Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail Part 6

But we could not delay longer, even to make money. I thought I could see signs of failing strength in my young wife and the baby. Not for mountains of gold would we jeopardize their lives.

All along the way the baby and the little mother had been tenderly cared for. We used to clear away a s.p.a.ce in the wagon bed for them to take a nap together. The slow swaying of the wagon over smooth, sandy stretches made a rock-a-by movement that would lull them off to dreamland and make them forget the weary way.

When we left the lower crossing, the mother and baby were placed in a small wagon. A sprightly yoke of oxen was. .h.i.tched to it that they might get an early start and keep out of the dust. What few delicacies the pioneers had were given to them. By this tender care the mother and child were enabled to continue to the end of the long journey, though the brave little mother was frail and weak from the wearisome struggle before we reached a resting place at last.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A nap in the wagon.]

What became of that baby? He thrived and grew to manhood and he is now living, sixty-nine years of age, in California. Some of his grandchildren are almost grown to manhood and womanhood.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Myers, Boise, Idaho_

Thousand Springs of the Snake River, Idaho.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The travel-worn wanderers sing "Home, Sweet Home."]

CHAPTER NINE

REACHING THE END OF THE TRAIL

AFTER leaving the Snake River we had one of the worst stretches of the trying journey. From the lower crossing of the Snake River at old Fort Boise to The Dalles is approximately three hundred and fifty miles over mountains and deserts. It became a serious question with many travelers whether there would be enough provisions left to keep them from starvation and whether their teams could muster strength to take the wagons in. Many wagons were left by the wayside. Everything that could possibly be spared shared the same fate. Provisions, and provisions only, were religiously cared for. Considering the weakened condition of both man and beast, it was small wonder that some ill-advised persons should take to the river in their wagon beds, many thus going to their death.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Benj. A. Gifford_

The cataract of the Columbia.]

The dust got deeper every day. Going through it was like wading in water as to resistance. Often it would lie in the road fully six inches deep, so fine that a person wading through it would scarcely leave a track.

And when disturbed, such clouds! No words can describe it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Benj. A. Gifford_

Shifting sands of eastern Oregon.]

At length, after we had endured five long months of soul-trying travel and had covered about eighteen hundred miles, counting from the crossing of the Missouri, we dragged ourselves on to the end of the Overland Trail at The Dalles on the Columbia River. From here my wife and I, with the baby, went by boat down the river, while Oliver took the ox team on to Portland by the land way.

The Dalles is a name given to the peculiar lava rock formation that strikes across the Columbia, nearly two hundred miles from the mouth.

These rocks throw the great stream into a fury of foaming rapids. An Indian legend says that the Bridge of the G.o.ds was once near The Dalles, but that the bridge broke and fell.

On the September day in 1852 when we reached The Dalles, we found there a great crowd of travel-worn people. This a.s.semblage was constantly changing. It was a coming-and-going congregation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Gifford & Prentiss_

Where the Columbia cuts through the Cascades.]

The appearance of this crowd of emigrants beggars description. Their dress was as varied as pieces in a crazy quilt. Here was a matronly dame in clean apparel, but without shoes; her husband perhaps lacked both shoes and hat. Youngsters of all sizes were running about with scarcely enough clothing to cover their nakedness. Some suits and dresses were so patched that it was impossible to tell what was the original cloth. The color of practically everybody's clothing was that of desert dust.

Every little while other sweat-streaked, motley-dressed homeseekers would straggle up to this end of the long trail. Their thoughts went back to their old homes, or to the loved ones that they had laid away tenderly in the shifting sands of the Plains. Most of them faced the future with fort.i.tude; the difficulties they had met and mastered had but steeled them to meet the difficulties ahead. There was an undercurrent of gladness in their souls with the thought that they had achieved the end of the Overland Trail. They were ready now to go on down the Columbia to find their new homes in this great, unknown Land of Promise.

Almost every nationality was represented among them. All traces of race peculiarity and race prejudice, however, had been ground away in the mill of adversity. The trying times through which these pioneers had just pa.s.sed had brought all to a kinship of feeling such as only trail and danger can beget.

Friendships, sincere and lasting, came as one of the sweet rewards of those days of common struggle and adversity. Few of the pioneers are now left to talk over the old days; when any of them do meet, the greeting is one of brotherhood indeed.

We camped but two days on the bank of the Columbia River. When I say "we," let it be understood that I mean myself, my young wife, and the baby boy who was but seven weeks old when the start was made from Eddyville.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Kiser Bros._

St. Peter's Dome--one of the sentinels of the Columbia.]

I do not remember the embarking on the great scow for our trip down the Columbia to the Cascades. But incidents of the voyage come to me as vividly as if they had happened but yesterday.

Those who took pa.s.sage felt that the journey was ended. The cattle had been unyoked for the last time; the wagons had been rolled to the last bivouac; the embers of the last camp fire had died out. We were entering now upon a new field with new present experiences, and with new expectancy for the morrow.

The scow, or lighter, upon which we took pa.s.sage was decked over, but without railing, offering a smooth surface upon which to pile our belongings. These, in the majority of cases, made but a very small showing. The whole deck surface of the scow was covered with the remnants of the homeseekers' outfits, which in turn were covered by the owners, either sitting or reclining upon their possessions, with but scant room to change position or move about in any way. There must have been a dozen families or more on the boat, or about sixty persons. These were princ.i.p.ally women and children; the young men and some of the older ones were still struggling on the mountain trail to get the teams through to the west side of the Cascade Mountains.

As we went floating down that wonderful old river, the deep depression of spirits that, for lack of a better name, we call "the blues," seized upon us. Do you wonder why? We were like an army that had burned the bridges behind it. We had scant knowledge of what lay in the track before us. Here we were, more than two thousand miles from home,--separated from it by a trackless, uninhabited waste of country.

It was impossible for us to retrace our steps. Go ahead we must, no matter what we were to encounter.

Then, too, we had for months borne the burden of duties that could not be avoided or delayed, until many were on the verge of collapse from strain and overwork. Some were sick, and all were reduced in flesh from the urgent toil at camp duty and from lack of variety of food. Such was the condition of the motley crowd of sixty persons as we slowly neared that wonderful channel through which the great Columbia flows while pa.s.sing the Cascade range.

For myself, I can truly say that the journey had not drawn on my vitality as it had with so many. True, I had been worked down in flesh, having lost nearly twenty pounds; but what weight I had left was the bone and sinew of my system. The good body my parents had given me carried me then and afterwards through many hardships without great distress.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Benj. A. Gifford_

Multnomah Falls along the Columbia; named after a famous Indian chief.]

In our company, a party of three, a young married couple and an unmarried sister, lounged on their belongings, listlessly watching the ripples on the water, as did also others of the party. But little conversation was pa.s.sing. Each seemed to be communing with himself or herself, but it was easy to see what were the thoughts occupying the minds of all. The young husband, it was plain to be seen, would soon complete that greater journey to the unknown beyond, a condition that weighed so heavily upon the ladies of the party that they could ill conceal their solicitude and sorrow. Finally, to cheer up the sick husband and brother, the ladies began in sweet, subdued voices to sing the old familiar song of "Home, Sweet Home," whereupon others of the party joined in the chorus with increased volume of sound. As the echo died away, at the moment of gliding under the shadow of the high mountain, the second verse was begun, but was never finished. If an electric shock had startled every individual of the party, there could have been no more simultaneous effect than when the second line of the second verse was reached, when instead of song, sobs and outcries of grief poured forth from all lips. It seemed as if there were a tumult of despair mingled with prayer. The rugged boatmen rested upon their oars in awe, and gave way in sympathy with the scene before them, until it could be truly said no dry eyes were left nor aching heart but was relieved. Like the downpour of a summer shower that suddenly clears the atmosphere to welcome the bright shining sun that follows, so this sudden outburst of grief cleared away the despondency, to be replaced by an exalted, exhilarating feeling of buoyancy and hopefulness. The tears were not dried till mirth took possession--a real hysterical manifestation of the whole party, ending all depression for the rest of the trip.

On this last stage of the journey other parties had much more trying experiences than ours. John Whitacre, afterward governor of Oregon, was the head of a party of nine that constructed a raft at The Dalles out of dry poles hauled from the adjacent country. While their stock was started out over the trail, their two wagons were put upon the raft.

With the women and children in the wagons, perched on the provisions and bedding, the start was made to float down the river to the Cascades.

They had hardly begun the journey when the waves swept over the raft. It was like a submerged foundation upon which their wagons stood. A landing a few miles out of The Dalles averted a total wreck, and afforded opportunity to strengthen the buoyancy of the raft with extra timber carried upon the backs of the men for long distances.

Then the question arose, how should they know when they would reach the falls? Would they be able to discover the falls in time to make a landing? Their fears finally got the better of them and a line was run ash.o.r.e; but instead of making a landing, they found themselves hard aground out of reach of land, except by wading a long distance. This occurred while they were many miles above the falls, or Cascades. At last they gave up the raft and procured a scow. In this they reached the head of the Cascades in safety.

As we neared Portland we felt that a long task had been completed. Yet reaching the end of the Overland Trail did not mean that our pioneer struggles were over. Before us lay still another task--the conquest of the new land. And it was no easy work, we were to learn, to find a home or make one in the western wilderness.

PART TWO

SETTLING IN THE NORTHWEST COUNTRY