Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 22, 2025
An uproar of whinnying and braying, the clank of chains, and then the captain's shout "Stretch out," when the long line of twenty or thirty white-tented wagons would rumble out for the journey of thirty to sixty days across the plains. Each wagon had five yoke of oxen, with six or eight extra mule teams behind in case of emergency. About three tons made a load.
It must indeed have required great courage on behalf of the old Voor-trekker Boers, when they and their families left Cape Colony, at the time of the Great Trek, in long lines of white-tented waggons, to have penetrated through that dreary-waste in search of the promised land, of green veldt and running streams, which they had heard of, as lying away to the north, and eventually found in the Transvaal.
It gave him, nevertheless, great pain to travel on horseback, but there was no other means of conveying him to the camp. As we rode slowly along, in the grey light of the morning, we caught sight of the valley, the scene of our last night's misfortunes, and saw on the hill-sides two white-tented emigrant wagons, with the horses quietly grazing down in the bottom.
But here, just at the entrance to the village street, an altogether unconscious deus ex machinâ destined at once to relieve Helen of further anxiety, and commit poor Dickie to a course of action affecting the whole of his subsequent career presented itself in the shape of a white-tented miller's waggon, which, with somnolent jingle of harness bells and most admired deliberation, moved down the centre of the road.
Before him stood the white-tented camp of the round-up, and the rope corral was filled with circling horses half hidden by the veil of dust thrown upward by their restless, trampling hoofs. Now he was in the midst of them, a coil of rope in his left hand; his right swung the loop circling over his head.
Certain ones of them had brought with them big white-tented ox-waggons for conveying ammunition, commissariat stores, and such extra luggage as some might wish to carry; and these were sent ahead as soon as the field-cornet, the military leader of the ward, learned that all his men had arrived from their homes.
On this account I have ceased to frequent that portion of the Plain where the War Office is in possession of the land, and to keep to the southern side in my rambles, out of sight and hearing of the "white-tented camps" and mimic warfare.
We talk of the picturesque fur trade of the North, when brigades of birch canoes one and two hundred strong penetrated every river and lake of the wilderness of the Northwest. Let us take a look at these caravan brigades of the traders of the Southwest! Teams were hitched tandem to the white-tented wagons. Drivers did not ride in the wagons.
Behind the Palace about a quarter of a mile, was the Gareta, a sort of combined custom house and prison. The combination was deeply expressive of Spanish rule in those early days, for independent of what the American's white-tented wagon might contain baled hay or priceless silks or chewing tobacco a duty of $500 was levied against each mule-team wagon of the American trader.
The third night he was detailed to stand with Bob MacGregor on the middle guard, which lasts from eleven o'clock until two. The outfit had camped near the head of a long, shallow basin that had a creek running through; down the winding banks of it lay the white-tented camps of seven other trail-herds, the cattle making great brown blotches against the green at sundown.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking