Beginning in 1844 Saint Joseph, then a thriving border town, situated on the river some fifty miles to the north of the first jumping off places, became an important fitting out place. Those who took steamboat passage to the border would naturally wish to make as much of the distance to Oregon in that way as possible. The vicinity of Saint Joseph seemed to furnish excellent facilities for securing the necessary ox teams and other needs for the trip. The Saint Joseph route, too, was a more direct one for those coming across the country from Iowa, Illinois and Indiana. After 1850 the Council Bluffs’ route had the largest transcontinental travel. Weston and old Fort Kearney, the present Nebraska City, both on the Missouri, the former between Independence and Saint Joseph and the latter between Saint Joseph and Council Bluffs were minor points of departure. Smaller companies would cross the river wherever there was a ferry. [Illustration: 8.—The Trail leading down to bottom lands of the Sweetwater. ] Steamboating on the treacherous Missouri during those spring seasons while the tide of emigration was strongly westward set is given a lurid hue in the journals of the emigrants. The river route was the natural one for all coming from Ohio and the states to the east, also for many coming from Indiana. One entry made during this part of the trip in 1852 reads as follows: “We have a bar on our boat, too, and that is visited about as often as any other place I know of. A son of temperance is a strange animal on this river, I can assure you. I think there are three or four sons on the boat, and the rest, about five hundred people, like a dram as often as I would like to drink a little water. * * * We get a little scared sometimes, for we hear of so many boats blowing up. There was another boat blown up at Lexington last Saturday and killed one hundred and fifty persons, the most of which were emigrants for California and Oregon. These things make us feel pretty squally, I can assure you, but it is not the way to be scared beforehand. So we boost our spirits up and push on. * * * Got to Lexington at 12 o’clock. There we found the wrecks of the boat that blew up five days ago. There were about two hundred people aboard, and the nearest we could learn about forty persons escaped unhurt, about forty were wounded and the balance were killed.”