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The frontier of to-day is on the plains and in the mountains. In that immense territory bounded by the Pacific on the west, and on the east by a line running irregularly from the sources of the Red River of the North to the Platte, one hundred miles from Omaha, and thence to the mouth of the Brazos in Texas, wherever a settlement is isolated, there is the frontier.

Life in these remote regions is affected, of course, by external surroundings. The same is true of the passage of the pioneer battalions from the eastern settlements through the country westward. The mountain-frontier presents, both to the settler who makes her abode there, and to her who passes through its wild pathways, a distinct set of difficulties and dangers besides those which are incident to every family which settles far from the more populous districts.

The enormous extent of the mountain region can be measured in linear and square miles; it can be bounded roughly by the Pacific Ocean and the fountains of the great rivers which course through the Mississippi valley; it can be placed before the eye in an astronomical position between such and such latitudes and longitudes, but such descriptions convey to the mind only an idea which is quite vague and general. When we say that one hundred and fifty states like Connecticut, or twenty states like New York or Illinois, spread over that infinitude of peaks and ranges, would scarcely cover them, we gain a somewhat more adequate idea of their extent. But it is only by actually traversing this wilderness of hills and mountains, east and west, north and south, that we can more fully comprehend its extent and the difficulties to be encountered by the emigrant who crosses it.

A straight line from Cheyenne on the east, to Placer at the foot of the Sierra Nevada in California, is eight hundred and fifty miles; by the shortest traveled route between these points it is upward of one thousand miles. A straight line from the same point in the east to Oregon City, among the Cascade Mountains in Oregon, measures nine hundred and fifty miles; by the traveled routes it is more than twelve hundred.

Thirty years ago, when railroads were unknown west of Buffalo, the journey by ox-teams across the continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, was more than three thousand miles, and might occupy from one year to eighteen months, according to circumstances.

After leaving the regions where roads and settlements made their march comparatively comfortable and secure, they struck boldly across the plains, fording rivers, hewing their way through forests, toiling across wide tracks of desert, destitute of food, herbage, and water, until they reached the Rocky Mountains. The region they were now to pass through had been penetrated by scarcely any but hunters, fur traders, soldiers, and missionaries. It was to the peaceful settler who was seeking a home, a terra incognita, an unknown land. Those mountain peaks were veiled in clouds, those devious labyrinthine valleys were the abode of darkness. The awful majesty of nature's works, the Titanic wonder-shapes which God hath wrought, are calculated to burden the imagination and subdue the aspiring soul of man by their vastness. Those mountain heights, seen from which the files of travelers passing through the profound defiles, look like insects; the relentless sway of nature's great forces--the storm roaring through the gorges, the flood plunging from the precipice and wearing trenches a thousand feet deep in the flinty rock; the walls which rear themselves into giant ramparts which human power can never scale; the wide circles of desolation, where hunger and thirst have their domain; such spectacles must indeed have thrilled the hearts, awed the minds, and filled the imaginations of the early pioneers with forebodings of difficulty and danger.

And yet the actual difficulties encountered by the emigrants, the actual toils, dangers, and hardships endured then in conquering a passage through and over the Rocky Mountains and their kindred ranges, must have surpassed the anticipations of the shrewdest forethought, and the bodings of the gloomiest imagination. Tongue cannot tell, nor pen describe, nor hath it entered into the heart of the eastern home-dweller to conceive of the forlorn and terrible stories of those early mountain passages. We may wonder whether the fortunate traveler of these days, who is whirled up and down those perilous slopes by a forty-ton locomotive, often looks back to the time when those rickety wagons and lean oxen jogged along, drearily, eight or ten miles a day through those terrible fastnesses, or reverting to such a scene, expends upon it a merited sympathy. Now a seven days' journey from Manhattan to the Golden Gate, sitting in a palace car, well fed by day, well rested by night, scarcely more fatigued when one steps on the streets of San Francisco than by a day's journey on horseback in the olden time! Then a year's journey in the emigrant wagon, scantily fed, poorly nourished with sleep, footsore and haggard, the weary emigrant and his wife dragged themselves into the spot in the valley of the Sacramento, or the Columbia, where they were to commence anew their homely toils!

Who can sit down calmly, and, casting his eyes back to those heroes and heroines--the Rocky Mountain pioneers--and not feel his heart swell with pride and gratitude! Pride, in that, as an American, he can count such men and women among his countrymen; gratitude, in that he and the whole country are reaping fruits from their heroic courage, fortitude, and enterprise. Dangers met with an undaunted heart, hardships endured with unshrinking fortitude, trials and sufferings borne with cheerful patience, forgetfulness of self, devotion and sacrifice for others: such, in brief words, is the record of woman in those first journeys of the pioneers who crossed the continent for the purpose of making homes, forming communities, and building states on the Pacific slope.

Among these histories, which illustrate most clearly the virtues of the pioneer women, we count those which display her battling with the difficulties of the passage through the mountains, as proving that the heroine of our own time may be matched with those who have lived before her in any age or clime. One of these histories runs as follows: In the corps of pioneers who, in 1844, were pushing the outposts of civilization farther towards the setting sun, was a young couple who left Illinois late in the summer of that year, and, journeying with a white-tilted wagon, drawn by four oxen, crossed the Missouri near the site of old Fort Kearney, and moving in a bee line over the prairie, early in November, encamped for the winter just beyond the forks of the Platte.

A low cabin, built of cotton-wood, banked up with earth, and consisting of a single room, which contained their furniture, farming utensils, and stores, sufficed as a shelter against the severe winds which sweep over those plains in the inclement season; their oxen, not requiring to be housed, were allowed to roam at large and browse upon the sweet grass which remains nourishing in that region throughout the winter.

At that period immense herds of bison roved through that section, and in a few days after the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Hinman--for this was their name--they had each shot, almost without stirring from their camp, three fat buffalo cows, whose flesh was dried and added to their winter's store. A supply of fresh meat was thus near at hand, and for five weeks they fared sumptuously on buffalo soup and ribs, tender-loin and marrow bones, roasted with succulent tidbits from the hump, and tongue, which, with boiled Indian meal, formed the staple of their repasts.

Both Mr. Hinman and his wife were scions of that hardy stock which had, even before the Revolutionary War, set out from Connecticut, and, cutting their way through the forest, had crossed the Alleghany Mountains and river, and pitched their camp in the rich valley of the Muskingum, near the site of the present city of Marietta. Both had also grown up amid the surroundings of true frontier life, and were endowed with faculties, as well as fitted by experience, to engage in the bold enterprise wherein they were now embarked, namely, to cross the Rocky Mountains with a single ox-team and establish themselves in the fertile vale of the Willamette in Oregon.

The spare but well-knit frame, the swarthy skin, the prominent features, the deep-set eyes, the alert and yet composed manner; marked in them the true type of the born borderer. To these physical traits were united the qualities of mind and heart which are equally characteristic of the class to which they belonged; an apparent insensibility to fear, a capacity for endurance that exists in the moral nature rather than in the body, and a self-reliance that never faltered, formed a combination which fitted them to cope with the difficulties that environed their perilous project.

As early in the spring of 1845 as the ground would permit, they re-packed their goods and stores, hung out the white sails of their prairie schooner and pursued their journey up the north fork of the Platte, crossed the Red Buttes, went through Devil's Gate, skirted the banks of the Sweet Water River, and winding through the great South Pass, diverted their course to the north in the direction of the head-waters of Snake River, which would guide them by its current to the Columbia.

At this stage in their journey they consulted a rough map of the route on which two trails were laid down, either of which would lead to the stream they were seeking. With characteristic boldness they chose the shorter and more difficult trail.

Following its tortuous course in a northwesterly direction they reached a point where the path was barely wide enough for the wagon to pass, and was bounded on the one side by a wall of rock and on the other by a ragged precipice descending hundreds of feet into a dark ravine.

Here Mrs. Hinman dismounted from her seat in the wagon to assist in conducting the team past this dangerous point. Her husband stood between the oxen and the precipice when the hind wheel of the wagon slipped on a smooth stone, the vehicle tilted and being top-heavy upset and was precipitated into the abyss, dragging with it the oxen who, in their fall, carried down Mr. Hinman who stood beside the wheel yoke.

He gave a loud cry as he fell, and gazing horror-stricken over the brink Mrs. Hinman saw him bounding from rock to rock preceded by the wagon and oxen which rolled over and over till they disappeared from view.

In the awful stillness of that solitude the beating of her heart became audible as she rapidly reviewed her terrible situation, and taxed her mind to know what she should do. Summoning up all her resolution she ran swiftly along the edge of the precipice in search of a place where she could descend, in the hope that by some rare good fortune her husband might have survived his fall. Half a mile back of the spot where the accident occurred she found a more gradual descent into the ravine, and here, by swinging herself from bush to bush she managed at length with the utmost difficulty and danger to reach the bottom of the ravine, but could find there no trace either of her husband or of the ox-team.

Scanning the face of the precipice she saw, at last, one hundred feet above her the wreck of the wagon, and the bodies of the oxen, which had landed upon a projecting ledge.

At great risk of being dashed to pieces, she succeeded in climbing to the spot. The patient beasts which had carried them so far upon their way were crushed to a jelly; among the remains of the wagon scarcely a vestige appeared of the furniture, utensils, and stores with which it was laden. She marked the track it had made in its descent, and digging her fingers and toes into the crevices of the rock, and drawing herself from point to point in a zigzag course, by means of bushes and projecting stones, she slowly scaled the declivity and reached a narrow ledge some three hundred feet from the ravine, where she paused to take breath.

A low moan directed her eyes to a clump of bushes some fifty feet above her, and there she caught sight of a limp arm hanging among the stunted foliage. Climbing to the spot she found her husband breathing but unconscious. He was shockingly bruised, and although no bones had been broken, the purple current trickling slowly from his mouth showed that some internal organ had been injured. While there is life there is hope. If he could be placed in a comfortable position he might still revive and live. Feeling in his breast pocket she found a leather flask filled with whisky with which she bathed his face after pouring a large draught down his throat. In a few moments he revived sufficiently to comprehend his situation.

"Don't leave me, Jane," whispered the suffering man, "I shan't keep you long." It was unnecessary to prefer such a request to a woman who had gone through such perils to save one whom, she loved dearer than life. "I'll bring you out safe and sound, Jack," returned she, "or die right here with you."

While racking her brain for means to remove him fifty feet lower to the ledge from which she had first spied him, a welcome sight met her eye. It was the axe and the coil of rope which had fallen from the wagon during its descent, and now lay within easy reach. Passing the rope several times around his body so as to form a sling she cut a stout bush, and trimming it, made a stake which she firmly fastened into a crevice, and with, an exertion of strength, such as her loving and resolute heart could have alone inspired her to put forth, she extricated him from his position, and laying the ends of the rope over the stake gently lowered him to the ledge, and gathering moss made a pillow for his bleeding head. Then descending to the spot where the carcasses of the oxen lay she quickly flayed one, and cutting off a large piece of flesh she ransacked the wreck of the wagon and found a blanket and a pot. Returning to her husband she kindled a fire, and made broth with some water which she found in the hollow of a rock.

Gathering moss and lichens she made a comfortable couch upon the rock, and gently stretched her groaning patient upon it, covering him with the blanket for the mountain air was chill even in that August afternoon. The wounded man's breathing grew more regular, the bloody ooze no longer flowed from his white lips, but his frame was still racked by agonizing pains.

The hours sped away as the devoted wife bent over him; the height of the mountains in that region materially shortens the day to such as are in the valleys, but though the sun sets early behind the western summits twilight lingers long after his departure. When the orb of day had disappeared, Mrs. H. still viewed with wonder, not unmixed with fear, the savage grandeur of the mountains which lifted their heads still glittering in the passing light; and gazing into the profound below she watched the shades as they deepened to blackness.

The ledge on which the forlorn pair lay was barely four feet wide and less than ten feet long. There, on the face of that precipice, one hundred miles from the nearest settlement, all through the lonely watches of the night, the strong-hearted wife, with tear-dimmed eyes, hung over the sufferer. Many a silent prayer in the weary hours of that moonless night did she send up to the Father of mercies. Many a plan for bringing succor or for alleviating pain on the morrow did she devise.

Will-power is the most potent factor in giving a satisfactory solution of the problem of vitality. Just as the gray light was shimmering in the eastern sky the wounded man moaned as if he wished to speak. His wife understood that language of pain and weakness, and placed her ear to his lips. "I won't die, Jane," he said scarcely above a whisper. "You shan't die, Jack," was the reply. A great hope dawned like a sun upon her as those four magic syllables were uttered.

He fell into a doze, and when he woke the sun was up. "Can you stay here all alone for a few hours," inquired Mrs. H------, after feeding her patient, "I am going to see if I can fetch some one to help us out of this." "Go," he answered. Placing the flask and broth within reach of her husband, and kissing him, she sprang up the acclivity as though she had wings, reached the trail and sped along it southward. Fifteen miles would bring her to the spot where the two trails met: here she hoped to meet some wayfaring train of emigrants, or some party of hunters coursing through the defiles of the mountains.

Sooner than she expected, after reaching the fork, her wish was gratified. In less than half an hour six hunters came up with her, and, hearing her story, three of them volunteered to go and bring her husband to their cabin, which stood half a mile away from the trail. A horse was furnished to Mrs. H------, and the three hunters and she rode rapidly to the scene of the disaster.

Skipping down the declivity like chamois, and helping their brave companion, who was now quite fatigued with her exertion, they reached the rocky shelf. The mountain air and the delicious consciousness that he would live, coupled with implicit confidence in the success of his wife's errand, had acted like a charm on the vigorous organization of the wounded man, and he begged that he might be immediately removed.

He was accordingly carried carefully to the trail, and placed astride of one of the horses in front of one of the hunters. After a slow march of four hours, he was safely stowed in the cabin of the hunters, where, in a few weeks, he entirely recovered from his injuries.

It might be readily supposed after such a grave experience of the dangers of mountain life, that our heroine and her husband would have been inclined to return to their old home on the sunny prairies of Illinois. On the contrary, they strongly desired to continue the prosecution of their Oregon enterprise, and were only prevented from carrying it out by the lack of a team and the necessary utensils, etc.

The hunters, learning their wishes, returned to the scene of the mishap, and scoured the side of the mountain in search of the articles which had been thrown from the wagon in its descent. They succeeded in recovering uninjured a large number of articles, including a few which still remained in the wrecked vehicle. Then clubbing together, they made up a purse and bought two pair of oxen and a wagon from a passing train of emigrants, who also generously contributed articles for the use and comfort of the resolute but unfortunate pair. Such deeds of charity are habitual with the men and women of the frontier, and the farther west one goes the more spontaneously and warmly does the heart bound to relieve the sufferings and supply the wants of the unfortunate, particularly of those who have been injured or reduced while battling with the hardships and dangers incident to a wild country. The more rugged the region on our western border, the more boundless becomes the sympathetic faculty of its inhabitants. Nowhere is a large and unselfish charity more lavishly exercised than among the Rocky Mountain men and women. Free as the breezes that sweep those towering summits, warm as the sun of midsummer, bright as the icy peaks which lift themselves into the sky, the spirit of loving kindness for the unfortunate animates the bosoms of the sons and daughters of that mountain land.

After wintering with their hospitable friends, Mr. and Mrs. Hinman pursued their journey the following spring, and, after a toilsome march, attended by no further startling incidents, reached their destination in Oregon.

There in their new home, which Mrs. H------, by her industry and watchfulness, contributed so largely to make, they found ample scope for the exercise of those qualities which they had proved themselves to possess. It is men and women like these whom we must thank for building up our empire on that far off coast.

The old hunters and gold-seekers in that region are the faithful depositaries of the mountain legends respecting the adventures of the early emigrants, and the observers and annotators, as it were, of the passages made by the pioneers in later times. Around their camp fires at night, when their repast is made and their pipes lighted, they beguile the lonely hours with tales of dreadful suffering, or of hairbreadth escapes from danger, or of heroism displayed by mountain wayfarers. This, as we have elsewhere remarked, is the hunters' pastime.

While a hunting party were once threading the defiles of the mountain, they espied below them in the valley certain suspicious signs. Approaching the spot, they discovered that a train of emigrants had been attacked by the savages, their wagons robbed, their oxen killed, a number of the party massacred and scalped, and the rest dispersed.

One of the hunters proceeds with the story from this point.

"Thirsting for a speedy revenge, the men at once divided. With Augur-eye as guide, I took command of the detachment who had to search the river bank; the old Sergeant commanded the scouting party told off to cross the ford and scour the timber on the right side of the river; whilst the third band was appropriated to the Doctor. The weather was cold, and the sky, thickly covered with fleecy clouds, foreboded a heavy fall of snow. The wind blew in fitful gusts, and seemed to chill one's blood with its icy breath, as, sweeping past, it went whistling and sighing up the glen. The rattle of the horses' hoofs, as the receding parties galloped over the turf, grew fainter and fainter, and when our little band halted on a sandy reach, about a mile up the river, not a sound was audible, save the steady rhythm of the panting horses and the noisy rattle of the stream, as, tumbling over the craggy rocks, it rippled on its course. The 'Tracker' was again down; this time creeping along upon the sand on his hands and knees, and deliberately and carefully examining the marks left on its impressible surface, which, to his practiced eye, were in reality letters, nay, even readable words and sentences. As we watched this tardy progress in impatient silence, suddenly, as if stung by some poisonous reptile, the Indian sprang upon his legs, and, making eager signs for us to approach, pointing at the same time eagerly to something a short distance beyond where he stood. A near approach revealed a tiny hand and part of an arm pushed through the sand.

"At first we imagined the parent, whether male or female, had thus roughly buried the child--a consolatory assumption which Augur-eye soon destroyed. Scraping away the sand partially hiding the dead boy, he placed his finger on a deep cleft in the skull, which told at once its own miserable tale. This discovery clearly proved that the old guide was correct in his readings, that the savages were following up the trail of the survivors. A man who had escaped and just joined us, appeared so utterly terror-stricken at this discovery, that it was with difficulty he could be supported on his horse by the strong troopers who rode beside him. We tarried not for additional signs, but pushed on with all possible haste. The trail was rough, stony, and over a ledge of basaltic rocks, rendering progression not only tedious but difficult and dangerous; a false step of the horse, and the result might have proved fatal to the rider. The guide spurs on his Indian mustang, that like a goat scrambles over the craggy track; for a moment or two he disappears, being hidden by a jutting rock; we hear him yell a sort of 'war-whoop,' awakening the echoes in the encircling hills; reckless of falling, we too spur on, dash round the splintered point, and slide rather than canter down a shelving bank, to reach a second sand-beach, over which the guide is galloping and shouting. We can see the fluttering garments of a girl, who is running with all her might towards the pine trees; she disappears amongst the thick foliage of the underbrush ere the guide can come up to her, but leaping from off his horse, he follows her closely, and notes the spot wherein she has hidden herself amidst a tangle of creeping vines and maple bushes. He awaited our coming, and, motioning us to surround the place of concealment quickly, remained still as a statue whilst we arranged our little detachment so as to preclude any chance of an escape. Then gliding noiselessly as a reptile through the bushes, he was soon hidden. It appeared a long time, although not more than a few minutes had elapsed from our losing sight of him, until a shrill cry told us something was discovered. Dashing into the midst of the underbrush, a strange scene presented itself. The hardy troopers seemed spell-bound, neither was I the less astonished.

"Huddled closely together, and partially covered with branches, crouched two women and the little girl whose flight had led to this unlooked-for discovery. In a state barely removed from that of nudity, the unhappy trio strove to hide themselves from the many staring eyes which were fixed upon them, not for the purpose of gratifying an indecent curiosity, but simply because no one had for the moment realized the condition in which the unfortunates were placed. Soon, however, the fact was evident to the soldiers that the women were nearly unclad, and all honor to their rugged goodness, they stripped off their thick topcoats, and throwing them to the trembling females, turned every one away and receded into the bush. It was enough that the faces of the men were white which had presented themselves so unexpectedly. The destitute fugitives, assured that the savages had not again discovered them, hastily wrapped themselves in the coats of the soldiers, and, rushing out from their lair, knelt down, and clasping their arms round my knees, poured out thanks to the Almighty for their deliverance with a fervency and earnestness terrible to witness. I saw, on looking round me, streaming drops trickling over the sunburnt faces of many of the men, whose iron natures it was not easy to disturb under ordinary circumstances.

"It was soon explained to the fugitives that they were safe, and as every hour's delay was a dangerous waste of time, the rescued women and child were as carefully clad in the garments of the men as circumstances permitted, and placed on horses, with a hunter riding on either side to support them. Thus reinforced, the cavalcade, headed by Augur-eye, moved slowly back to the place where we had left the pack-train encamped, with all the necessary supplies. I lingered behind to examine the place wherein the women had concealed themselves. The boughs of the vine-maple, together with other slender shrubs constituting the underbrush, had been rudely woven together, forming, at best, but a very inefficient shelter from the wind, which swept in freezing currents through the valley. Had it rained, they must soon have been drenched, or if snow had fallen heavily, the 'wickey' house and its occupants soon would have been buried. How had they existed? This was a question I was somewhat puzzled to answer.

"On looking round I observed a man's coat, pushed away under some branches, and on the few smouldering embers by which the women had been sitting when the child rushed in and told of our coming, was a small tin pot with a cover on it, the only utensil visible. Whilst occupied in making the discoveries I was sickened by a noisome stench, which proceeded from the dead body of a man, carefully hidden by branches, grass, and moss, a short distance from the little cage of twisted boughs. Gazing on the dead man a suspicion too revolting to mention suddenly flashed upon me. Turning away saddened and horror-stricken, I returned to the cage and removed the cover from the saucepan, the contents of which confirmed my worst fears. Hastily quitting the fearful scene, the like of which I trust never to witness again, I mounted my horse and galloped after the party, by this time some distance ahead.

"Two men and the guide were desired to find the spot where the scouting parties were to meet each other, and to bring them with all speed to the mule camp. It was nearly dark when we reached our destination, the sky looked black and lowering, the wind appeared to be increasing in force, and small particles of half-frozen rain drove smartly against our faces, telling in pretty plain language of the coming snowfall. Warm tea, a good substantial meal, and suitable clothes, which had been sent in case of need by the officers' wives stationed at the 'Post,' worked wonders in the way of restoring bodily weakness; but the shock to the mental system time alone could alleviate. I cannot say I slept much during the night. Anxiety lest we might be snowed in, and a fate almost as terrible as that from which we had rescued the poor women, should be the lot of all, sat upon me like a nightmare. More than this, the secret I had discovered seemed to pall every sense and sicken me to the heart, and throughout the silent hours of the dismal darkness I passed in review the ghostly pageant of the fight and all its horrors, the escape of the unhappy survivors, the finding of the murdered boy and starving women, and more than all--the secret I had rather even now draw a veil over, and leave to the imagination."

A fugitive woman in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains is indeed an object of pity; but when she boldly faces the dangers that surround her in such a position, and succeeds by her courage, endurance, and ingenuity in holding her own, and finally extricating herself from the perils by which she is environed, she may fairly challenge our admiration. Such a woman was Miss Janette Riker, who proved how strong is the spirit of self-reliance which animates the daughters of the border under circumstances calculated to daunt and depress the stoutest heart.

The Riker family, consisting of Mr. Riker, his two sons, and his daughter Janette, passed through the Dacotah country in 1849, and late in September had penetrated to the heart of the mountains in the territory now known as Montana. Before pursuing their journey from this point to their destination in Oregon, they encamped for three days in a well-grassed valley for the purpose of resting their cattle, and adding to their stock of provisions a few buffalo-humps and tongues.

On the second day after their arrival at this spot, the father and his two sons set out on their buffalo hunt with the expectation of returning before nightfall. But the sun set and darkness came without bringing them back to the lonely girl, who in sleepless anxiety awaited their return all night seated beneath the white top of the Conestoga wagon. At early dawn she started on their trail, which she followed for several miles to a deep gorge where she lost all trace of the wanderers, and was after a long and unavailing search compelled in the utmost grief and distraction of mind, to return to the camp.

For a week she spent her whole time in seeking to find some trace of her missing kinsmen, but without success. As the lonely maiden gazed at the mighty walls which frowned upon her and barred her egress east and west from her prison-house, hope died away in her heart, and she prayed for speedy death. This mood was but momentary; the love of life soon asserted its power, and she cast about her for some means whereby she could either extricate herself from her perilous situation, or at least prolong her existence.

To attempt to find her way over the mountains seemed to her impossible. Her only course was to provide a shelter against the winter, and stay where she was until discovered by some passing hunters, or by Indians, whom she feared less than an existence spent in such a solitude and surrounded by so many dangers.

Axes and spades among the farming implements in the wagon supplied her with the necessary tools, and by dint of assiduous labor, to which her frame had long been accustomed, she contrived to build, in a few weeks, a rude hut of poles and small logs. Stuffing the interstices with dried grass, and banking up the earth around it, she threw over it the wagon-top, which she fastened firmly to stakes driven in the ground, and thus provided a shelter tolerably rain-tight and weather-proof.

Thither she conveyed the stoves and other contents of the wagon. The oxen, straying through the valley, fattened themselves on the sweet grass until the snow fell; she then slaughtered and flayed the fattest one, and cutting up the carcase, packed it away for winter's use. Dry logs and limbs of trees, brought together and chopped up with infinite labor, sufficed to keep her in fuel. Although for nearly three months she was almost completely buried in the snow, she managed to keep alive and reasonably comfortable by making an orifice for the smoke to escape, and digging out fuel from the drift which covered her wood-pile. Her situation was truly forlorn, but still preferable to the risk of being devoured by wolves or mountain lions, which, attracted by the smell of the slaughtered ox, had begun to prowl around her shelter before the great snow fall, but were now unable to reach her beneath the snowy bulwarks. She suffered more, however, from the effect of the spring thaw which flooded her hut with water and forced her to shift her quarters to the wagon, which she covered with the cotton top, after removing thither her blankets and provisions. The valley was overflowed by the melting of the snows, and for two weeks she was unable to build a fire, subsisting on uncooked Indian meal and raw beef, which she had salted early in the winter.

Late in April, she was found in the last stages of exhaustion, by a party of Indians, who kindly relieved her wants and carried her across the mountains with her household goods, and left her at the Walla Walla station. This act on the part of the savages, who were a wild and hostile tribe, was due to their admiration for the hardihood of the "young white squaw," who had maintained herself through the rigors of the winter and early spring in that awful solitude--a feat which, they said, none of their own squaws would have dared perform. The fate of her father and brothers was never ascertained, though it was conjectured that they had either lost their way or had fallen from a precipice.

Miss Riker afterwards married, and, as a pioneer wife, found a sphere of usefulness for which her high qualities of character admirably fitted her.

Among the most authentic histories of these bands of early pioneers which undertook to make the passage of this region thirty years since, when it involved such difficulties and dangers, is the following:

In the year 1846, soon after the commencement of the Mexican War, a party of emigrants undertook to cross the Continent, with the intention of settling on the Pacific coast. The party consisted of J. F. Reed, wife, and four children; Jacob Donner, wife, and seven children; William Pike, wife, and two children; William Foster, wife, and one child; Lewis Kiesburg; wife, and one child; Mrs. Murphy, a widow woman, and five children; William McCutcheon, wife, and one child; W. H. Eddy, wife, and two children; W. Graves, wife, and eight children; Jay Fosdicks, and his wife; John Denton, Noah James, Patrick Dolan, Samuel Shoemaker, C. F. Stanton, Milton Elliot, ------ Smith, Joseph Rianhard, Augustus Spized, John Baptiste, ------ Antoine, ------ Herring, ------ Hallerin, Charles Burger, and Baylie Williams, making a total of sixty-five souls, of whom ten were women, and thirty-one were children.

Having supplied themselves with wagons, horses, cattle, provisions, arms, ammunition, and other articles requisite for their enterprise, they set out on their journey from the Mississippi, and, after a toilsome march of many weeks across the prairies, they reached, late in the summer of that year, the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains. Resting for a few days in a grassy valley, and, gazing with wistful eyes on the mighty peaks which towered beyond them, they girded up their loins for the novel toils and perils they were soon to encounter, and pushed on, expecting to follow the great military route which would conduct them, before the winter snows, to the sunny slopes which are fanned by the breezes of the peaceful ocean.

They reached the Sweet-Water River, on the eastern side of the mountains, late in August. While in camp there, they were induced, by the representations of one Lansford W. Hastings, to take a new route to the Pacific coast. Relying on the truth of these statements, and full of hope that they would thus shorten their journey, they left the beaten track and started onward through an unknown region. Long before they had reached the valley of the Great Salt Lake, they began to encounter the greatest difficulties. At one time they found themselves in a dense forest, and, seeing no outlet or passage, were forced to cut their way through, making only forty miles progress in thirty days.

In September, they were passing through the Utah Valley, since occupied by the Mormons. Here death invaded their ranks, and removed Mr. Hallerin. This and an accident to one of the wagons, detained them two days.

Pursuing their march, they were next forced to travel across a desert tract without grass or water, and lost many cattle.

At this point of the journey, the gloomiest forebodings seized the stoutest heart. They were in a rugged and desolate region, far from all hope of succor, surrounded by hostile Indians, their cattle dying, and their stock of provisions lessening rapidly, with the sad conviction hourly forcing itself upon their minds, that they had been betrayed by one of their own countrymen.

Some of the families had already been completely ruined by the loss of their cattle and by being forced to abandon their goods and property. They were in complete darkness as to the character of the road before them. To retreat across the desert to Bridger, was impossible. There was no way left to them but to advance; and this they now regarded as perilous in the extreme. The cattle that survived were exhausted and broken down; but to remain there was to die. Some of the men, broken by their toils and sufferings, lay down and declared they might as well die there as further on; others cursed the deception of which they had been the victims; others uttered silent prayers, and then sought to raise the drooping spirits of their comrades, and encourage them to press forward. Of these last were the females of the party--wives, who never faltered in these hours of trial, but sustained their husbands in their dark moods; and mothers, who fought the dreadful battle, thinking more of their children than of themselves.

Once more the party resumed their journey, but only to meet fresh disasters.

"Thirty-six head of working cattle were lost, and the oxen that survived were greatly injured. One of Mr. Reed's wagons was brought to camp; and two, with all they contained, were buried in the plain. George Donner lost one wagon. Kiesburg also lost a wagon. The atmosphere was so dry upon the plain, that the wood-work of all the wagons shrank to a degree that made it next to impossible to get any of them through.

"Having yoked some loose cows, as a team for Mr. Reed, they broke up their camp, on the morning of September 16th, and resumed their toilsome journey, with feelings which can be appreciated by those only who have traveled the road under somewhat similar circumstances. On this day they traveled six miles, encountering a very severe snow storm. About three o'clock in the afternoon, they met Milton Elliot and William Graves, returning from a fruitless effort to find some cattle that had strayed away. They informed them that they were in the immediate vicinity of a spring."

This spring they succeeded in reaching, and there they encamped for the night. At the early dawn, on September 17th, they resumed their journey, and, at four o'clock A. M. of the 18th, they arrived at water and grass, some of their cattle having meanwhile perished, and the teams which survived being in a very enfeebled condition. Here the most of the little property which Mr. Reed still had was burned, or cached, together with that of others. Mr. Eddy now proposed putting his team on Mr. Reed's wagon, and letting Mr. Pike have his wagon so that the three families could be taken on. This was done. They remained in camp during the day of the 18th, to complete these arrangements, and to recruit their exhausted cattle.

The journey was continued, with scarcely any interruption or accident, until the first of October, when some Indians stole a yoke of oxen from Mr. Graves. Other thefts followed, and it became evident that the party would suffer severely from the hostility of the Indians.

A large number of cattle were stolen or shot by the merciless marauders. The women were kept in a perpetual state of alarm by the proximity of the savages. Maternal love and anxiety for those thirty-one innocent children now exposed to captivity and death at the hands of the prowling redskins, made the lives of those unfortunate matrons one long, sad vigil. They could meet death locked in the fastnesses of the mountains, or in the desolate plain; they could even lay the remains of those dear to them, far from home, in the darkest cañon of those terrible mountains, but the thought of seeing their children torn from their embrace and borne into a barbarous captivity, was too much for their woman's natures. The camp was the scene of tears and mourning from an apprehension more dreadful even than real sufferings.

The fear of starvation, also, at this stage in their journey, began to be felt. An account was taken of their stock of provisions, and it was found that they would last only a few weeks longer, and that only by putting the party on allowances.

Here, again, the self-sacrificing spirit that woman always shows in hours of trial, shone out with surpassing brightness. Often did those devoted wives and mothers take from their own scanty portion to satisfy the cravings of their husbands and children.

For some weeks after the 19th of October, 1846, the forlorn band moved slowly on their course through those terrible mountains. Sometimes climbing steeps which the foot of white man had never before scaled, sometimes descending yawning cañons, where a single misstep would have plunged them into the abyss hundreds of feet below. The winter fairly commenced in October. The snow was piled up by the winds into drifts in some places forty feet deep, through which they had to burrow or dig their way. A sudden rise in the temperature converted the snow into slush, and forced them to wade waist deep through it, or lie drenched to the skin in their wretched camp.

One by one their cattle had given out, and their only supply of meat was from the chance game which crossed their track. At last their entire stock of provisions was exhausted, and they stood face to face with the grim specter of starvation. They had now encamped in the mountains, burrowing in the deep snow, or building rude cabins, which poorly sufficed to ward off the biting blast, and every day their condition was growing more pitiable.

On the 4th of January, 1847, Mr. Eddy, seeing that all would soon perish unless food were quickly obtained, resolved to take his gun and press forward alone. He informed the party of his purpose. They besought him not to leave them. But some of the women, recognizing the necessity of his expedition, and excited by the feeble wails of their perishing children, bade him God-speed. One of them, Mary Graves, who had shown an iron nerve and endurance all through their awful march, insisted that she would accompany him or perish. The two accordingly set forward. Mr. Eddy soon afterwards had the good fortune to shoot a deer, and the couple made a hearty meal on the entrails of the animal.

The next day several of the party came up with them, and feasted on the carcass of the deer. Their number during the preceding night had again been lessened by the death of Jay Fosdicks. The survivors, somewhat refreshed, returned to their camp on the following day.

The Indians Lewis and Salvadore, being threatened with death by the famished emigrants, had some days before stolen away. After the deer had been consumed, and while Mr. Eddy's party were returning to camp, they fell upon the tracks of these fugitives; Foster, who was at times insane through his sufferings, followed the trail and overtook and killed them both. He cut the flesh from their bones and dried it for future use. Mr. Eddy and a few of the party, in their wanderings, at length reached an Indian village, where their immediate sufferings were relieved.

The government of California being informed of the imminent peril of the emigrants in the mountain camp, took measures to send out relief, and a number of inhabitants contributed articles of clothing and provisions. Two expeditions, however, failed to cross the mountains in consequence of the depth of the snow. At length, a party of seven men, headed by Aquilla Glover, and accompanied by Mr. Eddy, who, though weak, insisted on returning to ascertain the fate of his beloved wife and children, succeeded in crossing the mountains and reaching the camp.

The last rays of the setting sun were fading from the mountain-tops as the succoring party arrived at the camp of the wanderers. All was silent as the grave. The wasted forms of some of the wretched sufferers were reposing on beds of snow outside the miserable shelters which they had heaped up to protect them from the bitter nights. When they heard the shouts of the new comers, they feebly rose to a sitting posture and glared wildly at them. Women with faces that looked like death's heads were clasping to their hollow bosoms children which had wasted to skeletons.

Slowly the perception of the purpose for which their visitors had come, dawned upon their weakened intellects; they smiled, they gibbered, they stretched out their bony arms and hurrahed in hollow tones. Some began to stamp and rave, invoking the bitterest curses upon the mountains, the snow, and on the name of Lansford W. Hastings; others wept and bewailed their sad fate; the women alone showed firmness and self-possession; they fell down and prayed, thanking God for delivering them from a terrible fate, and imploring His blessing upon those who had come to their relief.

Upon going down into the cabins of this mountain camp, the party were presented with sights of woe and scenes of horror, the full tale of which never will and never should be told; sights which, although the emigrants had not yet commenced eating the dead, were so revolting that they were compelled to withdraw and make a fire where they would not be under the necessity of looking upon the painful spectacle.

Fourteen, nearly all men, had actually perished of hunger and cold. The remnant were in a condition beyond the power of language to describe, or even of the imagination to conceive. A spectacle more appalling was never presented in the annals of human suffering. For weeks many of the sufferers had been living on bullocks' hides, and even more loathsome food, and some, in the agonies of hunger, were about to dig up the bodies of their dead companions for the purpose of prolonging their own wretched existence.

The females showed that fertility of resource for which woman is so remarkable in trying crises. Mrs. Reed, who lived in Brinn's snow-cabin, had, during a considerable length of time, supported herself and four children by cracking and boiling again the bones from which Brinn's family had carefully scraped all the meat. These bones she had often taken and boiled again and again for the purpose of extracting the least remaining portion of nutriment. Mrs. Eddy and all but one of her children had perished.

The condition of the unfortunates drew tears from the eyes of their preservers. Their outward appearance was less painful and revolting, even, than the change which had taken place in their minds and moral natures.

Many of them had in a great measure lost all self-respect. Untold sufferings had broken their spirits and prostrated everything like an honorable and commendable pride. Misfortune had dried up the fountains of the heart; and the dead, whom their weakness had made it impossible to carry out, were dragged from their cabins by means of ropes, with an apathy that afforded a faint indication of the change which a few weeks of dire suffering had produced in hearts that once sympathized with the distressed and mourned the departed. With many of them, all principle, too, had been swept away by this tremendous torrent of accumulated, and accumulating calamities. It became necessary to place a guard over the little store of provisions brought to their relief; and they stole and devoured the rawhide strings from the snow-shoes of those who had come to deliver them. But some there were whom no temptation could seduce, no suffering move; who were

'Among the faithless faithful still.'

The brightest examples of these faithful few were to be found among the devoted women of that doomed band. In the midst of those terrible scenes when they seemed abandoned by God and man, the highest traits of the female character were constantly displayed. The true-hearted, affectionate wife, the loving, tender mother, the angel of mercy to her distressed comrades--in all these relations her woman's heart never failed her.

On the morning of February 20th John Rhodes, Daniel Tucker, and R. S. Mootrey, three of the party, went to the camp of George Donner, eight miles distant, taking with them a little beef. These sufferers were found with but one hide remaining. They had determined that, upon consuming this, they would dig up from the snow the bodies of those who had died from starvation. Mr. Donner was helpless. Mrs. Donner was weak, but in good health, and might have come into the settlements with Mr. Glover's party, yet she solemnly but calmly declared her determination to remain with her husband, and perform for him the last sad offices of affection and humanity. And this she did in full view of the fact that she must necessarily perish by remaining behind.

The rescuing party, after consultation, decided that their best course would be to carry the women and children across the mountains, and then return for the remnant of the sufferers. Accordingly, leaving in the mountain-camp all the provisions that they could spare, they commenced their return to the settlement with twenty-three persons, principally women and children, from whom, with a kind thoughtfulness, they concealed the horrible story of the journey of Messrs. Eddy and Foster.

A child of Mrs. Pike, and one of Mrs. Kiesburg, were carried in the arms of two of the party. Hardly had they marched two miles through the snow, when two of Mrs. Reed's children became exhausted--one of them a girl of eight, the other a little boy of four.

There were but two alternatives: either to return with them to the mountain-camp, or abandon them to death. When the mother was informed that it would be necessary to take them back, a scene of the most thrilling and painful interest ensued. She was a wife, and her affection for her husband, who was then in the settlement, dictated that she should go on; but she was also a mother, and all-powerful maternal love asserted its sway, and she determined to send forward the two children who could walk, and return herself with the two youngest, and die with them.

No argument or persuasion on the part of Mr. Glover could shake her resolution. At last, in response to his solemn promises that, after reaching Bear River, he would return to the mountain-camp and bring back her children, after standing in silence for some moments, she turned from her darling babes and asked Mr. Eddy, "Are you a mason?" A reply being given in the affirmative, she said, "will you promise me, upon the word of a mason, that when you arrive at Bear River Valley, you will return and bring back my children if we do not meantime meet their father going for them?" "I do thus promise," Mr. Glover replied. "Then I will go on," said the mother, weeping bitterly as she pronounced the words. Patty, the little girl, then took her mother by the hand and said, "Well, mamma, kiss me good-bye! I shall never see you again. I am willing to go back to our mountain-camp and die, but I cannot consent to your going back. I shall die willingly if I can believe that you will see papa. Tell him good-bye for his poor little Patty."

The mother and the children lingered in a long embrace. As Patty turned from her mother to go back to the camp, she whispered to Mr. Glover and Mr. Mootrey, who were to take her, that she was willing to go back and take care of her little brother, but that she should never see her mother again.

Before reaching the settlement Mrs. Reed met her husband, who had been driven, for some cause, from the party several weeks before, and had succeeded in crossing the mountains in safety.

Messrs. Reed and McCutchen next headed a relief party, and crossed the mountains with supplies for the remainder of the emigrants. The Reed children were alive, but terribly wasted from their dreadful sufferings.

Hunger had driven the emigrants to revolting extremities. In some of the cabins were found parts of human bodies trussed and spitted for roasting, and traces of these horrid feasts were seen about the space in front of the doors where offal was thrown.

The persons taken under Mr. Reed's guidance on the return, were Patrick Brinn, wife and five children; Mrs. Graves, and four children; Mary and Isaac Donnor, children of Jacob Donner; Solomon Work, a stepson of Jacob Donner, and two of his children. They reached the foot of the mountain without much difficulty; but they ascertained that their provisions would not last them more than a day and a half. Mr. Reed then sent three men forward with instructions to get supplies at a cache about fifteen miles from the camp. The party resumed its journey, crossed the Sierra Nevada, and after traveling about ten miles, encamped on a bleak point, on the north side of a little valley, near the head of the Yuba River. A storm set in, and continued for two days and three nights. On the morning of the third day, the clouds broke away and the weather became more intensely cold than it had been during the journey. The sufferings of the emigrants in their bleak camp were too dreadful to be described. There was the greatest difficulty in keeping up the fire, and during the night the women and children, who had on very thin clothing, were in great danger of freezing to death; when the storm passed away, the whole party were very weak, having passed two days without food. Leaving Patrick Brinn and his family and the rest of the party who were disabled, Mr. Reed, and his California friends, his two children, Solomon Hook and a Mr. Miller, pressed forward for supplies, and in five days they succeeded in reaching the settlement.

It was some weeks before a new relief party organized by Messrs. Eddy and Foster were successful in reaching the party which Reed had left. A shocking spectacle was presented to the eyes of the adventurers at the "Starved Camp" as they rightly named it. Patrick Brinn and his wife were sunning themselves with a look of vacuity upon their faces. They had eaten the two children of Jacob Donner: Mrs. Graves' body was lying near them with almost all the flesh cut from the arms and limbs. Her breasts, heart, and liver were then being boiled over the fire. Her child sat by the side of the mangled remains crying bitterly.

After being supplied with food they were left in charge of three men who undertook to conduct them to the settlement. Meanwhile Messrs. Eddy and Foster went on to the horrible mountain-camp only to be shocked and revolted by new scenes of horror. Strewed about the cabins and burrows, in the snow, were the fragments of human bodies from which the flesh had been stripped; among the debris of the hideous feasts sat the emaciated survivors looking more like cannibal-demons than human beings. Kiesburg had dug up the corpse of one of Mr. Eddy's children and devoured it, even when other food could be obtained, and the enfuriated father could with difficulty be restrained from killing the monster on the spot. Of the five surviving children at the mountain-camp, three were those of Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Donner. When the time came for the party of unfortunates to start for the settlement under the guidance of their generous protectors, Mr. Donner's condition was so feeble that he was unable to accompany them, and though Mrs. Donner was capable of traveling, she utterly refused to leave her husband while he survived. In response to the solicitations of those who urged that her husband could live but a little longer, and that her presence would not add one moment to the remaining span of his life, she expressed her solemn and unalterable purpose which no hardship or danger could change, to remain and perform for him the last sad offices of duty and affection. At the same time she manifested the profoundest solicitude for her beloved children, and implored Mr. Eddy to save them, promising all that she possessed if he would convey them in safety to the settlement. He pledged himself to carry out her wishes without recompense, or perish in the attempt.

No provisions remained to supply the needs of these unhappy beings. At the end of two hours Mr. Eddy informed Mrs. Donner that a terrible necessity constrained him to depart. It was certain that Jacob Donner would never rise from the wretched couch on which he lay, worn out with toil and wasted by famine. It was almost equally certain that unless Mrs. Donner then abandoned her unfortunate partner and accompanied Mr. Eddy and his party to the settlement, she would die of wasting famine or perish violently at the hands of some lurking cannibal. By accompanying her children she could minister to their wants and perhaps be the means of saving their lives. The all-powerful maternal instinct combined with the love of life, urged her to fly with her children from the scene of so many horrors and dangers. Well might her reason have questioned her, "Why stay and meet inevitable death since you cannot save your husband from the grave which yawns to receive him? and when your presence, your converse and hands can only beguile the few remaining hours of his existence?" Time passed. By no entreaties could she enlarge the hour of departure which had now arrived. Nor did she seek to and thus endanger the lives of those who were hastening to depart. She must decide the dread question that moment.

Rarely in the long suffering record of woman, has she been placed in circumstances of such peculiar trial, but the love of life, the instinct of self-preservation, and even maternal affection, could not triumph over her affection as a wife. Her husband begged her to save her life and leave him to die alone, assuring her that she could be of no service to him, as he could not probably survive under any circumstances until the next morning; with streaming eyes she bent over him, kissed his pale, emaciated, haggard, and even then, death-stricken cheek, and said:

"No! no! dear husband, I will remain with you, and here perish rather than leave you to die alone, with no one to soothe your dying sorrows, and close your eyes when dead. Entreat me not to leave you. Life, accompanied with the reflection that I had thus left you, would possess for me more than the bitterness of death; and death would be sweet with the thought in my last moments, that I had assuaged one pang of yours in your passage into eternity No! no! no!" She repeated, sobbing convulsively.

The parting interview between the parents and the children is represented to have been one that can never be forgotten as long as reason remains or the memory performs its functions. In the dying father the fountain of tears was dried up; but the agony on his death-stricken face and the feeble pressure of his hand on the brow of each little one as it bade him adieu for ever, told the story of his last great sorrow. As Mrs. Donner clasped her children to her heart in a parting embrace, she turned to Mr. Eddy with streaming eyes and sobbed her last words, "O, save, save, my children!"

This closing scene in the sad and eventful careers of those unfortunate emigrants was the crowning act in a long and terrible drama which illustrated, under many conditions of toil, hardship, danger, despair, and death, the courage, fortitude, patience, love, and devotion of woman.

Page 469

Mind-power and heart-power--these are the forces that move the moral universe. Which is the stronger, who shall say? If the former is within the province of the man, the latter is still more exclusively the prerogative of woman. With this she wins and rules her empire, with this she celebrates her noblest triumphs, and proves herself to be the God-delegated consoler and comforter of mankind. This is the power which moves the will to deeds of charity and mercy, which awakens the latent sympathies for suffering humanity, which establishes the law of kindness, soothes the irritated and perturbed spirit, and pours contentment and happiness into the soul.

If we could collect and concentrate into one great pulsating organ all the noble individual emotions that have stirred a million human hearts, what a prodigious agency would that be to act for good upon the world! And yet we may see something of the operation of just such an agency if we search the record of our time, watch the inner movements which control society and reflect that nearly every home contains a fractional portion of this beneficent agency, each fraction working in its way, and according to its measure, in harmony with all the others towards the same end.

Warm and fruitful as the sunshine, and subtle, too, as the ether which illumines the solar walk, we can gauge the strength of this agency only by its results. Nor can we by the symbols of language fully compass and describe even these results.

The man of science can measure the great forces of physical nature; heat, electricity, and light can all be gauged by mechanisms constructed by his hand, but by no device can he measure the forces of our moral nature.

The poet, whose insight is deeper than others' into this great and mysterious potency, can only give glimpses of its source, and draw tears by painting, in words, the traits which it induces.

The historian and biographer can record and dwell with fondness upon the acts of men and women, which were prompted by this power of the soul.

The moralist can point to them as examples to follow, or as cheering evidence of the loftier impulses of humanity. But still, in its depth and height, in its fountain, and in its remotest outflow, this power cannot be fully measured or appreciated by any standards known to man. The comprehensive and conceptive faculty of the imagination is wearied in placing before itself the springs, the action, and the boundless beneficence of this grand force, which flourishes and lives in its highest efficiency in the breast of woman. "Thanks," cries the poet of nature and of God,

"Thanks, to the human heart, by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, its fears."

We have shown how in all the ages since the landing, woman has proved her title to the possession of the manly virtues. We have shown her as a heroine, battling with the hostile powers of man and nature, and yet, even in those cases, if we were to analyze the motives which prompted her heroic acts, we should find them to spring at last from the source of power whereof we are speaking. It is out of her abounding and forceful emotional nature that she becomes a heroine. It is to relieve, to succor, or to save her dear ones, that she is brave, strong, enduring, patient, and devoted.

Frontier life has called, upon her for the exercise of these qualities, and she has nobly responded to the call. She fought; she toiled; she was undaunted by the apprehension of dangers and difficulties as well as intrepid in facing them. She bore without complaint the privations and hardships incident to such a life, and taxed every resource of body and mind in efforts to secure for her successors a home which neither peril nor trial should assail.

But this did not embrace the entire circle of her acts and her influence. To soothe, to comfort, to sustain in the trying time, to throw over the darkest hour the brightness of her sunny presence and sweet voice--by these influences she did more to establish and confirm, that civilization which our race has been carrying westward, than by even those exhibitions of manly heroism of which we have spoken.

Nine generations of men and women, through a period which a few years more will make three centuries, have been engaged in extending the frontier line, or have lived surrounded by circumstances similar to those which environ the remote border. The aggregate number of these men and women cannot be any more than estimated. Doubtless it will amount to many millions. A million helpmeets and comforters in a million homes! Mothers, wives, daughters, sisters--all supporting and buoying up the well-nigh broken spirits of the "stronger sex," and, by simple words, encouraging and stimulating to repair their desperate fortunes. Who can calculate the sum total of such an influence as this?

Among the myriad instances of the solacing and soul-inspiring power of a woman's voice in hours of darkness on the lonely border, we select a few for the purpose of showing her in this her appropriate domain.

Nearly two centuries ago, in one of those heated religious controversies which occurred in a river settlement in Massachusetts, a young man and his wife felt themselves constrained, partly through a desire for greater liberty of thought and action, and partly from natural energy of disposition, to push away from the fertile valley and establish their home on one of those bleak hillsides which form the spurs of the Green Mountain range. Here they set up their household deities, and lit the lights of the fireside in the darkness of the forest, and amid the wild loneliness of nature's hitherto untended domain.

In such situations as these, not merely from their isolation, but from the sterility of the soil and the inhospitable air of the region, the struggle for existence is often a severe one. Perseverance and self-denial, however, triumphed over all difficulties. Year after year the trees bowed themselves before the axe, and the soil surrendered its reluctant treasures in the furrow of the ploughshare.

Plenty smiled around the cabin. The light glowed on the hearth, and the benighted traveler hailed its welcome rays as he fared towards the hospitable door.

Apart from the self-interest and happiness of its inmates, it was no small benefit to others that such a home was made in that rugged country. Such homes are the outposts of the army of pioneers: here they can pause and rest, gathering courage and confidence when they regard them as establishments in the same wilderness where they are seeking to plant themselves.

Five years after their arrival their house and barns were destroyed by fire. Their cattle, farming utensils, and household furniture were all fortunately saved, and before long the buildings were replaced, and in two years all the ravages of the devouring element had been repaired. Again a happy and plenteous abode rewarded the labors of the pair. Three years rolled away in the faithful discharge of every duty incumbent upon them, each toiling in their respective sphere to increase their store and rear their large family of children.

A series of severe rains had kept them within doors for nearly ten days. One afternoon as they were sitting before their fire they experienced a peculiar sensation as though the ground on which the house stood was moving. Running out doors, they saw that the rains had loosened the hill-side soil from the rock on which it lay, and that it was slowly moving into the ravine below. Hastily collecting their children, they had barely time to escape to a rock a short distance from their house, when the landslide carried the house and barns, with the ground on which they stood, into the ravine, burying them and their entire contents beneath twenty feet of earth.

Almost worn out with his unremitting toils continued through ten years, and seeing the fruits of that toil swept away in an instant, looking around him in vain for any shelter, and far away from any helping hand, it was not surprising that the man should have given way to despair. He wept, groaned, and tore his hair, declaring that he would struggle no longer with fates which proved so adverse. "Go," said he, "Mary, to the nearest house with the children. I will die here."

His wife was one of those fragile figures which it seemed that a breath could blow away. Hers, however, was an organization which belied its apparent weakness. A brave and loving spirit animated that frail tenement. Long she strove to soothe her husband's grief, but without avail.

Gathering a thick bed of leaves and sheltering her children as well as she could from the chilly air, she returned ever and anon to the spot where her husband sat in the stupor of despair, and uttered words of comfort and timely suggestions of possible means of relief.

"We began with nothing, John, and we can begin with nothing again. You are strong, and so am I. Bethink yourself of those who pass by on their way to the great river every year at this time. These folk are good and neighborly, and will lend us willing hands to dig out of the earth the gear that we have lost by the landslip." Thus through the night, with these and like expressions, she comforted and encouraged the heart-broken man, and having at length kindled hope, succeeded in rousing him to exertion.

For two days the whole family suffered greatly while awaiting help, but that hope which the words of the wife had awakened, did not again depart. A party of passing emigrants, ascertaining the condition of the family, all turned to, and having the necessary tools, soon dug down to the house and barn, and succeeded in recovering most of the buried furniture, stores, and utensils. The unlucky couple succeeded finally in retrieving themselves, and years after, when the father was passing a prosperous old age in the valley of the Mohawk, to which section the family eventually moved, he was wont to tell how his wife had lifted him out of the depths of despair by those kind and thoughtful words, and put new life and hope into his heart during those dark days among the mountains of Massachusetts.

There is no section of our country where the presence of woman is so strong for good, and where her words of lofty cheer to the stricken and distressed are so potential as in the mountain republics on our extreme western border. There are in that section communities composed almost entirely of men who not only treat the few of the other sex who live among them, with a chivalrous respect, but who listen to their words as if they were heaven-sent messages. In one of the mining settlements of California, during the early years of that State, an epidemic fever broke out, and raged with great malignity among the miners. The settlement was more than two hundred miles from San Francisco, in a secluded mountain gorge, barren of all but the precious metal which had attracted thither a rough, and motley multitude. There was no doctor within a hundred miles, and not a single female to nurse and watch the forlorn subjects of the pestilence.

Mrs. Maurice, a married lady who had recently come from the east to San Francisco with her husband, hearing of the distress which prevailed in that mountain district, immediately set out, in company with her husband, who heartily sympathized with her generous enterprise, and crossed the Sierra Nevada for the purpose of ministering to the wants of the sick. She carried a large supply of medicines and other necessaries, and after a toilsome journey over the rough foot-paths which were then the only avenues by which the place could be reached, arrived at the settlement. By some means the miners had become apprised of her approach, and she was met by a cavalcade of rough-bearded men, a score in number, mounted on mules, as a guard of honor to escort her to the scene of her noble labors. As she came in sight, riding down the mountain side, the escort party waved their huge hats in the air and hurrahed as if they were mad, while the tears streamed down their swarthy cheeks. With heads uncovered they ranged themselves on either side of the lady and her husband, and accompanied them to the place where the pestilence was raging. Some of the sick men rose from their beds and stood with pale, fever-wasted faces at the doors of their wretched cabins, and smiled feebly and tried to shout as the noble woman drew near. Their voices were hollow and sepulchral, and the ministering angel who had visited them witnessed this moving spectacle not without tears. For two months she passed her time night and day in watching over and ministering to those unfortunate men. Snatching a nap now and then, every other available moment was given to her patients. Many died, and after receiving their last messages to friends far away in the east, she closed their eyes and passed on in her errand of mercy.

One of her patients thus testified to the efficacy of her ministrations: "As I owe my recovery to her exertions, I rejoice to give my testimony to her untiring zeal, her self-sacrificing devotion, and her angelic kindness. She never seemed to me to be happy except when engaged in alleviating the sufferings of us who were sick, and she watched over us with all the tenderness and love of a mother. Many of the sick men called her by that endeared name, and we all seemed to be her children.

"Even in the gloomiest cabins and to the most disheartened of the fever-stricken, her presence seemed to bring sunshine. Her face always wore a smile so sweet that I forgot my pain when I gazed upon her. Her voice rings in my ears even now. It was peculiarly soft and musical, and I never heard her speak but I recalled those lines of the great dramatist, 'Her voice was ever low, an excellent thing in woman.' Every sufferer waited to hear her speak and seemed to hang upon her accents. Her words were few, but so kind that we all felt that with such a friend to help us we could not long be sick.

"She was entirely forgetful of herself, so much did the poor invalids dwell in her thoughts.

"The storms of autumn raged with frightful violence throughout that gorge, and yet I have known her, while the wind was howling and the rain pouring, to go round three times in one night to the bedsides of those whose lives were hanging by a thread. Once I recollect after my recovery, going to see a young man who was very low and seemed to have life only while Mrs. Maurice bent over him. She had visited him early that evening, and had promised to come and see him again after making her rounds among her other patients. A fierce snow storm had come up and a strong man could barely maintain himself before the blast. I found the poor fellow very low. He was evidently sinking rapidly. He moved feebly and turned away his eyes, which were fixed upon me as I entered. It was already considerably past the hour when it was expected she would return, and as I bent to ask him how he was, he looked into my face with a bright eager gaze, and said in a whisper, 'ask mother to come.' I knew in an instant whom he meant and said I would go in search of her and conduct her thither through the storm.

"I had only reached the door when she met me. I never shall forget her appearance as she entered out of the howling storm and stood in that dim light all radiant with kindness and sympathy, which beamed from her face and seemed to illumine the room. The sufferer's face brightened and his frame seemed to have a sudden life breathed into it when he saw her enter. It seemed to me as if she had a miraculous healing power, for that moment he began to mend, and in a few weeks was restored to his pristine health."

It was beyond doubt that her presence and gentle words were more potent in effecting cures than were the medicines which she administered. Those who recovered and walked out when they saw her approaching, even at a distance, were wont to remove their hats and stand as she went by gazing at her as if she was an angel of light.

The scene after the last patient was convalescent, and when she came to take her departure, was indescribable. All the miners quit work and gathered in the village; a party was appointed to escort her to the mountain and the rest formed a long line on each side and stood bareheaded and some of them weeping as she passed through.

The mounted men accompanied her and her husband and their guide to the top of the mountain. All of the escort had been her patients and some of them were still wasted and wan from the fever. When they bade her farewell there was not a dry eye among them, and long after she had left them they could have been seen gazing after the noble matron who had visited and comforted them in their grievous sickness and pain.

Life in the Rocky Mountains before the great transcontinental line was built was remarkable for concentrating in itself the extremest forms of almost every peril, hardship, and privation which is incident to the frontier. Even at the present day and with the increased facilities for reaching the Atlantic and Pacific coast by that single railroad, the greater part of the region far north and far south of that line of travel is still isolated from the world by vast distances and great natural obstacles to communication between the different points of settlement.

So much the more valuable and stronger therefore upon that field is the emotional force of good women. Such there were and are scattered through that rocky wilderness whose ministrations, in many a lonely cabin, and with many a wayfaring band, are like those of the angel who visited the prophet of old when he dwelt "in a desert apart".

An incident is told of a party of emigrants, who were journeying through Idaho that powerfully illustrates this idea.

There were five in the party, viz. James Peterson, an aged man, his two daughters, his son, and his son's wife.

While pursuing their toilsome and devious course through the gorges and up and down the steeps, a friendly Indian whom they met informed them that a few miles from the route they were following, a body of men were starving in an almost inaccessible ravine where they had been prospecting for gold. Mr. Peterson and his son, although they pitied the unfortunate gold hunters, were disinclined to turn from their course, judging that the difficulties of reaching them, and of conveying the necessary stores over the rocks and across the rapid torrents were such that they would render the attempt wholly impracticable.

The two daughters, as well as the wife of young Peterson, refused to listen to the cold dictates of prudence which controlled Mr. Peterson and his son: they saw in imagination only the wretched starving men, and their hearts yearned to relieve them.

Turning a deaf ear to the arguments and persuasions of the elder and younger Peterson, they urged in eloquent and pleading tones that they might be allowed to follow the impulses of kindness and pity and visit the objects of their compassion. The father could stay with the team and the brother and husband could accompany them under the guidance of the Indian, on their errand of mercy.

Their prayers and persuasions at last prevailed over the objections which were offered. Selecting the most concentrated and nourishing food, which their store of provisions embraced, young Peterson and the Indian loaded themselves with all that they could carry, the three women, who were strong and active, also bearing a portion of the supplies. The party, after a most difficult and toilsome march on foot, succeeded in reaching the top of the mountain, from which they could look down into the ravine upon the spot where the unfortunate men were encamped. They could see no sign of life, and feared they had come too late.

As they neared the place, picking their way down precipices where a single misstep would have been death, one of the women waved her handkerchief and the men shouted at the top of their voices. No response came back except the echoes which reverberated from the wall of the mountain opposite. The rays of the setting sun fell on seven human forms stretched on the ground. One of these forms at length raised itself to a sitting posture and gazed with a dazed look at the rescuers hastening towards them. The rest had given up all hope and lain down to die.

A spoonful of stimulant was immediately administered to each of the seven sufferers, and kindling a fire, the women quickly prepared broth with the dried meat which they had brought. The starving men were in a light-headed condition, induced by long fasting, and could scarcely comprehend that they were saved. "Who be those, Jim, walking round that fire; not women?" said one of the men. "No, Pete," was the reply, "them's angels; didn't you hear 'em sing to us a spell ago?" The kind words with which the three women had sought to recall the wretched wayfarers to life and hope might well have been mistaken for an angel's song. One of the men afterwards said he dreamed he was in heaven, and when his eyes were opened by the sound of those sweet voices, and he saw those noble girls, he knew his dream had come true.

Another said that those voices brought him back to life and hope, more than all the food and stimulants.

For a week these angels of mercy nursed and fed the starving men, the Indian meanwhile having shot a mountain goat, which increased their supplies, and at the end of that period the men were sufficiently recruited to start, in company with their preservers, for the camp, where Mr. Peterson was awaiting the return of his daughters, of whose safety he had been already informed by the Indian.

When the rescued men came to bid them farewell, they brought a bag containing a hundred pounds weight of gold dust, the price for which would have been their lives, but for those devoted women, and begged them to accept it, not as a reward, but as a token of their gratitude. The girls refused to take the gift, believing that the adventurous miners needed it, and that they had been amply rewarded by the reflection that they had saved seven lives.

The parting, on both sides, was tearful, the rough miners being more affected than even the women. Each party pursued its separate course, the one towards Oregon, the other towards Utah; but after the Petersons had reached the spot where they encamped that night, they discovered the bag of gold, which the miners had secretly deposited in the wagon. The treasure thus forced upon them was divided between the Miss Petersons and their sister-in-law. Bright and pure as that metal was, it was incomparably less lustrous than the deeds which it rewarded, and infinitely less pure than the motives which prompted them.

Finely has a poet of our own time celebrated the wondrous power of those words of cheer and comfort which woman utters so often to the unfortunate.

O! ever when the happy laugh is dumb,
All the joy gone, and all the sorrow come,
When loss, despair, and soul-distracting pain,
Wring the sad heart and rack the throbbing brain,
The only hope--the only comfort heard--
Comes in the music of a woman's word.
Like beacon-bell on some wild island shore,
Silverly ringing through the tempest's roar,
Whose sound borne shipward through the ocean gloom
Tells of the path and turns her from her doom.

Acting within their own homes, who can sum up the entire amount of good which the frontier wife, mother, sister, and daughter have accomplished in their capacities as emotional and sympathetic beings? How many fevered brows have they cooled, how many gloomy moods have they illumined, how many wavering hearts have they stayed and confirmed?

This service of the heart is rendered so freely and so often that it ceases to attract the attention it merits. Like the vital air and sunshine, it is so free and spontaneous that one rarely pauses to thank God for it. The outflow of sympathy, the kind word or act, and all the long sacrifice of woman's days pass too often without a thought, or a word, from those who perhaps might droop and die without them.

England has its Westminster Abbey, beneath whose clustered arches statesmen, philanthropists, warriors, and kings repose in a mausoleum, whither men repair to gaze at the monumental bust, the storied urn, and proud epitaph; but where is the mausoleum which preserves the names and virtues of those gentle, unobtrusive women--the heroines and comforters of the frontier home? In the East, the simple slabs of stone which record their names have crumbled into the dust of the churchyard. In the far West, they sleep on the prairie and mountain slope, with scarcely a memorial to mark the spot.

Nowhere more strongly are the manifestations of heart-power shown than among the women of our remote border. Speaking of them, one who long lived in that region says, "If you are sick, there is nothing which sympathy and care can devise or perform, which is not done for you. No sister ever hung over the throbbing brain, or fluttering pulse, of a brother with more tenderness and fidelity. This is as true of the lady whose hand has only figured her embroidery or swept her guitar, as of the cottage-girl, wringing from her laundry the foam of the mountain stream. If I must be cast, in sickness or destitution, on the care of a stranger, let it be in California; but let it be before avarice has hardened the heart and made a god of gold."

What is said of the California wives, mothers, and sisters, may, with equal force, be applied to woman throughout the whole vast mountain region, including ten immense states and territories. In the mining districts, on the wild cattle ranche, in the eyrie, perched, like an eagle's nest, on the crest of those sky-piercing summits, or on the secluded valley farm, wherever there is a home to be brightened, a sick bed to be tended, or a wounded spirit to be healed, there is woman seen as a minister of comfort, consolation, and joy.

The military posts on the frontier have long had reason to thank the wives of the soldiers and officers for their kindness, manifested in numberless ways.

One of these ladies was Mrs. R------, who accompanied her husband to his post on the Rio Grande, in 1856.

Here she remained with him for more than three years, till that grand mustering of all the powers of the Republic to the long contested battle-grounds along the Potomac. Their life on the Mexican frontier was full of interest, novelty, and adventure. The First Artillery was often engaged in repulsing the irregular and roving bands of Cortinas, who rode over the narrow boundary river in frequent raids and stealing expeditions into Texas. When in camp, Mrs. Ricketts greatly endeared herself to the men in her husband's company by constant acts of kindness to the sick, and by showing a cheerful and lively disposition amid all the hardships and annoyances of garrison life, at such a distance from home and from the comforts and refinements of our American civilization.

She was a spirit of mercy as well as good cheer; and many a poor fellow knew that, if he could but get her ear, his penance in the guard-house for some violation of the regulations, would be far less severe on account of her gentle and womanly plea.

She afterwards shared her husband's imprisonment in Richmond. Captain R------ had been severely wounded and grew rapidly worse. The gloomiest forebodings pressed like lead upon the brave heart of the devoted wife. Again the surgeons consulted over his dreadfully swollen leg, and prescribed amputation; and again it was spared to the entreaties of his wife, who was certain that his now greatly enfeebled condition would not survive the shock. Much of the time he lay unconscious, and for weeks his life depended entirely on the untiring patience and skill with which his wife soothed down the rudeness of his prison-house, cheering him and other prisoners who were so fortunate as to be in the room with him, and alleviating the slow misery that was settling like a pall upon him.

As the pebble which stirs the lake in wider and ever wider circles, so the genial emotion which begins in the family extends to the neighborhood, and sometimes embraces the whole human race. Hence arises the philanthropic kindness of some, and the large-hearted charity that is willing to labor anywhere and in any manner to relieve the wants of all who are suffering pain or privation.

In all our wars from the Revolutionary contest to the present time, woman's work in the army hospitals, and even on the battle-field, as a nurse, has been a crown to womanhood and a blessing to our civilization and age. Many a life that had hitherto been marked only by the domestic virtues and the charities of home, became enlarged and ennobled in this wider sphere of duty.

Wrestling in grim patience with unceasing pain; to lie weak and helpless, thinking of the loved ones on the far off hillside, or thirsty with unspeakable longing for one draught of cold water from the spring by the big rock at the old homestead; to yearn, through long, hot nights, for one touch of the cool, soft hand of a sister or a wife on the throbbing temples, the wounded soldier saw with joy unspeakable the coming of these ministering angels. Then the great gashes would be bathed with cooling washes, or the grateful draught poured between the thin, chalky lips, or the painful, inflamed stump would be lifted and a pad of cool, soft lint, fitted under it. These ministrations carried with, them a moral cheer and a soothing that was more salutary and healing than medicines and creature comforts.

The poor wounded soldier was assured in tones, to whose pleasant and homelike accents his ear had long been a stranger, that his valor should not be forgotten, that they too had a son, a brother, a father, or a husband in the army. After a pallid face and bony fingers were bathed, sometimes a chapter in the New Testament or a paragraph from the newspapers would be read in tones low but distinct, in grateful contrast to the hoarse battle shouts that had been lingering in his ear for weeks.

Then the good lady would act as amanuensis for some poor fellow who had an armless sleeve, and write down for loving eyes and heavy hearts in some distant village the same old soldier's story, told a thousand times by a thousand firesides, but always more charming than any story in the Arabian Nights,--how, on that great day, he stood with his company on a hillside, and saw the long line of the enemy come rolling across the valley; how, when, the cannon opened on them, he could see the rough, ragged gaps opening in the line; how they closed up and moved on; how this friend fell on one side, and poor Jimmy ------ on the other; and then he felt a general crash, and a burning pain, and the musket dropped out of his hand; then the ambulance and the amputation, and what the surgeon said about his pluck; and then the weakness, and the pain, and the hunger; and how much better he was now; and how kind the ladies had been to him.

Such offices as these lift woman above the plane of earthly experience and place her a little lower than the angels. Only she can fill the measure of such duties, and only she does fill them.

Among the deities of the Eastern Pantheon, the god representing the destroyer is embodied under the form of a man, while the preserver is symbolized under the form of a woman. This is an adaptation in Polytheism of a great and true idea. Woman is a preserver. Her's is the conservative influence of society. It is from man that the destructive forces that shake the social organization emanate. He wars on his kind and the earth shakes under the tread of his armies. He organizes those mighty revolutionary movements which pull down the fabric of states. He is restless, aggressive, warlike. But it is woman's province to keep. Her mission is peace.

A party of soldiers passing through the western wilds, sees in the distance a body of horsemen approaching. Cocking their rifles and putting themselves in a defensive attitude, they prepare for battle. But when they see that there are women among the riders who are galloping towards them, they relax their line and restore their rifles to their shoulders. They know there will be no battle, for woman's presence means peace.

Woman is the guardian of our race. In the household she is saving; in the family she is protecting, and everywhere her influence is that which keeps.

It is this characteristic that makes her presence on the frontier so essential to a successful prosecution of true pioneer enterprises. The man's work is one of destruction and subjugation. He must level the forest, break the soil, and fight all the forces that oppose him in his progress. Woman guards the health and life of the household, hoards the stores of the family, and economizes the surplus strength of her husband, father, or son.

We are speaking now of the sex as it is seen in a new country and in remote settlements. In crowded cities, amid a superabundant wealth, and an idle and luxurious mode of life, we see too often the types of selfish, frivolous, and conventional females such as are hardly known on the border. But even in these, populous districts the same spirit is not unfrequently shown, with important results, in respect to the accumulation of great fortunes.

Some forty years since, a capitalist who now counts his fortune by the tens of millions, informed his wife that if he was only in possession of five thousand dollars, he could derive great gains from a business into which he designed to enter. To his astonishment she immediately brought him a bank book showing a balance of five thousand dollars, the savings of many years, and told him to use it as he thought best. Those hoardings judiciously invested laid the foundation of one of the largest properties owned by a single man upon this continent.

As a conserving agency, the spirit and influence of woman is of course most strongly exerted within the circle of her own family. Here she knits the ties that binds that circle together, and gathers and holds the material and moral resources which make the household what it is. When disaster comes, it is her study to prevent disintegration and keep the home uninjured and unbroken.

While a family were flying from a ferocious band of tories during the Revolution, in the confusion, one of the children was left behind. It was the eldest daughter who first discovered the fact, and only she dared to return and save her little brother from their blood-thirsty enemies. It was dark and rainy, and imminent danger would attend the effort to rescue the lad. But the brave girl hastened back; reached the house still in possession of the British; begged the sentinel to let her enter; and though repeatedly repulsed doubled the earnestness of her entreaties, and finally gained admittance. She found the child in his chamber, hastened down stairs and passing the sentry, fled with the shot whizzing past her head, and with the child soon joined the rest of the family.

When deprived of her natural protector and left the sole guardian of her children she becomes a prodigy of watchful care.

Some years since, one of the small islands on our coast was inhabited by a single poor family. The father was taken suddenly ill. There was no physician. The wife, on whom every labor for the household devolved, was sleepless in care and tenderness by the bedside of her suffering husband. Every remedy in her power to procure was administered, but the disease was acute, and he died.

Seven young children mourned around the lifeless corpse. They were the sole beings upon that desolate spot. Did the mother indulge the grief of her spirit, and sit down in despair? No! she entered upon the arduous and sacred duties of her station. She felt that there was no hand to assist her in burying her dead. Providing, as far as possible, for the comfort of her little ones, she put her babe into the arms of the oldest, and charged the two next in age to watch the corpse of their father. She unmoored her husband's fishing boat, which, but two days before, he had guided over the seas to obtain food for his family. She dared not yield to those tender recollections which might have unnerved her arm. The nearest island was at the distance of three miles. Strong winds lashed the waters to foam. Over the loud billows, that wearied and sorrowful woman rowed, and was preserved. She reached the next island, and obtained the necessary aid. With such energy did her duty to her desolate babes inspire her, that the voyage which, depended upon her individual effort was performed in a shorter time than the returning one, when the oars were managed by two men, who went to assist in the last offices to the dead.

But female influence in the way of conservation, is not bounded by the narrow limits of home, family, and kindred. It is also seen on a wider field and in the preservation of other interests. The property, health, and life of strangers often become the object of woman's careful guardianship. Nearly thirty years since a heavily freighted vessel set sail from an English port bound for the Pacific coast. After a voyage of more than three months it reached the Sandwich Islands, and after remaining there a week, sailed in the direction of Oregon and British Columbia.

When two days out from Honolulu, the captain and mate were taken down with fever, which not only confined them, to their berths, but by its delirium incapacitated them from giving instructions respecting the navigation of the vessel. The third officer, upon whom the command devolved, was shortly afterwards washed overboard and lost in a gale. The rest of the crew were of the most common and ignorant class of sailors, not even knowing how to read and write. The heavens, overspread with clouds which obscured both the sun and the stars, was a sealed book to the man at the wheel, and the good ship, at the mercy of the winds and waves, was drifting they knew not whither.

At this juncture the wife of the captain stepped to the front, and boldly assumed the command. She had been reared on Cape Cod, and was a woman of uncommon intelligence and strength of character. Her husband, in the early stages of his illness, had thoughtfully instructed her in the rudiments of navigation, and foreseeing that such knowledge might be the means of enabling her to steer the ship safely to port, she diligently employed every moment that she could spare from the necessary attendance on the sick men, in studying the manual of navigation. She soon learned how to calculate latitude and longitude. When the third officer was washed overboard she knew that all must then depend upon her, and at once put herself in communication with the steersman, and instructed him as to their true position. The men all recognized the value of her knowledge, and obeyed her as if she had been their chief from the outset. The correctness of her calculations was soon proved, and such was her firmness and kindness while in command, that the sailors came to regard her as a superior being who had been sent from heaven to help them out of their dangers. The clouds at length cleared away, the wind subsided, and after a voyage of twenty-five days, the ship made the mouth of the Columbia River. Meanwhile by diligent nursing she had also contributed to save the lives of her husband and his second officer. But for her knowledge and firmness it was acknowledged by all that the ship would have been lost; and a large salvage was allowed her by the owners as a reward for her energy and intelligence in saving the vessel and its valuable cargo.

Another of these guardians on the deep was Mrs. Spalding, of Georgia. She was one of those patriot women of the Revolution of whom we have already spoken. The part she bore in that struggle, and the anxieties to which she had been necessarily subjected, so impaired her health that some years after the termination of the war an ocean voyage and a European climate was prescribed for her restoration.

While crossing the Atlantic a large ship painted black, carrying twelve guns, was seen to windward running across their course. She was evidently either a privateer or a pirate. As there was no hope of out-sailing her, it was judged best to boldly keep the vessel on her course, trusting that its size and appearance might deter the strange craft from attacking it.

Mr. Spalding, realizing the danger of their situation, and not daring to trust himself with an interview till the crisis was past, requested the captain to go below and do what he could for the security of his family.

The captain on visiting the cabin, found that Mrs. Spalding had placed her daughter-in-law and the other inmates of the cabin, for safety, in the two state-rooms, filling the berths with the cots and bedding from the outer cabin. She had then taken her station beside the scuttle, which led from the outer cabin to the magazine, with two buckets of water. Having noticed that the two cabin-boys were heedless, she had determined herself to keep watch over the magazine. She did so till the danger was past. The captain took in his light sails, hoisted his boarding nettings, opened his ports, and stood on upon his course. The privateer waited till the ship was within a mile, then fired a gun to windward, and stood on her way. This ruse preserved the ship.

America, like England, has had her Grace Darlings, whose lives have been devoted to the rescue of drowning sailors. Such a life was that of Kate Moore, who some years since resided on a secluded island in the Sound. Disasters frequently occur to vessels which are driven round Montauk Point, and sometimes in the Sound when they are homeward bound; and at such times she was always on the alert. She had so thoroughly cultivated the sense of hearing, that she could distinguish amid the howling storm the shrieks of the drowning mariners, and thus direct a boat, which she had learned to manage most dexterously, in the darkest night, to the spot where a fellow mortal was perishing. Though well educated and refined, she possessed none of the affected delicacy which characterizes too many town-bred misses, but, adapting herself to the peculiar exigencies of her father's humble yet honorable calling, she was ever ready to lend a helping hand, and shrank from no danger if duty pointed that way. In the gloom and terror of the stormy night, amid perils at all hours of the day and all seasons of the year, she launched her barque on the threatening waves, and assisted her aged and feeble father in saving the lives of twenty-one persons during the last fifteen years. Such conduct, like that of Grace Darling, to whom Kate Moore has been justly compared, needs no comment; it stamps its moral at once and indelibly upon the heart of every reader.

That great land ocean which stretches southwestward from Fort Leavenworth on the Missouri, to the fountains of the great rivers of Texas, has its perils to be guarded against as well as the stormy Atlantic. The voyagers over that expanse, as well as the mariners on the ocean, have not seldom owed their safety to the watchfulness of the prairie woman, who possesses, in common with her more cultivated and conventional sisters, a keen insight into character. This enables her to take early note of danger arising from the agency of bad men, and avoid it.

In 1858, a gentleman, accompanied by a Creek Indian as a guide, while escorting his sister to her husband, who was stationed at Fort Wayne, in the Indian Territory, near the southwest corner of Missouri, lost the trail, and the party found themselves, at nightfall, in an immense plain, which showed no signs of any habitation. Riding southward in the darkness, they saw, at last, a light twinkling in the distance, and, directing their course toward it, they discovered that it proceeded from the window of a lonely cabin. Knocking at the door, a man of singularly repulsive appearance responded to the summons--invited them in. Three rough-looking characters were sitting around the fire. The hospitalities of the cabin were bargained for, the horses and Indian being quartered in a shed, while the gentleman and his sister were provided with shakedowns in the two partitions of the loft. The only inmates of the house besides the four whom we have mentioned was a girl some fifteen years of age, the daughter of one of the men. The lady, who was very much fatigued, was waited upon by this girl, who moved about as if she was in a dream. She was very pale, and had a look as if she was repressing some great fear, or was burdened by some terrible secret.

When she accompanied the lady to her sleeping apartment, she whispered to her hurriedly that she wished to speak to her brother, but begged her to call him without making any noise, as their lives depended upon their preserving silence. The lady, though astonished and terrified at such a revelation at that hour and place, checked the exclamation which rose to her lips, and, lifting the partition of cotton cloth which hung between the apartments, in a low tone asked her brother to come and hear what the girl had to say.

Her information was of a terrible character. They were, she said, in a den of murderers. She knew not how they could escape, unless by a miracle. It was the intention of the assassins, she believed, to murder and rob the whole party. Then, telling them to keep awake and be on their guard, she glided down to the room below. The brother and sister, listening sharply for a few minutes, heard the girl say in a loud tone, as if she intended the guests should hear her, that she was going out to the shed to look for her ear-ring, which she believed she had dropped there. They surmised she was going to put the Indian on his guard.

The gentleman had a pair of revolvers, and resolved to sell his life dearly, should he be attacked. Peering down into the room below, he saw, by the dim light, the ruffians making preparations for bloody work. Axes, knives, pistols, and guns had been brought out, and, in low whispers, the miscreants were evidently discussing the plan of attack. Sometime after midnight two of the men stole out of the door, with the obvious intention of killing the Indian, as the first act in the bloody drama. For a few minutes after their disappearance all was still, and then the silence was broken by two pistols shots in quick succession, followed by a triumphant war-whoop, which served to tell the story. The Indian, who was also armed with a revolver, must have shot his two assailants. The gentleman fired down the hatchway of the loft, killing one of the villains as he was running out of the door. The other, after shouting loudly for his partners in murder, took to his heels and fled away.

It appeared that the Indian guide, having been notified of his danger by the girl, rose from his bed and ensconced himself behind the shed. When the two men came out to attack him, he shot them both dead, and then waited, expecting that the others would have come out and furnished him with a new target.

The girl came out of her hiding place, whither she had run on hearing the shots, and looked sharply into the faces of the three dead ruffians, and finding that her father was not among them, expressed her joy that her unworthy parent had escaped the fate he richly deserved.

She told her story to the gentleman and lady while they were standing on guard and waiting for the morning to dawn. It appeared that she had been brought to the den a few days before by her father, and had become knowing to a murder which he and his companions had committed. Her mother, a pious woman, had instructed her daughter in the principles of Christianity, and had checked the evil propensities of her husband as long as she lived, but after her death, which had taken place shortly before the events we have been describing, all constraint had been removed from the evil propensities of the misguided man, and he joined the murderous gang who had just met their fate.

The natural goodness of the young girl's nature, fostered by the teachings of her guardian mother, thus exerted itself to save three lives from the assassin's stroke.

She gladly accompanied the lady on her route the following morning, and ever remained her attached protege.

Montana is one of the newest and wildest of our territories. Its position so far to the north and the peculiarly rugged face of the country, make it the fitting abode for the genius of the storms. Gathering their battalions the tempests sweep the summits and whirling round the flanks of the mountains, roar through the deep, lonely gorges with a sound louder than the ocean surges in a hurricane. The snows fill the ravines in drifts one hundred feet in depth, and such are the rigors of winter that the women who live in the fur-trading posts on that section of our northern border, are often carried across the mountains into Oregon or Washington territory, to shield them from the severities of the inclement season.

Late in the fall of 1868, a party consisting of thirty soldiers, while faring on through the mountains of that territory, were overtaken by one of these fearful snowstorms. The wind blew from the north directly in their faces, and the snow was soon piled in drifts which put a thorough embargo upon their further progress. Selecting the fittest place that could be found they pitched their tents on the snow, but hardly had they fastened the tent ropes when a blast lifted the tents in a moment, and whirled them into the sky. After a night of great suffering they found in the morning that all their mules were missing. They had probably strayed or been driven by the fury of the blast into a deep ravine south of the camp, where they had been buried beneath the enormous drifts.

The storm raged and the snow fell nearly all day. The rations were all gone, and progress against the wind and through the drifts was impossible. Another night of such bitter cold and exposure would in all probability be their last.

They shouted in unison, but their shouts were drowned in the shrieks of the tempest. Towards night the storm lulled and again they shouted, but no sound came back but the sigh of the blast. Help! help! they cried. Unhappy men, could help come to them except from on high! What was left to them but to wind their martial cloaks around them and die like soldiers in the path of duty!

But what God-sent messenger is this coming through the drifts to meet them? Not a woman! Yes, a poor, weak woman has heard their despairing cry and has hastened to succor them. Drenched and shivering with the storm she told them to follow her, and conducted them to a recess in the crags, where beneath an overhanging ledge and between projecting cliffs, a spacious shelter was afforded them. They crowded in and warmed their numbed limbs before a great fire, while their preserver brought out her stores of food for the wayfarers.

But how could a woman be there in the heart of the mountains in the wintry weather, with only the storm to speak to her?

Her husband was a miner and she a brave and self-reliant woman. He had left her two weeks before to carry his treasure of gold dust to the nearest settlement She was all alone! Alone in that rock-encompassed cabin in the realms of desolation, and still the heroine-guardian who had snatched thirty fellow beings from the jaws of death.

Solitude is the theatre where untold thousands of devoted women--the brave, the good, the loving--for ages past have acted their unviewed and unrecorded dramas in the great battle of frontier life. Warriors and statesmen have their need of praise, and crowds surround them to throw the wreath of laurel or of bay upon their fainting brows, or to follow their plumed hearse to the mausoleum which a grateful people has raised to their memory.

"Yet it may be a higher courage dwells
In one meek heart which braves an adverse fate,
Than his whose ardent soul indignant swells
Warmed by the fight or cheered through high debate,
The soldier dies surrounded, could he live
Alone to suffer and alone to strive?"

Page 501

"Within the house, within the family the woman is all: she is the inspiring, moulding, embellishing, and controlling power." This terse description of woman's influence in the household applies with double force and significance to the position of the pioneer wife and mother. Her life in that position was one long battle, one long labor, one long trial, one long sorrow. Out of this varied, searching, continuous educational process came discipline of the body, of the mind, and of the whole moral nature. Adversity, her

"Stern, ragged nurse, whose rigid lore,
With patience, many a year, she bore,"

taught her the practice of the heroic as well as of the gentler virtues; courage, labor, fortitude, plain living, charity, sobriety, pity. In that school these virtues became habitual to her mind; because their practice was enforced by the stress of circumstances. Daily and nightly, in those homes on the frontier, there is some danger to be faced, some work to be done, some suffering to be borne or some self-denial to be exercised, some sufferer to be relieved or some sympathy to be extended.

There is a two-fold result from this educational process: first, the transmission, by the law of hereditary descent, of marked traits of character to her children, who show, in a greater or less degree, their mother's nature as developed in this severe school; second, woman becomes fitted to mould the character and instruct the mind of her children in the light of her own experience and discipline. Woman is the great educator of the frontier.

Within the first half of the 18th century, in that narrow belt of thinly settled country which follows the indentation of the Atlantic ocean, in lonely cabins in the forest, or on the, hill-slope, or by the unvisited sea, most of the representative men of our Revolutionary Era first saw the light, and were pillowed on the breasts of the frontier mothers.

The biographical records of our country are bright with the names of men--the brave, the wise, the good--who were born of pioneer women, and who inherited from them those traits which, in after life, made them great and illustrious in the learned professions, in the camp, and in the councils of their native country. Who can doubt that the daughters, too, of those strong women, and the sisters of those eminent men, inheriting similar traits, exercised in their sphere as potent though silent an influence as did their brothers in the high stations to which they were called.

As by a strain of blood, inherited traits come down to succeeding generations, and, as from the breast of the mother the first elements of bodily strength are received, so from her lips are obtained those first principles of good and incentives of greatness which the sterner features and blunter feelings of the father are rarely sufficient to inculcate.

On parent knees, or later, in intervals of work or play, the soldier who fought to make us a free republic, and the statesman who laid deep and wide the foundations of our constitution, acquired from their mothers' lips those lessons of virtue and duty which made their after careers so useful to their country and memorable in history.

We have said that woman was the great educator on the frontier. She was something more than an educator, as the term is usually applied. The teaching of the rudiments of school-learning was a fraction in the sum-total of her training and influence.

The means of moulding and guiding the minds of the young upon the border are very different from what they are in more settled states of society. Education in the older states of the Union is organized in the district and high school, in the academy and the college, and is maintained by large taxation of the town, city, or state. Here are wealth, aggregations of intelligence, and a surplus of the educated labor class. Commodious and often beautiful edifices shelter the bright tribes whom the morning bell calls together beneath the eye of cultured teachers. Stately halls and quaint chapels are the seats where the higher learning is inculcated; the paraphernalia of education is splendid, the appliances are adequate, and the whole machinery by which knowledge is diffused among the young, works with a smooth regularity that makes it almost automatic.

Contrast this system which prevails to-day, and in the more settled conditions of American society, with that which prevailed in earlier years in a thinly and newly-inhabited country, and which now obtains on our frontier line, and how striking is the difference!

Indeed, how could we look for any such organism where small settlements were separated from each other by long spaces and bad roads, and where single cabins were so completely isolated, as in the New England and the Middle and Southern States a century and a half ago, or as in the earlier settled States of the West seventy years ago, or as in the newly-settled States of the West within the present generation, or as on the frontier proper to-day? Under such conditions even the district school was impracticable or inaccessible. To supply its place, each household where there were children was a training school, of which the mother was the head.

The process, under her eyes and hand, of forming the mind and character, is very slow, but it is healthy and natural. It is conducted in the short interval of severe toil. She reverts to first principles, and teaches by objects rather than by lessons. It is the character that she forms more than the mind.

She has about her a band of silent but powerful coadjutors. The sunshine and free air of the wilderness are poured around the little stranger, which soon grows into a handsome, largely-developed, vigorous nursling.

The air of the wilderness, too, is the native air of freedom: this, and the ample space wherein the young plant flourishes, makes it large in frame and broad in mind and character.

Transplant a cypress from a garden in a populous community to the deep black mould of the west, and it grows to be a forest monarch. It is Hazlitt who says "the heart reposes in greater security on the immensity of nature's works, expatiates freely there and finds elbow room and breathing space."

In the log-cabin there is perhaps but a single room: there is a bed, a table, blocks of wood for chairs, and a few wretched cooking utensils. Thank God! The life of the pioneer woman is not "cribbed and confined" to this hovel. The forest, the prairie, the mountain-side are free to her as the vital air, and the canopy of heaven is her familiar covering. A life out doors is a necessary part of both the moral and the physical education of her children.

Riding through one of the prairies of the far West, some years since, we arrived just at dusk in front of a cabin where a mother was sitting with her four young children and teaching them lessons from the great book of nature. She had shown them the sun as it set in glory, and told them of its rising and of its going down; of the clouds and of the winds, and how God made the grass and trees, and the stars, which came trooping out before their eyes. She taught them, she said, little as yet from books. She had but a Bible, a catechism, an almanac. The Bible was the only Reader in her little school. Already she had whispered in their ears the story of Jesus' life and death, and charged their infant memories with the wise and beautiful teachings of the Sermon on the Mount.

What a practical training was that which children had in that outdoor knowledge which had been useful to their mother! The chemistry of common life learned from the processes wrought out by the air and sunshine; astronomy from the great luminaries which are the clocks of the wilderness, and the science of the weather from the phenomena of the sky. There was no "cramming" in that home-school; each item of knowledge was well absorbed and assimilated, for the mother's toils made the intervals long between the lessons. So much the better for the young heart and mind, which grows, swells, and gathers force unlaced and unfettered by scholastic pedantry and repression.

It is from the mother, too, that the boy or girl must take their first lessons in the tillage of the soil, which are most readily learned in the garden, for the women are the gardeners of the frontier. Gardening is a labor of patience and virtue, and is excellent discipline for the character. A child's true life is in the fields, and should be early familiarized with the forms of vegetable life. No small part of the education of a child may be carried on by the care and assiduous contemplation of plants and flowers. Observation, experience, reflection, and reasoning, would all come of it. A flower is a whole world, pure, innocent, peacemaking.

Woman's natural fitness for the work of an educator of the human plant is seen in the readiness and zeal with which she enters into this work of tending and training the plants in a vegetable or flower garden, and the garden is one of the outdoor schools where her little ones gain their most useful instruction. The difference between plants, the variegation of colors, their relations to the air, the sunshine, the dew, the rain; the habits of plants, some erect, some creeping, some climbing, the seasons of flowering, fruitage, and seed, are impressed with ease upon the plastic mind of childhood.

From the garden it is but one step to the meadow and the forest. Here the boy and girl sees nature unaided by man working out similar processes on a grander scale. There is heroic force