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"On to the Platte! The buffalo!" New cheer seerants now, and they forgot bickering Theback, if not all its egotism, at least ate still rode ahead, though

orders came now from a joint council of his leaders, since Banion would

not take charge

The great road to Oregon was even now not a trail but a road, deep cut

into the soil, though no wheeled traffic had marked it until within the

past five years A score of paralled paths ita hillside or a marshy level; but it was for

the most part a deep-cut, unmistakable road from which it had been

impossible to wander At times it lay worn into the sod a half foot, a

foot in depth Sometimes it followed the ancient buffalo trails to

water--the first roads of the Far West, quickly seized on by hunters and

engineers--or again it transected these, hanging to the ridges after

frontier road fashion, heading out for the proved fords of the greater

streaone ahead in previous

years, the continuing thread of the trail itself, worn in by trader and

trapper and Morave hope and cheer to

these who folloith the plow

Stretching out, closing up, al worh a vast

and stately landscape, which some travelers had called the Eden of