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Updated: June 11, 2025
The oxen's flanks quivered, and they foamed at the mouth. Straining, they moved the wagon a few feet forward, then stood with bent backs to keep it from sliding back. From the black ox's nostrils foam and blood were streaming on to the ground. It turned its head in its anguish and looked at me with its great starting eyes.
The pass over which they toiled and strained so hard is still named the Pass of the Oxen's Slope. When going down hill, the work of dragging the Afang was easier. In a great hole in the ground, big enough to be a pond, they dumped the carcass of the Afang, and soon a little lake was formed. This uncanny bit of water is called "The Lake of the Green Well."
As soon as Uncle Kit saw the men doing this, he said, "What do they mean? Are they crazy? I will go and see what is the matter." As soon as he got in speaking distance, he asked them what they were throwing their provisions to the creek for. One of the men stopped and answered, "We are going back to Missouri, and our oxen's feet are so tender that they can hardly walk, let alone pull this load."
"As Joseph was a-walking He heard an angel sing 'This night shall be the birth night Of Christ, our heavenly King. His birthbed shall be neither In housen nor in hall, Nor in the place of paradise, But in the oxen's stall. He neither shall be rocked In silver nor in gold, But in the wooden manger That lieth on the mould.
This awkward result of the blockade moved the sense of humor of the Yankee rhymsters who placarded the wagons with such mottoes as "Free Trade and Oxen's Rights" and parodied Ye Mariners of England with the lines: Ye wagoners of Freedom Whose chargers chew the cud, Whose wheels have braved a dozen years The gravel and the mud; Your glorious hawbucks yoke again To take another jag, And scud through the mud Where the heavy wheels do drag, Where the wagon creak is long and low And the jaded oxen lag.
The laws being by such discourses and philosophical reasons as these taken away, there wants nothing to a beast-like life but lions' paws, wolves' teeth, oxen's paunches, and camels' necks; and these passions and doctrines do the beasts themselves, for want of speech and letters, express by their bellowings, neighings, and brayings, all their voice being for their belly and the pleasure of their flesh, which they embrace and rejoice in either present or future; unless it be perhaps some animal which naturally takes delight in chattering and garrulity.
Galileo studied the eye of an ox and beheld the principle of the lens. The difference between these men, to whom the world is indebted, and many others is this, that they have looked at the oxen's eyes and have been unmoved, have allowed the teakettle to boil without making an impression upon them, and the wind to blow without leading them to any shore. The opportunity for greatness is gone.
One great swirling wave ran up and curled around the oxen's hoofs just as they reached firm ground, but, though Eyebright gave a little scream, and Mr. Downs frowned and said, "by gosh!" no harm was done, and the momentary fright only made pleasanter their drive to Scrapplehead, which they reached just as the sun sank for the night into a great soft-looking bed of purple and crimson clouds.
There was nothing for it, I knew, but to proceed at the oxen's steady crawl, which had this advantage: the wagons made very little noise passing over the soft earth, the oxen none at all worth mention.
"At length the faint dawn came stealing like a ghost up the long slope of bush, and glinted on the tangled oxen's horns, and with white and frightened faces we got up and set to the task of disentangling the oxen, till such time as there should be light enough to enable us to follow the trail of the lioness which had gone off with Jim-Jim.
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