When they reached us, the chief held out his hand to me, and said in broken English, “How do, brother?” I shook hands with him, returning the salutation of “How do.”  My uncle then turning to me said, “Have you plenty of tobacco with you?” “O yes,” I replied rather tremblingly, for I was ill at ease.  “You can have it all if you want it.”  “I don’t want it all,” uncle replied.  “Give me one plug.”  I gave it to him and he handed it to the chief.

The war party was directly on the trail.  Four hundred mounted warriors occupy much space, composing a formidable looking band.  Following the directions which had been given us, we continued on the move.  The chief waved a signal to his men, to which they promptly responded, opening their ranks and filing to the right and to the left.  We passed on through this, living wall bristling with spears, meeting with an occasional greeting of “How do.”  Having passed through the long lines of the band my uncle said to me, “Keep straight on till night.  I will then rejoin you.  I am going to have a big smoke with the chief.”

With alacrity we obeyed this mandate, glad enough to leave such customers behind us.  I confess that I was half frightened to death, and feared I should never see my uncle again.  In the evening he joined us and laughed very heartily at me for wishing, in my trepidation, to give the chief all my tobacco.

In after life, in my intercourse with the Indians, I got bravely over being scared by any sights or sounds emanating from them.  We pressed on without molestation to Salt Lake, passing continually the newly made graves of the dead.  The cholera had broken out with awful fatality, along the whole line of the emigrants’ march, consigning thousands to burial in the wilderness.

We reached the Great Salt Lake, the home of the Mormons, in safety.  Here we remained for nearly a month.  I called on Brigham Young, and also on the old patriarch Joe Smith.  From the latter I received a commission, or power of attorney, for the consideration of two dollars, authorizing me to heal the sick, to raise the dead, and to speak all languages.  Perhaps my want of faith left me as powerless as other men, notwithstanding my commission.  We spent our time here in strolling around the city, visiting the tabernacle, bathing and fishing in the river Jordan, which empties into the lake, and in making sundry purchases for the continuation of our journey to the Pacific.

Again we started upon our journey.  After weary days of travel, without encountering any adventure of special interest, we reached the vast ridge of the Sierra Nevada mountains.  Up, up, and still up, the trail led us over the gigantic cliffs.  On the summit we found snow hundreds of feet deep, and apparently as hard as the rock which it surmounted.  We crossed the ridge by what is called the Carson route.  Descending the mountains on the western side, we find ourselves in California, and pressing on through Sacramento, to Benicia, are at our journey’s end.