“Our commissary wagon was supplied with flour, bacon, coffee, tea, sugar, rice, salt and so forth; rations estimated to last for five or six months, if necessary; also medical supplies, and whatever else we could carry to meet the probable necessities and the possible casualties of the journey; with the view of traveling tediously but patiently over a country of roadless plains and mountains, crossing deserts and fording rivers; meanwhile cooking, eating and sleeping on the ground as we should find it from day to day. The culinary implements occupied a compartment of their own in a wagon, consisting of such kettles, long-handled frying-pans and sheet-iron coffee pots as could be used on a camp-fire, with table articles almost all of tin. Those who attempted to carry the more friable articles, owing to the thumps and falls to which these were subjected, found themselves short in supply of utensils long before the journey ended.”
William Maxwell…
of his trip to California in 1857
