Treatments were almost always ineffective and sometimes hastened death. It would have been a terrifying companion while crossing the desolate high plains and passes of the Rocky Mountain West. Cholera killed many thousands in New York City, New York, St. Louis, Missouri, New Orleans, Louisiana, and other towns on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers who inadvertently drank cholera contaminated water. Cholera is thought to have been brought to these river cities, etc. and the California, Oregon and Mormon Trails by infected immigrants from Europe. Cholera killed additional thousands in London England, Liverpool, England, and other cities in Europe and around the world. These widespread infections and thousands of deaths finally gave impetus to building, at great cost, effective citywide water and sewage systems in many European and US cities. Germs that caused cholera and other diseases were still undiscovered as a disease spreading mechanism in this era. The "Germ theory of disease" and the systematic observation of possible disease causing microorganisms were just starting in this era. The cause of cholera, ingesting "invisible" cholera germs from cholera infected fecal contaminated water or food was not known. Although magnifying lenses had been discovered in 1592 effective microscopes that could see germs well were just being developed and widely used starting in the 1860s. The prevention or effective treatment for cholera, once patients were infected, were unknown in this era and death rates then sometimes reached 50% of infected people. Cholera infections spread rampantly in the era before possible sources of cholera were identified, cholera carriers isolated and before effective water and sewage treatment facilities were developed and deployed. Many thousands of emigrants died in Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming and were buried along the trail in unmarked graves. The Platte River in the future states of Nebraska and Wyoming typically had many channels and islands and was too shallow, crooked, muddy and unpredictable for even a canoe to travel very far on as it pursued its braided paths to the Missouri River. The Platte River Valley, however, provided an easily passable wagon corridor sloping easily up as it went almost due west with access to water, grass, buffalo meat and hides and 'buffalo chips' for fire 'wood'. There were trails on both sides of the muddy, about wide and shallow ( to ) Platte River. In all the trail(s) traveled about in the present state of Nebraska in the Platte River Valley. The Platte's water was silty and bad-tasting but it could be used if no other water was available.