It was here at Kanesville that the last purchases were made, the last letter sent back to anxious friends. Once across the Missouri and headed westward, we should have to cross the Rocky Mountains to find a town again.
We had now come to the beginning of the second stage of our long journey. We had reached the Missouri River. From the western bank of the river we should strike out across the Plains, through what is now Nebraska and Wyoming, to the crest of the continent. We should follow the ox-team trail along the north bank of the Platte, and then up the north fork of the Platte to the mountains. But first we must get across the Missouri.
"What on earth is that?" exclaimed one of the women, as we approached the landing for the ferry which crossed the river to a point a few miles below where Omaha now stands.
"It looks for all the world like a big white flatiron," answered another.
[Illustration: On this page and the following are shown the main trails that stretched across the continent, west of the Missouri, in the years before the building of railroads. The Oregon Trail from Kanesville to Portland is marked with the heaviest line. The lighter line from Huntsville to Kanesville shows Ezra Meeker's early travels; this marks not a trail but a main-traveled road. People starting out from St. Louis for the Oregon Country went by way of the Santa Fé Trail about as far as Fort Leavenworth, then northwest to Fort Kearney on the Platte River, where they joined the trail from Kanesville. The Santa Fé Trail was the earliest trail to be made; trading expeditions had gone from St. Louis to Santa Fé since the early 1800's. The California Trail and the Oregon Trail are the same as far as the big bend of the Bear River, at which point the California Trail goes off to the southwest.]
We drivers had little time for looking and for making comparisons. All our attention had to be given to our teams, for as we neared the landing we found the roads terribly cut up on account of the concentrated travel.
It was indeed a sight long to be remembered. The "white flatiron" proved to be wagons with their tongues pointing to the landing. A center train with other parallel trains extended back in the rear, gradually covering a wider range the farther back from the river it went. Several hundred wagons were thus closely interlocked, completely blocking the approach to the landing.