home when the storm struck them. After they had gone four miles they
were compelled to abandon their wagon; the snow fell in heavy masses
"as if thrown from a scoop-shovel"; arriving within two miles of their
habitation, they were forced to trust to the instinct of their
animals, and reached home hanging to the tails of their steers. Not
all were so fortunate. Some were found weeks afterwards in the snow-
drifts, their flesh gnawed by famished wolves; and the fate of others
was unknown until the late spring sunshine revealed their resting-
places. To those who escaped, the winter was tedious and terrible. It
is hard for us to understand the isolation to which such weather
condemned the pioneer. For weeks they remained in their cabins hoping
for some mitigation of the frost. When at last they were driven out by
the fear of famine, the labor of establishing communications was
enormous. They finally made roads by "wallowing through the snow," as
an Illinois historian expresses it, and going patiently over the same
track until the snow was trampled hard and rounded like a turnpike.
These roads lasted far into the spring, when the snow had melted from
the plains, and wound for miles like threads of silver over the rich
black loam of the prairies. After that winter game was never again so
plentiful in the State. Much still remained, of course, but it never
recovered entirely from the rigors of that season and the stupid
enterprise of the pioneer hunters, who, when they came out of their
snow-beleaguered cabins, began chasing and killing the starved deer by
herds. It was easy work; the crust of the snow was strong enough to
bear the weight of men and dogs, but the slender hoofs of the deer
would after a few bounds pierce the treacherous surface. This
destructive slaughter went on until the game grew too lean to be worth
the killing. All sorts of wild animals grew scarce from that winter.
Old settlers say that the slow cowardly breed of prairie wolves, which
used to be caught and killed as readily as sheep, disappeared about