Father had been gone three weeks when a letter came telling us that he had located a farm in the town of Alto, the southwest-corner township in Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin; that it had a log house on it, twelve by fourteen, which he had bought; that ten acres had already been broken by the man of whom he had bought the claim, and that he would return at once with his wagon and oxen for the family. In March, 1847, we started for the new home. We were soon in the long line of dust, making our proportion of what we had been accustomed to see for two years. I was to help drive the cows and pigs. Whoever has attempted to drive a hog knows the discouragements with which I met. Whoever has never attempted it can never know. It seemed that if we had wanted them to go the other way it would have been all right. They scattered in different directions several times, and some of them succeeded in getting back home. My chagrin was increased by passing or meeting other emigrant boys whose pigs and cattle kept quietly near the wagons and walked gently along. It took all day to go about six miles. We stopped overnight near a farm-house, and father, after getting the cattle and pigs in the barn, built a fire by the roadside and prepared our supper. He made tea, and with the cold chicken and bread and butter which mother had given us for the journey, we fared sumptuously. Father brought an armful of hay from the barn near by, and with plenty of coverlets he made up a bed under the wagon, where we slept soundly. This was my first camping out. At Fort Atkinson we met the first band of Indians I had ever seen. There was a chief and three or four young buck Indians, as many squaws, and a number of children, all of the Black Hawk tribe. They were on ponies, riding in single file into the town as we were going out. I was so frightened that I cried, and as the chief kept putting his hand to his mouth, saying, "Bread--hungry--bread--hungry," father gave him a loaf of bread. It was not enough, but it was all father would let him have. Homer and I were in favor of giving him everything we had if he would only move on. After leaving Watertown we came out on what is known as rolling prairie--for miles in every direction a green, wavy sheet of land. No ornamental gardener could make so lovely and charming a lawn, gently rolling, and sloping just enough to relieve the monotony of the flatness of the long stretches of prairie and openings we had passed through. Father told us that these great prairies would always be pasture-land for herds of cattle, as the farmers could not live where there was no timber. To-day the finest farms I know of in America are on these great prairie-lands, but at that time the prospectors avoided such claims and preëmpted only the quarter-sections skirting the prairies, where the oak openings supplied timber for log houses, fences, and fuel.