In the heart of the buffalo country the buffaloes were an insufferable nuisance. Vast herds were moving across our trail from south to north, trampling the moist and grassy soil into a black paste, and so polluting the streams and springs that drinking-water was often difficult to obtain. The vastness of some of these droves was most impressive, in spite of the calamitous ruin they left behind them. As far as the eye could reach, the surface of the earth was a heaving mass of animal life; the ground seemed to be covered with a brown mantle of fur. As we advanced along the trail, the droves would quietly separate to our right and left, leaving a lane along which we traveled with herds on each side of us. From an eminence, looking backward and forward, one could see that we were completely hemmed in before and behind; and the space left for us by the buffalo moved along with us. They never in the least incommoded us by any hostile action; all they asked, apparently, was to be let alone. [Illustration: First view of Salt Lake from a mountain pass.] The buffalo is not the clumsy animal he looks in captivity or in pictures. It is a fleet horse that can overtake him; and to see him drop into a wallow while on a keen run, roll over and over two or three times, and skip to his feet and away with his comrades with the nimbleness of a kitten, is a sight to be remembered. Although we traveled a part of the time through what was known as a hostile Indian country, we were never molested by the red men. Friendly Indians came into our camps to beg, to pilfer, or to sell buckskins and moccasins. Before us and behind us were several attacks upon caravans, the victims usually being few in number and unprepared for a skirmish. But while we were in the region deemed dangerous from Indians we massed in with other companies of emigrants, so that we were seldom less than one hundred and fifty strong; a regular watch was kept by night, and the wagons were parked in a circle which could be used as a defense in case of an attack. In the course of weeks, the camp, wherever it might be pitched, took on the semblance of a home. The tent was our house; the rude cooking-and eating-apparatus and the comfortable bedding were our household furniture, and the live stock about us was our movable property. Except in the most trying and difficult straits, evening found us busy with household cares and amusements. Our neighbors were changeable, it is true, but we often found new and pleasant acquaintances, and sometimes old friends from whom we had been separated for weeks would trundle up and camp near us.