On this side of the James we have passed fields of corn 8 feet high. There are cotton-wood hedges along the road, the trees 10 inches through and 35 or 40 feet tall. But it all seems burned and bare after our camping grounds by the river.
10 o’clock. It is 101° in the shade in the wagon, and hardly a breath of air.
At 11 o’clock, 9 miles from Yankton, we stopped at a windmill to water the horses. The man who owned the house told us he paid $5,000 for three 80’s, without a building.
Not far from Yankton we crossed a bone-dry creek bed with the most desolate barren bluffs on each side. Covered with stones and the grass dry and brown, they looked like great drifts of sand that somehow had stopped drifting.
We reached Yankton at 4 o’clock. Drove by the insane asylum. The buildings look nice and they stand in the middle of a large farm of acres and acres of corn and potatoes. Manly wanted to stop and go through the asylum but I could not bear to, so we did not. We passed by the Yankton College, the buildings are very nice.
I am greatly disappointed in Yankton, it is a stick in the mud. We drove all over the town to find a little feed for the teams, went to the mill and the elevator and the feed stores, and finally found a couple of sacks of ground feed but not a bit of flax* in the whole town.
= Flaxseed was indispensable first aid to hurts and minor ills. A boiling-hot flaxseed poultice holds hotter heat longer than a bread-and-milk one, and usually it works better than layers of cold vinegar-and-brown-paper. R.W.L.
There were no green vegetables, nor any figs nor dates in the grocery stores. It would be a blessing to Yankton if Carpenter would move down here, or if folks in Yankton would send to De Smet for what they need. They have a number of elevators, 2 or 3 mills, and 6 feed stores, but we carried the most of the feed away in two sacks.
I got my revolver fixed, then we had to spend so much time hunting for feed all over town that Mr. Cooley got to the ferry first. Mrs. Cooley and Paul crossed the river, then the ferry came back and took Mr. Gooley over. It was leaving just as we drove down to the landing at 6 o’clock and while we were waiting for it to come back a bad-looking storm came up. It was not rain, only wind and dust.
We had to face the river to keep the wagon’s back to the wind so that it would not be blown over. The wind lifted the hind wheels twice before Manly could get them roped down. The ferryman did not like to try to cross the river in the storm. He waited on the other side until the blow was over, and we were afraid he would not cross again that night. But he did.*
= When the rear wheels lifted as if the wagon were going end over end into the river, my father jumped out, leaving the reins in my mother’s hands. While she held and gentled the nervous horses, I craned around the edge of the side-curtain to see what my father was doing. He was driving a picket-pin into the ground, and tying a wheel to it with the picket rope. Behind us was a covered wagon, behind it another, and another. As far as I could see, covered wagons stood one beyond another in a long, long line. Behind them and over them, high over half the sky, a yellow wave of dust was curling and coming. My mother said to me, “That’s your last sight of Dakota.” R.W.L.
Where we crossed the Missouri it is one mile wide, very nasty and muddy. I do not wonder that it is called The Big Muddy, and since I have seen the dust blowing into it I do not think it strange that it is muddy. The Missouri is nothing like as beautiful as the Jim.
Pet made no fuss at all at the ferry, but drove onto it nicely, stood as quiet as could be, and calmly drove off it. Her colt Little Pet ran onto it loose and stood beside her as still as a mouse.
About a mile from the river we camped in woods. Temperature 98°.
July 24
Mr. Gooley got up early and went fishing but did not get a bite. We were all tired from being up so late last
night, and did not get started until 9 o’clock. We had taken the wrong road, so we had to go back to the river and start again on the right one. For a little way we followed the river and could see down it, four or five miles across the water. It was a grand sight, though the scenery on the banks is nothing. What is it about water that always affects a person? I never see a great river or lake but I think how I would like to see a world made and watch it through all its changes.
The banks of the Missouri are crumbling all the time and falling into the water. In one place the road had fallen in. There on the river flats before we reached the bluffs we saw 24 hay stacks at one time, and mowing had only begun. Four mowing machines were working. Hay is $9 a ton in Yankton.
Well, we have come to the bluffs. On the side next the river they look as if they had been cut straight down with a knife. Grass has not grown on the face. All along the foot of it trees are growing, sheltered from the south wind. Plums, grapes, black currants and sweet clover grow wild on the bottom land. Sweet clover 8 feet high. And the first oak trees we have seen.
We have been going over the bluffs, the most desolate bare hills I ever saw, without houses or fields or trees and hardly any grass. Manly said he would just as soon own the whole of Nebraska as not, if it were fenced. Judging from all he has ever seen of the state it might do for pasture if he did not keep much stock. So far Nebraska reminds me of Lydia Locket’s pocket, nothing in it, nothing on it, only the binding round it.
We meet covered wagons going north. Manly talked to a couple of men traveling from Kansas to South Dakota. They said there is nothing in Kansas.
The hens are laying yet. Temperature 110°.
July 25
We spent the night among the Nebraska hills, down in a hollow where they shut us in, and not a house in sight. This morning I like to look at the hills, there is something fascinating in their loneliness.
We started at 7:35. It is a nice cool morn. Went through Hartington at 8:30. It is a nice town, I like it much better than Yankton though it is smaller. Passed through Coleridge at 12:30, not much of a place. The wind is blowing and the dust flying till we can hardly see. Talk about hard roads in Dakota, I never saw hard roads till now. The more I see of Nebraska the less I like it. We have been climbing over bluffs all day.
Just south of Coleridge there are 22 families that are going to start for Missouri in about 6 weeks, though this country is very thinly settled. One man said he has lived here for 6 years and has not seen a good crop yet.
We camped east of the town of Beldon one mile, but within sight of it, by a creek. Not so much as a bush to be seen. Manly did the chores so Mr. Gooley could go fishing. He caught 11 fish. Temperature 109°.
The man living near where we camped is working for a man in Sioux City who owns 3,000 acres of land here, in a body. 500 acres of it are in pasture and 250 in meadow.
July 26
Mr. Cooley went fishing again this morning and caught 2. We were on the road at 8:40. There has been plenty of rain right here and crops are good, corn, wheat and oats. But three miles west they have nothing. Land is $25 an acre here.