-The  captain  gave  the  word,  and  the  cavalcade  drew
slowly  out,  the  last  canvas-covered  wain  dwindled  to  an
ant's  white  egg,  and  the  pioneers  were  gone;  gone  into  a
silence  as  profound  as  the  grave's.  Spring  should  come
and  go,  June  should  shed  its  roses,  autumn  roll  its  golden
sea  and  break  into  the  barn's  broad  bays  in  the  high-
tides  of  abundance;  the  winter  fires  should  glow  again,
and  yet  no  word  from  the  Argonauts,  no  lock  from  the
Golden  Fleece  of  the  new-found  El  Dorado  of  the  farthest
West.  Ah,  the  weary  waitings,  the  hopes  deferred,  the
letters  soiled  and  wrinkled  and  old,  that  crept  by  return-
ing trains,  or  doubled  the  Cape  or  crossed  the  Isthmus,
that  the  readers  thanked  God  for  and  took  courage,  be-
cause the  writers  were  not  dead  last  year.
And  now  it  is  a  six  days'  sweep  as  on  wings  of  eagles


"SET  SAIL."  23

from  the  Prairies  of  Garden  Gate  to  Pacific's  Golden  Gate !
Verily  Galileo's  whisper  has  swelled  to  a  joyful  shout:
■"The  world  moves!"  Fox  river,  Rock  river,  Mississippi,
the  old  Father  of  them  all,  are  crossed  in  one  sunshine.
The  Cedar  is  reached  by  tea-time;  we  are  riding  the
breezy  swells  of  Iowa;  the  second  morning  finds  us  giv-
ing Council  Bluffs  a  cold  shoulder,  and  making  for  "  The
Big  Muddy,"  which  is  the  prose  for  that  ancient  maiden,
Missouri.  Council  Bluffs  is  the  old  Kanesville,  where  the
Mormons  advanced  the  first  parallel  in  their  long  siege
to  take  the  parched  desert  of  Utah,  with  its  strange
mimicry  of  the  salted  ocean  that  slakes  no  thirst,  and  to
make  a  blooming  garden  with  streams  of  living  water.
