Familiarity had done much to divest the overland journey of its terrors. We hear in this, and even in earlier years, of a sort of plains travel de luxe, of wagons "fitted up so as to be secure from the weather and ... the women knitting and sewing, for all the world as if in their ordinary farm-houses." Stansbury, hurrying out in June and overtaking the trains, was impressed with the picturesque character of the emigrants and their equipment. "We have been in company with multitudes of emigrants the whole day," he wrote on June 12. "The road has been lined to a long extent with their wagons, whose white covers, glittering in the sunlight, resembled, at a distance, ships upon the ocean.... We passed also an old Dutchman, with an immense wagon, drawn by six yoke of cattle, and loaded with household furniture. Behind followed a covered cart containing the wife, driving herself, and a host of babies--the whole bound to the land of promise, of the distance to which, however, they seemed to have not the most remote idea. To the tail of the cart was attached a large chicken-coop, full of fowls; two milch-cows followed, and next came an old mare, upon the back of which was perched a little, brown-faced, barefooted girl, not more than seven years old, while a small sucking colt brought up the rear." Travellers eastward bound, meeting the procession, reported the hundreds and thousands whom they met. The organization of the trains was not unlike that of the Oregonians and the Mormons, though generally less formal than either of these. The wagons were commonly grouped in companies for protection, little needed, since the Indians were at peace during most of 1849. At nightfall the long columns came to rest and worked their wagons into the corral which was the typical plains encampment. To form this the wagons were ranged in a large circle, each with its tongue overlapping the vehicle ahead, and each fastened to the next with the brake or yoke chains. An opening at one end allowed for driving in the stock, which could here be protected from stampede or Indian theft. In emergency the circle of wagons formed a fortress strong enough to turn aside ordinary Indian attacks. When the companies had been on the road for a few weeks the forming of the corral became an easy military manoeuvre. The itinerant circus is to-day the thing most like the fleet of prairie schooners.