the rolling billows of a tempestuous ocean. Traveling over these hills, is attended with much inconvenience and fatigue; as it is but one continued scene of alternate ascension and decension, from morning until night, for several days in succession, and until we arrive at Independence rock...It is composed of solid granite, covering an area of about five acres, and rising in conical form, about four hundred feet, above the level of the surrounding country; it is seen at a great distance, and, hence, serves as a land mark, both for the mountaineer and the emigrant. Many portions of this extraordinary rock, present an extensive, perpendicular, smooth surface, upon which the various trappers and others, who have passed through that region, have inscribed their names, the numbers of their parties, and the date of their passing. The first party, which noticed this singular rock, in this manner, was a party of American trappers, who chanced to pass that way, upon the fourth day of July, when wishing to be Americans, even in that secluded region of aboriginal barbarism, they proceeded to celebrate that great day, which gave birth to human liberty. This they did, by a succession of mountain revelings, festivities, and hilarities, which having been concluded, they all inscribed their names together with the word "Independence," upon the most prominent, and conspicuous portions of the rock...Independence rock, thus consecrated, is destined, in all coming time, to stand forth as an enduring monument to civil liberty, and American Independence!

Dear Reader, can you hazard a guess as to what mile-marker the Donner-Reed party had not yet passed by the Fourth of July? That is correct: Independence Rock!

Already, they were a week late.

When I first passed Independence Rock, I camped in its shadow with the wagon train I had recently been elected to lead. As we settled down in the late afternoon, a gun accidentally discharged, so that a bullet wounded an 18-year-old boy in the boy and exited through his sternum.

He took a full two hours to die and never would I wish those two hours on anyone. His friend who accidentally shot him wandered about like a madman, insensible to anything going on around him except his dying friend's screams.

I wrote of the aftermath in my guide, "The ordinary rites of interment, having been performed at the grave, the company returned in the same solemn manner, to the encampment, where all sat down in silent mournful mood, contemplating the many trying scenes of the desolating past, and anticipating the dreaded fearful future!"

In Brazil, the country from which I am lately departed, such silence is remedied by a song called a chorinho—"little cry, little lament." On the Prairie, however, we had no such tune.

[The fiddler plays strains of "Chorinho."]

Indeed, Dear Reader, as I address you from the aft deck of the steamer Guiding Star, my eyes glimpse the streaky lights of distant Caribbean harbor towns—lit in patches, islands dotting this torpid, humid sea. In the salt air of the coming night, it seems I looked West on the dry, thrilling winds of the Frontier, so, so, long ago....

Yet with these eyes I found my way across that Frontier with no one to lead me! I found my own way with my very own, God-fearing, God-knowing, God-feeling, God-acquainted—because, Dear Reader, when your eyes light on the Wasatch range and that range has passed beneath your feet and beneath your undaunted, blind, animal breath, and you have been carried over those mountains and found the Pacific, God damn it—God has been yours to know because only angels can carry such a wounded hell-stained creature to something so great and so good and brought on by the insufferable formlessness of breath alone. God and God alone, can greet you at the Other Side of the Frontier.