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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: During the winter of 1849, my father caught the California Gold Fever, and started with his family, consisting of mother, four sons and four daughters?of which I was the third in age (of the children, I mean) for the new Eldorado. Loss of stock from the murrain necessitated his stopping in Iowa, from whence my two elder brothers went up the Mississippi to try their luck, steamboating and lead-mining. Being so young and frail, father thought I would be an incumbrance to them, so he kept me near our new home, which he had entered with his Mexican Land Warrant. - Being a good blacksmith, he constructed a large breaking-plow, with wheels to guide it, and having secured the use of an ox-team on the shares, I earned for my father, during that year's breaking-season, a yoke of oxen and two good cows, and for myself a good rifle and a year's outfit of clothing, while father had to forward money to my brothers for them to come home on. In the spring of 1852 my father rigged up two teams of six yoke of cattle each, and we started across the plains for Oregon, driving a dozen cows along. Our wagon-boxes were decked over, so that we could sleep in them as well as in the tents that we hauled for that purpose. We had a six- months' supply of provisions and clothing. A young man named John Haligan, an Irishman, who had been educated for the priesthood, but oil account of ill health had abandoned that intention and become a country schoolteacher, engaged passage with us, thinking that the trip would be beneficial to him. He was small and delicate, and one of the best men I ever knew. More of him hereafter. At Kanesville, near Council Bluffs, on the Missouri river, we joined an emigrant train of about fifty wagons, loaded with men, women and children, and the ne...

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