giving Parker an opportunity of visiting Allis and Dunbar, the missionaries to the Pawnees,[1] and of studying the tribes in the vicinity, in whom he took much interest. While at Bellevue the cholera broke out among the men, three of whom died almost immediately. Doctor Whitman, with characteristic kindness, devoted himself to the care of the sufferers, and the disease was arrested by removing the sick from the riverside to the higher prairie, after which no new cases appeared. Besides winning the gratitude of the men whose lives he had saved, and of Fontenelle, whose company was kept from breaking up, the doctor's reputation was established among the Rocky Mountain hunters and trappers, to whom the fame of his skill and goodness was spread by the newcomers at the summer rendezvous.
The journey was marked only by the usual incidents of travel across the plains: the early morning start; the long march before breakfast, which with supper constituted the only meals; the frequent thunder-storms, in which everybody became drenched and chilled; crossing rivers in a wagon-bed for a boat, made water-tight by a covering of undressed skins;[2] the occasional visits of Indians, with now and then a buffalo chase or a rare accident. The Black Hills were reached by the 26th of July, and Fontenelle remained at Fort Laramie, a post of the American Fur Company, while Fitzpatrick, another partner, took charge of the caravan to the rendezvous.
On approaching Laramie, an exhibition of mountain manners rather tried the nerve of Parker, who, leaving the road with a single attendant to examine a singular elevation called Chimney Rock, about three miles from the caravan, was alarmed by a company
- ↑ In 1856 Mr Allis was still living at his home on the east side of the Missouri, nearly opposite to the old Bellevue trading post.
- ↑ The green hides are sewed together, and tightly stretched over the boxes, flesh side out, and fastened with strong tacks to the wood, when they are placed in the sun to dry. Repeated stretching and drying prepares the skin to keep out the water. These are called bull-hide boats, being usually made of buffalo-skins. Burnett's Rec. of a Pioneer, MS., 112.
