The summer went by with no news and no hunchback; and that winter I
stayed with an aunt of Captain Sproule's, taking care of her stock. I
got five dollars a month, and my keep, but no schooling. She wanted me
to stay the summer with her, and offered me what was almost a man's
wages; which shows how strong I was getting, and how much of a farmer I
was. I did stay and helped through the spring's work; but on Captain
Sproule's second passing of Mrs. Fogg's farm, I joined him, not as a
driver, but as a full hand. I kept thinking all the time of my mother,
and felt that if I kept to the canal I surely should find some trace of
her. In this I was doing what any detective would have done; for
everything sooner or later passed through the Erie Canal--news, goods
and passengers. But I had little hope when I thought of the flood which
surged back and forth through this river of news, and of the little bit
of a net with which I fished it for information.

All this time the stream of emigration and trade swelled, and swelled
until it became a torrent. I thought at times that all the people in the
world had gone crazy to move west. We took families, even neighborhoods,
household goods, live stock, and all the time more and more people. They
were talking about Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, and
once in a while the word Iowa was heard; and one family astonished us by
saying that they were going to Texas.

The Mormons had already made their great migration to Utah, and the
Northwestern Trail across the plains to Oregon and to California took
its quota of gold-seekers every year. John C. Fremont had crossed the
continent to California, and caused me to read my first book, _The Life
of Kit Carson_.