“The supplies were brought into the mining camps of Montana by three different routes: the overland route from Omaha or St. Joseph, Missouri, by way of Denver and Salt Lake, a distance of nineteen hundred miles; from St. Louis by way of the Missouri river to Fort Benton; and by pack-train from the Pacific slope, starting from Portland or Walla Walla, Oregon, crossing the Cœur d’Alenes and the main ranges of the Rockies, and coming over the Bitter Root valley. “The larger part of the merchandise brought to Montana came by the first-named route. The vehicles used in transportation were, for the most part, what were known as ‘Murphy wagons’—vehicles with large wheels and strong bodies, capable of holding eight thousand pounds of general merchandise, and drawn by five or six yoke of oxen, or by as many spans of mules. During the rainy season, and for many weeks after a storm, it was frequently the case that not more than five miles a day of progress could be made with such a wagon train over the alkali plains or along the valley of such a stream as Bitter Creek. An average journey was about one hundred miles a week, and thus an entire season, commencing at the time when the grass of the plains was sufficiently grown to furnish food for oxen and mules, and lasting from eighteen to twenty weeks, was consumed in making the journey. “One who has never seen the plains, rivers, rocks, cañons, and mountains of the portion of the country traversed by these caravans, can form but a faint idea from any description given of them of the innumerable and formidable difficulties with which every mile of this weary march was encumbered. History has assigned a foremost place among its glorified deeds to the passage of the Alps by Napoleon, and to the long and discouraging march of the French army under the same great conqueror to Russia. If it be not invidious to compare small things with great, we may assuredly claim for these early pioneers greater conquests over nature than were made by either of the great military expeditions of Napoleon. A successful completion of the journey was simply an escape from death.” The nature of the transportation of passengers over the overland route may be inferred from a trip once made by the above writer by stage from Atchison, on the Missouri River, to Helena, Montana, which is thus described: