Who can sit down calmly, and, casting his eyes back to those heroes and heroines--the Rocky Mountain pioneers--and not feel his heart swell with pride and gratitude! Pride, in that, as an American, he can count such men and women among his countrymen; gratitude, in that he and the whole country are reaping fruits from their heroic courage, fortitude, and enterprise. Dangers met with an undaunted heart, hardships endured with unshrinking fortitude, trials and sufferings borne with cheerful patience, forgetfulness of self, devotion and sacrifice for others: such, in brief words, is the record of woman in those first journeys of the pioneers who crossed the continent for the purpose of making homes, forming communities, and building states on the Pacific slope. Among these histories, which illustrate most clearly the virtues of the pioneer women, we count those which display her battling with the difficulties of the passage through the mountains, as proving that the heroine of our own time may be matched with those who have lived before her in any age or clime. One of these histories runs as follows: In the corps of pioneers who, in 1844, were pushing the outposts of civilization farther towards the setting sun, was a young couple who left Illinois late in the summer of that year, and, journeying with a white-tilted wagon, drawn by four oxen, crossed the Missouri near the site of old Fort Kearney, and moving in a bee line over the prairie, early in November, encamped for the winter just beyond the forks of the Platte. A low cabin, built of cotton-wood, banked up with earth, and consisting of a single room, which contained their furniture, farming utensils, and stores, sufficed as a shelter against the severe winds which sweep over those plains in the inclement season; their oxen, not requiring to be housed, were allowed to roam at large and browse upon the sweet grass which remains nourishing in that region throughout the winter. At that period immense herds of bison roved through that section, and in a few days after the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Hinman--for this was their name--they had each shot, almost without stirring from their camp, three fat buffalo cows, whose flesh was dried and added to their winter's store. A supply of fresh meat was thus near at hand, and for five weeks they fared sumptuously on buffalo soup and ribs, tender-loin and marrow bones, roasted with succulent tidbits from the hump, and tongue, which, with boiled Indian meal, formed the staple of their repasts.