The Work of Francis Parkman: The Oregon trail: sketches of praire and Rocky-mountain lifeLittle, Brown, 1898 - America |
Common terms and phrases
animals antelope approached band of horses bank began Black Hills Blackfeet Blackfoot blankets Bonté's camp bourgeois broken buffalo buffalo-robes bushes captain Chugwater close Crow crowd Dahcotah Daniel Boone dark deep Deslauriers distance emigrants encamped enemies eyes face farther fire followed foot Fort Laramie Fort Leavenworth galloped grass grizzly bear ground hair half hand head Henry Chatillon hill horseback horses hour Indians journey Kanzas Laramie Creek leaped length lodge looking Mahto-Tatonka meadow miles Missouri morning mounted mules night Ogillallah OREGON TRAIL party passed Pawnees pipe plain Platte Pontiac prairie rain ravine Raymond reached rest Reynal ridge riding rifle river Rocky Mountains rode saddle scalp-locks scarcely seated seemed Shaw shouted side sight smoking soon squaw stood stream stretched suddenly sunset swell tall tent traders trail trail-rope trapper trees village wagons war-party warriors wild wolves woods young
Popular passages
Page xiv - We knew that more and more, year after year, the trains of emigrant wagons would creep in slow procession towards barbarous Oregon or wild and distant California ; but we did not dream how Commerce and Gold would breed nations along the Pacific ; the disenchanting screech of the locomotive break the spell of weird, mysterious mountains...
Page xi - I remember that, as we rode by the foot of Pike's Peak, when for a fortnight we met no face of man, my companion remarked, in a tone anything but complacent, that a time would come when those plains would be a grazing country, the buffalo give place to tame cattle, farmhouses be scattered along the water-courses, and wolves, bears, and Indians be numbered among the things that were.
Page 58 - The thunder here is not like the tame thunder of the Atlantic coast. Bursting with a terrific crash directly above our heads, it roared over the boundless waste of prairie, seeming to roll around the whole circle of the firmament with a peculiar and awful reverberation.
Page 77 - The Great American Desert — extending for hundreds of miles to the Arkansas on the one side, and the Missouri on the other. Before us and behind us, the level monotony of the plain was unbroken as far as the eye could reach. Sometimes it glared in the sun, an expanse of hot, bare sand; sometimes it was veiled by long coarse grass. Huge skulls and whitening bones of buffalo were scattered everywhere...
Page 4 - Indians, who had been on a visit to St. Louis. Thus laden, the boat struggled upward for seven or eight days against the rapid current of the Missouri, grating upon snags, and hanging for two or three hours at a time upon sand-bars. We entered the mouth of the Missouri...