid the authority, but at the time I read it, believed the account to be true, of a scout that passed over the ground late that year (1852) from the Loop Fork of the Platte to the Laramie, a distance approximating 400 miles, that by actual count in great part and conservative estimate of the remainder, there were six fresh graves to the mile for the whole distance—this, it is to be remembered, on the one side of the river in a stretch where for half the distance of a parallel column traveling on the opposite bank, where like conditions prevailed. A few more instances must suffice to complete this chapter of horrors. L. B. Rowland, now of Eugene, Oregon, recently told me the experience of his train of twenty-three persons, between the two crossings of the Snake River, of which we have just written. Of the twenty-three that crossed, eleven died before they reached the lower crossing.