West, an occasional cyclone added excitement; the cattle were apt to
stampede senselessly; and, while the Indian had not yet developed the
hostility that later made a journey across the plains so dangerous,
nevertheless the possibilities of theft were always near enough at hand
to keep the traveler alert and interested. Then there was the sandy
country of the Platte River with its buffalo--buffalo by the hundreds of
thousands, as far as the eye could reach--a marvelous sight: and beyond
that again the Rockies, by way of Fort Laramie and South Pass.

Beyond Fort Hall the Oregon Trail and the trail for California divided.
And at this point there began the terrible part of the journey--the
arid, alkaline, thirsty desert, short of game, horrible in its monotony,
deadly with its thirst. It is no wonder that, weakened by their
sufferings in this inferno, so many of the immigrants looked upon the
towering walls of the Sierras with a sinking of the heart.

While at first most of the influx of settlers was by way of Oregon,
later the stories of the new country that made their way eastward
induced travelers to go direct to California itself. The immigration,
both from Oregon in the North and by the route over the Sierras,
increased so rapidly that in 1845 there were probably about 700
Americans in the district. Those coming over the Sierras by the Carson
Sink and Salt Lake trails arrived first of all at the fort built by
Captain Sutter at the junction of the American and Sacramento rivers.

Captain Sutter was a man of Swiss parentage who had arrived in San
Francisco in 1839 without much capital and with only the assets of
considerable ability and great driving force. From the Governor he
obtained grant of a large tract of land "somewhere in the interior" for
the purposes of colonization. His colonists consisted of one German,