valleys were occupied by the river immigration, and the tide of settlement rose until it broke over the hills on such routes as the Old Ridge Road; but these cross-country streams here and there met other trickles of population which had come up the belts of forest on the streams.  I was steering right into the wilderness; but there were far islands of occupation—­the heft of the earliest settlements strongly southern in character—­on each of the Iowa streams which I was to cross, snuggled down in the wooded bottom lands on the Missouri, and even away beyond at Salt Lake, and farther off in Oregon and California where the folk-freshet broke on the Pacific—­a wave of humanity dashing against a reef of water.

Of course, I knew very little of these things as I sat there, ignorant as I was, looking out over the grassy sea, in my prairie schooner, my four cows panting from the climb, and with the yellow-haired young woman beside me, who had been wished on me by the black-bearded man on leaving the Illinois shore.  Most of it I still had to spell out through age and experience, and some reading.  I only knew that I had been told that the Ridge Road would take me to Monterey County, if the weather wasn’t too wet, and I didn’t get drowned in a freshet at a ferry or slewed down and permanently stuck fast somewhere with all my goods.

“Gee-up,” I shouted to my cows, and cracked my blacksnake over their backs; and they strained slowly into the yoke.  The wagon began chuck-chucking along into the unknown.

“Stop!” said my passenger.  “I’ve got to wait here for my—­for my husband.”

“I can’t stop,” said I, “till I get to timber and water.”

“But I must wait,” she pleaded.  “He can’t help but find us here, because it’s the only way to come; but if we go on we may miss him—­and—­and—­ I’ve just got to stop.  Let me out, if you won’t stop.”

I whoaed up and she made as if to climb out.

“He may not get out of Dubuque to-day,” I said.  “He said so.  And for you to wait here alone, with all these movers going by, and with no place to stay to-night will be a pretty pokerish thing to do.”

Finally we agreed that I should drive on to water and timber, unless the road should fork; in which case we were to wait at the forks no matter what sort of camp it might be.

The Ridge Road followed pretty closely the route afterward taken by the Illinois Central Railroad; but the railroad takes the easiest grades, while the Ridge Road kept to the high ground; so that at some places it lay a long way north or south of the railway route on which trains were running as far as Manchester within about two years.  It veered off toward the head waters of White Water Creek on that first day’s journey; and near a new farm, where they kept a tavern, we stopped because there was water in the well, and hay and firewood for sale.  It was still early.  The yellow-haired woman, whose name I did not know, alighted, and when I found that they would keep her for the night, went toward the farm-house without thanking me—­but she was too much worried about something to think of that, I guess; but she turned and came back.