Young Clagett (now member of Congress from Montana) unharnessed and fed and watered the horses; Oliphant and I cut sagebrush, built the fire and brought water to cook with; and old Mr.Ballou the blacksmith did the cooking.

This division of labor, and this appointment, was adhered to throughout the journey.
We had no tent, and so we slept under our blankets in the open plain.

We were so tired that we slept soundly.
We were fifteen days making the trip--two hundred miles; thirteen, rather, for we lay by a couple of days, in one place, to let the horses rest.
We could really have accomplished the journey in ten days if we had towed the horses behind the wagon, but we did not think of that until it was too late, and so went on shoving the horses and the wagon too when we might have saved half the labor.

Parties who met us, occasionally, advised us to put the horses in the wagon, but Mr.Ballou, through whose iron-clad earnestness no sarcasm could pierce, said that that would not do, because the provisions were exposed and would suffer, the horses being "bituminous from long deprivation." The reader will excuse me from translating.

What Mr.Ballou customarily meant, when he used a long word, was a secret between himself and his Maker.