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Updated: June 15, 2025
Those early days in California brought out character. It was a long way off then, and the journey was expensive. The fortunate could go by Cape Horn or by the Isthmus of Panama; but the mass of pioneers crossed the plains with their ox-teams. This took an entire summer. They were very lucky when they got through with a yoke of worn-out cattle.
This drew a number of callers who had no children to see if any could come to my Sabbath-school; and when I told them it was for every body of any age who desired to come, my school-house was filled to its utmost capacity. Many frequently came five or six miles with their ox-teams to attend these meetings, with their families.
By noon, the main street was filled with wagons, ox-teams and mules with vehicles of every kind, shape and color, all carrying crowds of whites and negroes. Paul dined with the Mayor, at the hotel and after dinner commenced to dress in his suit. The Mayor informed him that there would be a parade to start from the hotel door and that he would be escorted to the lake by the guard and the band.
Every day his ox-teams struggled over sandy bottoms to the tune of snapping whips and picturesque profanity by Indian drivers. Men with shovels leveling the sand hills, piled the wagons high with shimmering white grains which were carried to the shore and dumped into pile-surrounded bogs till the tides left them high and dry.
After examining them a few minutes, I came to the conclusion that they had been standing where they were all winter. I saw that there had been ox-teams attached to them some time, but there was no sign of yokes there. The covers were still on the wagons, so I got off my horse and climbed into one of them. I found some flour and probably three hundred pounds of bacon in the three wagons.
The road plunged into the darkly wooded gulch beyond the house, and then struck away eastward, crossing loop after loop of the river on the covered bridges, where the neighbors, who had broken it out with their ox-teams in the open, had thickly bedded it in snow.
They were, in fact, the hired peons of Carlos the cibolero the white man, and chief of the party. The half-blood Antonio by name was "arriero" of the mule-train, while the three Indians drove the ox-teams, guiding them across the ford with their long goads. Carlos himself was mounted upon his fine black horse, and, muffled in a strong serape, rode in front to pilot the way.
Small towns of corrugated iron and mud-brick homes and shops appeared at long intervals on the veld; grass-fires displayed the presence of the Boer farmer with his herds, and the long ox-teams slowly rolling over the plain signified that not all the peaceful pursuits of a small people at war with a great nation had been abandoned.
A dozen other equally remarkable incidents happened during the short time that the frantic buffaloes were playing havoc with our train, and when they had got through and left us, our outfit was very badly crippled and scattered. This caused us to go into camp and spend a day in replacing the broken tongues, and repairing other damages, and gathering up our scattered ox-teams.
For months out of the year, the Maine fisherman would be working in the forests, felling great trees, guiding the tugging ox-teams to the frozen rivers, which with spring would float the timber down to tidewater.
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