Glen Rock was the next place in our itinerary, which we reached at dark, after having driven twenty-five and one-fourth miles. This is the longest drive we have made on the whole trip.
Glen Rock is a small village, but the ladies met and resolved they "would have as nice a monument as Casper," even if it did not cost as much, because there was a stone quarry out but six miles from town. One enthusiastic lady said: "We will inscribe it ourselves, if no stonecutter can be had." "'Where there's a will there's a way,' as the old adage runs," I remarked as we left the nice little burg and said good-bye to the energetic ladies in it. God bless the women, anyhow; I don't see how the world could get along without them; and anyhow I don't see what life would have been without that little faithful companion that came over this very same ground with me fifty-four years ago and still lives to rejoice for the many, many blessings vouchsafed to us and our descendants.
At Douglas, Wyoming, 1,177½ miles out from The Dalles, the people at first seemed reluctant to assume the responsibility of erecting a monument, everybody being "too busy" to give up any time to it, but were willing to contribute. After a short canvass, $52 was contributed, a local committee appointed, and an organized effort to erect a monument was well in hand before we drove out of the town.
I here witnessed one of those heavy downpours like some I remember in '52, where, as in this case, the water came down in veritable sheets, and in an incredibly short time turned all the slopes into roaring torrents and level places into lakes; the water ran six inches deep in the streets in this case, on a very heavy grade the whole width of the street.
"Camp No. 95, July 12.—Odometer 1,192. We are camped under a group of balm trees in the Platte bottom near the bridge at the farm of a company, Dr. J. M. Wilson in charge, where we found a good vegetable garden and were bidden to help ourselves, which I did, with a liberal hand, to a feast of young onions, radishes, beets and lettuce enough for several days."
This refreshing shade and these spreading balms carried me back to the little cabin home in the Puyallup Valley, 1,500 miles away, where we had for so long a period enjoyed the cool shades of the native forests, enlivened by the charms of songsters at peep of day, with the dew dripping off the leaves like as if a shower had fallen over the forest. Having now passed the 1,200-mile mark out from The Dalles with scarcely the vestige of timber life except in the snows of the Blue Mountains, one can not wonder that my mind should run back to not only the little cabin home as well as to the more pretentious residence nearby; to the time when our homestead of 160 acres, granted to us by the Government, was a dense forest—when the little clearing was so isolated we could see naught else but walls of timber around us—timber that required the labor of one man twelve years to remove from a quarter-section of land—of the time when trails only reached the spot; when, as the poet wrote: