The Columbia River Part 8

Webster, Benton, and others of the great statesmen are on record in the _Congressional Globe_ with many disparaging remarks upon "that worthless Columbia River country."

Whitman watched all signs with anxious eye. Negotiations between England and the United States indicated a probable surrender to the former. The American Board was considering the abandonment of the mission. Looking over the broad field of the future of the American nation with a statesman's vision, Dr. Whitman readily saw that the interests of his country and of Christian civilisation demanded the acquisition of Oregon.

Those interests were in jeopardy. He made the great resolution to proceed at once to the "States" with the threefold aim: confer with the officers of the American Board on the retention of the mission, confer with President Tyler, Secretary Webster, and such others of the officers of government as he could see at Washington, and finally help organise and lead back to Oregon an American immigration. His fellow-missionaries strongly opposed his purpose. They felt that it was abandoning the religious aims of the mission to take up political questions. But he declared that he had not expatriated himself by becoming a missionary. Go he would. The undertaking seemed chimerical, even desperate. But Whitman was bold, athletic, persistent, possessing all the qualities of a hero.

With a single white companion, A. L. Lovejoy, and one or more Indian guides, he left Waiilatpu on October 3, 1842. His journey through snow, ice, wind, hunger, peril, and deprivation of every sort, has been ofttimes described. The extent of his influence in securing the adoption by our Government of the policy of retaining Oregon has become the theme of earnest, even acrimonious discussion. The simple fact remains that Oregon was "saved" to the American Union. The missionaries Lee and Whitman bore, each his part, and a great one, in the great final result. It is not too much to say that of the various lines of influence by which the valley of the Columbia became American territory, that of missions was one of the strongest.

The Catholic missions of the Columbia Valley have found several chroniclers, of whom the most valuable are Rev. F. N. Blanchet and Rev.

Pierre J. De Smet. The former in his book, _The Catholic Church in Oregon_, gives a clear and circ.u.mstantial account of the founding and carrying on of the work in the Willamette Valley. The latter in his _Oregon Missions_, and _Western Missions and Missionaries_, has given a singularly graphic and interesting report on religious progress, and with it many charming descriptions of the scenery and other natural conditions of the country.

Father Blanchet, in company with Rev. Modest Demers, went from Montreal to Vancouver, a journey of over four thousand miles, in 1837. At the Little Dalles of the Columbia, near the present Northport, a lamentable disaster cost the lives of twelve of the company with whom they were travelling.

Reaching Vancouver on November 24, 1837, they received from Dr.

McLoughlin, who had himself been brought up a Catholic, a most cordial welcome, though apparently not more cordial than the good man had given Lee, the Methodist, and Whitman, the Presbyterian. The fact that there were so many French Canadians in the country made the way of the Catholic Fathers easier than that of the other missionaries. For the French, with their gayety, sociability, and usual habit of intermarriage with the Indians, were much more popular with them than were the more harsh and reserved British and Americans. In fact the Catholic Fathers found a building all ready for their use at the historic town of Champoeg on the Willamette, thirty miles above Portland. There in 1836, the French settlers had built a log church, the first church building in Oregon. It is rather sad to relate that petty dissensions and jealousies marred the relations between the Catholics and the Methodists. But both alike were zealous and indefatigable in promoting the secular and religious interests of both red men and white men.

While Fathers Blanchet and Demers and their a.s.sociates were busily engaged in the Willamette Valley, Father de Smet had come in 1840 into the Flathead country, in what is now Northern Idaho. His first mission was St. Mary's, on the Flathead River, founded by the planting of the cross on September 24, 1841. Other missions were soon established on Coeur d'Alene Lake and Pend Oreille Lake. Branching out from them were missions in Colville, and ultimately in the Walla Walla, Yakima, Wenatchee, and Chelan valleys.

De Smet greatly overestimated the number of Indians, reckoning those in Oregon at one hundred and ten thousand. He numbered his converts by the thousands. So pressing seemed the needs that in 1843, he went to Europe for reinforcements. He was very successful in his quest, returning the following year in the ship _L'Indefatigable_, from Antwerp, accompanied by four fathers, six sisters, and several lay brothers. He gives a thrilling account of his entrance of the Columbia River on July 31, 1844. He vividly portrays the terrors of the bar with the mighty surges dashing across the entrance. The captain did not understand the channel and became diverted from the true course, which was then by the north channel, and got into the south. The latter is now the main channel, but then was dangerous. De Smet piously regards their escape from wreck as due to the special interposition of divine providence, and to the favour extended to them because of its being the day sacred to St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of their order. De Smet's brilliant and poetical descriptions of the grandeur of the river and its forests denote a keen appreciation of nature and a facile pen.

Demers, De Smet, and Blanchet entered upon their work with such energy that by the time of De Smet's report in 1844 there had been established four dioceses in the region tributary to the Columbia; viz., Oregon City, Walla Walla, Fort Hall, and Colville. Oregon City was the Metropolitan See and in charge of Rev. F. N. Blanchet. Walla Walla was under the direction of Rev. Magloire Blanchet, who at that date had charge also of Forts Hall and Colville. Eleven chapels had been erected at different points; five in the Willamette Valley, one at Vancouver, one on the Cowlitz, one on Coeur d'Alene Lake, one on Pend Oreille Lake, one at Kettle Falls on the Columbia near Colville, and one near Calispell among the Flatheads. There were three schools; one being St. Mary's among the Flatheads, while at St.

Paul's on the Willamette, there were two, a college for boys, still the site of a college, and a girls' academy. Twelve clergymen were engaged at that time in the work, and the number was soon increased to twenty-six by another reinforcement from Europe. With the reinforcement were also seven female teachers.

Each of these three chief groups of missions had its special aims, methods, and results. The Catholic was more exclusively religious, while the Protestants pa.s.sed over readily from their initial religious aims to the domain of political and educational interest. The net result was tremendous in the history of the country.

Among the educational inst.i.tutions growing directly out of the labours of the missionaries we may mention Willamette University at Salem, the direct successor of the Methodist mission at Chemeketa; Whitman College at Walla Walla, founded by Cushing Eells as a memorial to Marcus Whitman; Pacific University at Forest Grove, Oregon, founded by a later set of Congregational Home Missionaries; and the Catholic College at St. Paul's, the successor of the school founded in 1839 by Blanchet.

They rest from their labours and their works do follow them.

CHAPTER VII

The Era of the Pioneers: their Ox-teams and their Flatboats

Events and Men who led the Way to the Pioneer Age--Kelley, Wyeth, and Bonneville--Ewing Young--Farnham, Shortess, and the "Oregon Dragoons"--The Wilkes Expedition--The _Star of Oregon_, and the Cattle Enterprise--Dr. John McLoughlin and the Americans--Dr. Marcus Whitman and his Winter Ride, and the Immigration of 1843--Retrospect of J. W.

Nesmith--Features of the Journey across the Plains--Whitman's Services--Getting the Waggons across the Plains--Reaching the River and Building Boats--Delights and then Distress of the Descent of the River--Battle with the River--Condition in which they Reached Vancouver, and their Reception by Dr. McLoughlin--Subsequent Immigrations--The Barlow Road--The Donation Land Law--Quotation from Jesse Applegate.

The pioneer era was ushered in by the coming to Oregon of fur-hunters, missionaries, and little bands of adventurers, who together composed the nucleus of that American community which formed the Provisional Government of 1843. There were certain individuals, too, whose agency in leading the way to the immigration movement was so unique as to deserve mention.

One of these was Hall J. Kelley of Boston. He was a native of New Hampshire and a Harvard graduate. As early as 1815, when seventeen years old, he conceived the idea of the colonisation of Americans in Oregon. He was a man of high scholarship, philanthropic spirit, and patriotic purpose. He was a dreamer and idealist, planning to form a community on the Columbia, as one of the Utopias which minds of that stamp, from Plato down, have been fond of locating somewhere in the unexplored West. After making a great effort, with partial success, to enlist Congress in his schemes, he succeeded in organising a company of several hundred, and by 1828 shaped the definite plan of going to St. Louis and following the route of the fur companies across the plains to the River of Oregon. But opposition by those same fur companies, and adverse criticism by the press broke up his enterprise for that time. In 1832 he started with a small party for the land of his dreams by the route through Mexico and California. In California, he met with Ewing Young, an American of great natural abilities and some education. Young and Kelley, brainy and original men, the former from shrewd commercial instinct and the latter from philanthropic dreams, formed a little company, and proceeded overland from California to Oregon. This was in the autumn of 1834. When, after some disasters, the company of eleven reached the Columbia, Young took up a great tract of land in the Chehalem Valley, where he devoted himself to stock-raising. Kelley, having become an invalid, went in distress to Fort Vancouver, where Dr. McLoughlin treated him with kindness, though the exclusive "Britishers" would not admit him to "social equality." The other members of the company were scattered in various directions, but some of them remained till American occupancy became an accomplished fact.

This company of 1834,--the same year that the Methodist missionaries under Jason Lee arrived--may be considered the advance guard of American immigration. Kelley, upon his return to New England by way of the Sandwich Islands, disseminated much useful information about Oregon. To him, without doubt, is to be attributed much of the subsequent wave of interest which swept on toward American immigration. As first a New England college man, educator, and social theoriser, and then a leader of the pioneer movement to Oregon, Hall J. Kelley is worthy of permanent remembrance.

Ewing Young became distinguished for leading the party which in 1837 drove a band of seven hundred cattle from California to Oregon. This even marked an epoch in preparing for immigration and subsequent American possession.

One of the peculiarly noteworthy facts in connection with Young's enterprise, is that Dr. McLoughlin, the Hudson's Bay Company's magnate, who had at first discountenanced Young on account of a charge of stealing brought against him from California, and who frowned upon the cattle enterprise for fear of American influence, became reconciled to both Young and the cattle, and subscribed liberally to the enterprise.

Nearly contemporary with Kelley and Young were Bonneville and Wyeth.

Bonneville was a well-educated French-American, a West Pointer, and holding the commission of captain in the United States Army. His ardent and imaginative disposition became fired with the thought of a far western expedition, and in 1832 he organised a fur-traders' company of a hundred and ten men. Though not realising his dreams of a fortune in furs, Bonneville made many interesting and valuable observations upon the Salmon, Clearwater, Snake, and Columbia rivers. He became thoroughly imbued with the romance and scenic grandeur of the far West. Upon his return to New York, he had the good fortune to meet Washington Irving at the home of John Jacob Astor. Irving had already felt the irresistible fascination which the River of Oregon has wrought upon all poetical natures, and the result of this meeting was one of Irving's most charming volumes, _Bonneville's Adventures_, a volume which became another potent force in turning toward the Pacific slope the thoughts of the eager, restless people of the frontier.

Still another in the group of men who led the way to immigration was Nathaniel Wyeth. He was a talented, well-educated, and energetic Bostonian. So distinguished a personage as James Russell Lowell has said of him: "He was a very remarkable person, whose conversation I valued highly. A born leader of men, he was fitly called Captain Nathaniel Wyeth as long as he lived."

Wyeth conceived the idea of a great trading company on the Columbia, whose operations would necessarily create rivalry with the British. His design was to send companies across the continent to the Columbia head-waters and to maintain also ship connection by way of Cape Horn. He believed that a ship load of salmon from the Columbia River to the Atlantic sea-board would be a paying venture. On so large a scale did he lay out his enterprise that he expected soon to have a business of two hundred thousand dollars a year. But he looked beyond the fur and salmon business to American possession and settlement, at least south of the River to the California line. He therefore embraced in his view the building of enterprises which should lead up to and then profit by American immigration. Wyeth spent five years in Oregon, having many interesting adventures, and as many business reverses. As was the case with Astor, the British fur-traders proved too powerful for the Yankee. Among other undertakings, he built a fort on Sauvie's Island at the mouth of the Willamette, which he called Fort William. He desired to make this the basis of his trade, and he expected the Indians to go there to trade. But such was the influence of the Hudson's Bay people and their employees with the Indians that Wyeth's fort had no trade. It was during those years that a frightful pestilence swept the natives away like flies, and there was great fear among them that Wyeth's fort might harbour the scourge. The period of Wyeth's enterprise in Oregon extended from the spring of 1832 to the autumn of 1836. Though not a business success, it had a great bearing on the creation of an interest in Oregon, and on preparing for immigration a few years later. It opened the eyes of many Americans to the attractions of Oregon and to the tremendous power and profits of the Hudson's Bay Company.

The next movement may be called a real immigration to Oregon. It consisted of a party of nineteen, commonly known as the "Peoria party," since they went from Peoria, Ill. Jason Lee, the missionary of Chemeketa, delivered a lecture at that place in 1838, and so much interest in Oregon was aroused that in the year following, the Peoria party, the first regular party from the Mississippi Valley, set forth for the River of the West. Their leader, T. J. Farnham, christened his followers the "Oregon Dragoons" and Mrs. Farnham gave them a flag with the inscription, "Oregon or the Grave."

Farnham declared his purpose to seize Oregon for the United States.

The Peoria party had the good fortune to have two writers in the number, whose accounts possess rare interest. These writers were the leader Farnham, and Robert Shortess. The party went to pieces at Bent's Fort on the Arkansas, but its members reached Oregon somewhat in driblets during that year, and the one following. Shortess reached the Whitman Mission at Walla Walla in the fall of 1839, and there he remained until the following spring, when he went down the River to The Dalles. From The Dalles, he made his way over the Cascade Mountains to the Willamette Valley, and there he lived many years. Farnham also finally reached Oregon, but his avowed mission was unfulfilled. Shortess says of him: "Instead of raising the American flag and turning the Hudson's Bay Company out-of-doors, he accepted the gift of a suit of clothes and a pa.s.sage to the Sandwich Islands, and took a final leave of Oregon." But upon his return to the "States," Farnham published a _Pictorial History of Oregon and California_, a book of many interesting features, and one which played a worthy part in waking the people of the Mississippi Valley to the attractions of the Pacific Coast.

Soon after the close of Wyeth's enterprise, there were two notable government expeditions to the Columbia River. One was commanded by Sir Edward Belcher of the British Navy, and the other by Lieutenant Charles Wilkes of the American Navy. The Wilkes expedition was one of the most interesting and important ever undertaken by the United States Government.

The squadron consisted of two sloops-of-war, the _Peac.o.c.k_ and the _Vincennes_, the store ship, _Relief_, the brig, _Porpoise_, and the schooners, _Sea Gull_ and _Flying Fish_. This fine squadron took up its princ.i.p.al station on Puget Sound, from which extensive surveys were made, one across the mountains to Fort Okanogan; another of the Cowlitz Valley and the Columbia River as far as Wallula.

One of the most important results of this elaborate Wilkes expedition was to establish in the minds of officers of the Government the essential unity of all parts of the Pacific Coast and the boundless opportunities offered to American immigration. Wilkes and his intelligent officers readily grasped, and conveyed through an elaborate report to the government, the idea that Puget Sound was an inherent and integral part of Oregon and that the Columbia Basin was essential to the proper development of American commerce upon the Pacific. They may also have forecast the time when California with her girdles of gold and chaplets of freedom would spring, Athena-like, from the Zeus brain of American enterprise. The control of the River was the key to the control of the entire coast from San Diego to the Straits of Fuca;--and American ownership should have extended to Sitka.

A memorable calamity occurred to the squadron upon its entrance to the River, and that was the loss of the _Peac.o.c.k_ on the Columbia River bar.

The oft-depicted terrors of the River were realised at that time, and yet it was not the River's fault for the _Peac.o.c.k_ was out of the channel.

The spit is known as "Peac.o.c.k Spit" to this day.

Among the many episodes connecting Wilkes with the early immigration was the building of the schooner _Star of Oregon_ and her voyage to California for cattle. This was in 1842. It will be remembered that Ewing Young had made a successful trip from California with cattle. But as the population of the Columbia had increased, there was a great desire among the settlers to obtain a larger number of cattle to let loose upon the rich pasture lands of the Willamette Valley. A little group of Americans conceived the adventurous project of building a schooner of Oregon timber, sailing with her to California, exchanging her there for stock, and driving the band across the country home again. The schooner was built by Felix Hathaway, Joseph Gale, and Ralph Kilbourne. The oak and fir timber of which the vessel was built was cut on Sauvie's Island, at the mouth of the Willamette, and in due time she was launched and taken to Willamette Falls for fitting. A difficulty arose. Dr. McLoughlin refused to sell sails, cordage, and other materials. He had the only supply in Oregon. In despair the enterprising ship-builders appealed to Lieutenant Wilkes. He felt a keen interest in their laudable undertaking and made a visit to McLoughlin to try to change his resolution. By a.s.suring the Doctor that he would be responsible both for all the bills, as well as for the good conduct of the party, he induced him to allow the requisition for all materials necessary to complete the gallant craft. Gale was the only sailor in the party.

Having satisfied Wilkes that he was qualified to command a ship, and having received from him a present of a flag, an ensign, a compa.s.s, kedge-anchor, hawser, log line, and two log gla.s.ses, the captain flung the flag to the Oregon breeze and turned the prow of the _Star of Oregon_ toward the River's mouth. She may be remembered as the first sea-going vessel built of Oregon timber. Crossing the Bar in a storm, she sped southward in a spanking breeze, all hands seasick except Gale. He held the wheel thirty-six hours continuously, and in five days "dashed through the portals of the Golden Gate like an arrow, September 17, 1842."

As it was too late to get the cattle back to Oregon that fall, the party sold their schooner for three hundred and fifty cows, wintered in California, and the next spring drove to the Columbia twelve hundred and fifty head of cattle, six hundred head of mules and horses, and three thousand sheep. This was an achievement which made the way for immigration clearer than ever before, and in a most effective manner united the American settlers with the American government. Some of the Hudson's Bay Company people could begin to see the handwriting on the wall. Dr.

McLoughlin saw most quickly and most clearly, and as elsewhere narrated, began to transfer his interests to the American side. This fine old man was big-brained, big-bodied, and big-souled, a natural American, though compelled to work for the British fur monopolists for the time. He admired the independent spirit of the incoming Yankee immigrants, even when the joke was on him. He afterwards told with much gusto of an American named Woods crossing the Columbia to Vancouver to try to get goods. He found his credit shaky, and somewhat piqued, he exclaimed: "Well, never mind, I have an uncle back East rich enough to buy out the whole of your old Hudson's Bay Company!" "Well, well, Mr. Woods," demanded the autocrat, "who may this very rich uncle of yours be?" "Uncle Sam," was the unabashed and characteristic American reply. "Old Whitehead" also appreciated, though he was obliged to manifest a dignified disapproval, when two young men from New York, having reached the fort on the River, were asked about their pa.s.sports. Laying their hands on their rifles they replied, "These are an American's pa.s.sports."

These small miscellaneous immigrations were in continuance from about 1830 to 1842. In the latter year a hundred came. In 1843, as elsewhere related, the Provisional Government was inst.i.tuted. At the very same time, the immigration of 1843 was on its way to the River.

This immigration of 1843 was in many respects the most remarkable of all.

It was the first large one, and it was a type of all. It will be remembered that Dr. Marcus Whitman had made his great winter ride in 1842-43 across the Rockies to St. Louis, with a double aim. First he wished to see the officers of the American Board of Missions, and then to enlist the American government and people in the policy of holding Oregon against the manifest aims of the British. There was already a tremendous interest felt in Oregon among the people of Missouri, Illinois, and the other great prairie States. Whitman's opportune arrival and his announced purpose to guide an immigration to the Columbia became widely known, and brought to a focus many vaguely-considered plans.

J. W. Nesmith, subsequently one of the most prominent pioneers and a member of each House of Congress from Oregon, has given a humorous account of the manner of starting this immigration of 1843, of which he was a member, which is so characteristic that we quote it here.

Mr. Burnett, or as he was more familiarly styled, "Pete," was called upon for a speech. Mounting a log the glib-tongued orator delivered a glowing florid address. He commenced by showing his audience that the then western tier of states and territories were crowded with a redundant population, who had not sufficient elbow room for the expansion of their enterprise and genius, and it was a duty they owed to themselves and posterity to strike out in search of a more expanded field and a more genial climate, where the soil yielded the richest return for the slightest amount of cultivation,--where the trees were loaded with perennial fruit,--and where a good subst.i.tute for bread, called La Camash, grew in the ground; where salmon and other fish crowded the streams; and where the princ.i.p.al labour of the settlers would be confined to keeping their gardens free from the inroads of buffalo, elk, deer, and wild turkeys. He appealed to our patriotism by picturing forth the glorious empire we should establish upon the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific,--how with our trusty rifles we should drive out the British usurpers who claimed the soil, and defend the country from the avarice and pretensions of the British Lion,--and how posterity would honour us for placing the fairest portion of the land under the Stars and Stripes.... Other speeches were made full of glowing descriptions of the fair land of promise, the far-away Oregon, which no one in the a.s.semblage had ever seen, and about which not more than half a dozen had ever read any account. After the election of Mr.

Burnett as captain, and other necessary officers, the meeting, as motley and primitive a one as ever a.s.sembled, adjourned with "three cheers" for Captain Burnett and Oregon.

Peter Burnett to whom Nesmith here refers, was the same who became the first governor of California.

By the walnut hearth-fires in many a home of the prairie States and at the corn-huskings and quilting bees the talk of Oregon and the forests of the Columbia, and the rich pasture lands of the Willamette, and the salmon and game, and genial climate and majestic mountains, went the rounds. Interest grew into enthusiasm, enthusiasm waxed hot, and in the early spring the great immigration of 1843 set forth from Westport, Missouri, for the Columbia waters. Though the immigration of 1843 was the earliest of any size and the first with any number of women and children, it had perhaps the least trouble and misfortune and the most romance and gayety and enthusiasm of any. The experience of crossing the plains was one which nothing else could duplicate;--the hasty rising in the chill damp of the morning, the preparing the cattle and horses for the long, hard drive, the rounds of the waggons to strengthen bolts and tires and tongues, the loading of the rifles for possible hostile Indians or buffalo, the setting forth of the scouts on horseback, the long train strung across the dusty plain, the occasional bands of wild Indians emerging like a whirlwind from the broad expanse, and then the approaching cool of night with its hurried rest on the rough prairie sod. Sometimes there were nights of storm and stampede and darkness. Sometimes savage beasts and savage men startled the train, or one of the stupendous herds of buffalo went thundering across the prairie. Then came the first glimpse of snowy heights, then of deep canons, and then the summit was attained, and far westward stretched the maze of plains and mountains through which the Snake River, the greatest of the tributaries of the Columbia, took its swift way.

During most of the journey, Dr. Marcus Whitman was guide, physician, and friend. While severe controversy has arisen as to the extent of his services in organising the immigration, the testimony is unvarying as to the value of his presence with the train. Last to bed at night and first up in the morning, attending both people, cattle, and horses in their sicknesses and accidents, ahead of the train on horseback to find the pa.s.ses of the hills and the fords of the rivers, the watcher by night and the pilot by day, the missionary doctor was the veritable "Mr. Greatheart"

of the immigration.

Great was the astonishment of Captain Grant, commandant of the Hudson's Bay Fort Hall on Snake River, near the present Pocatello, when the long train filed past the enclosure. Grant had known Whitman before and was aware of his stubborn determination and patriotic purpose. But Grant attempted just the same to dissuade the immigrants of 1843 from going farther with their waggons, declaring the Blue Mountains to be impa.s.sable.

The doughty doctor simply laughed quietly and told the immigrants to push on, and he would see them through. But just as they were entering the rough defiles of the Blue Mountains, a band of Indians from Waiilatpu, headed by Sticcus, came to meet the train, searching for Whitman, telling him that his medical services were in great demand at Lapwai. The much-needed guide turned over the pilotage of the train to Sticcus, and he himself hastened on to minister to the sick at Lapwai. As he pa.s.sed through Waiilatpu he learned that the threatening conduct of the Indians had led Mrs. Whitman to go to Vancouver, and that during his absence the Indians had burned his mill and committed other depredations. But it was his lot to labour and suffer. He had become accustomed to it.

The event proved that Sticcus was a thoroughly capable guide. For, though not speaking a word of English, he made his directions so well understood by pantomime that, as Mr. Nesmith has said, he led them safely over the roughest mountain road that they ever saw. And so in due time the train emerged from the screen of timber on the Blue Mountains. Stretched wide before them, lay the plains of Umatilla and Walla Walla, while in the far distance the River of the West poured through the arid waste. Yet farther the snow summits of the Cascades ridged the western sky. After a brief pause at Waiilatpu, the train reached the banks of the River. The immediate vicinity of the section of the River first reached is very dry in autumn. Aside from the River itself, the immediate scene is desolate and forbidding. But probably those immigrants of '43 gazed upon the blue flood, a mile wide and hastening to the western ocean, with feelings almost akin to those which swelled the hearts of the Pilgrims landing from the _Mayflower_. This was another epic of state-making, and one generation after another of the Americans who have wrought such achievement may well turn back to join hands with those before.

Doubtless the immigrants, as they stood by the River in the pleasant haze of the October afternoon, felt as though their journey was substantially at an end. Being now at Fort Walla Walla on the river of that name, they paused to make ready for the last stage of the journey, little realising what perils and sufferings it would entail. Dr. Whitman and Archibald McKinley, the chief factor at the fort, advised them to leave their cattle and waggons to winter on the Walla Walla, while they pursued their way down the stream on flatboats. Part of the company accepted the advice, but a number determined to keep all their belongings together and to take their road along the bank of the River to The Dalles, and there make their flatboats.

To those who remained on the Walla Walla now fell the difficult task of constructing flatboats. Huge, uncouth, structures they were, made of timber gathered on the river bank. But when loaded and pushed out into the swift current, steered with immense sweeps in the stern, these flatboats afforded to the footsore and exhausted immigrants a delightful change. Out of the dust, off the rocks, away from the sage-brush, with more of laugh and song than they had had for many a day, they swept gaily on. For a hundred miles or more the elements were propitious. With the bright sunshine, the clear, cool water, the majestic snow-peaks in the distance, the easily gliding boats,--this seemed the pleasantest part of the entire journey. But after The Dalles had been reached and the two divisions of the company were again united and on their way down the River to the Cascades, disaster began to haunt them. At the Cascades, a boat with several members of the Applegate family, one of the most prominent in the immigration as well as afterwards, was overturned in the rapids, and three of the party drowned in the boiling surge. Two were saved in a way that seems almost miraculous. One of these was a young boy, the other a young man. The boy was very active and an excellent swimmer. After the overturning of the boat he was carried two miles in the current, part of the time being entirely sucked under by the whirling under-current. After being tossed with violence betwixt rock and wave till it seemed that he must expire, he was suddenly spewed forth upon a ledge of slippery rock, to which he clung desperately till he had recovered breath. Then he drew himself up on a narrow shelf, and at the same instant saw the young man swept by. Reaching forth, the brave boy managed to bring the struggling man to the same shelter with himself. But when they had regained sufficient strength to examine their surroundings, they discovered that they were on a rocky niche from which they could find no ascent of the ragged precipitous cliff. They were in a trap. Looking across the River, they could see that the bank was smooth and that on that side lay the trail. Young Applegate saw that a reef extended a considerable part of the way across the River, and desperate as the attempt seemed, he resolved to pick his way along the reef to a point whence he might swim to the other sh.o.r.e. It was his only chance for life. Fearful as were the odds, the daring lad accomplished his aim. He emerged on the further end of the reef. Looking around, he discovered that his comrade had not possessed the nerve to follow. And then,--most wonderful of all,--back he went to a.s.sist his more timid fellow. In this, too, he succeeded, and after a return in which they should have been drowned a dozen times, they both reached the farther end of the reef. There casting themselves again into the inhospitable flood, they buffeted their way to sh.o.r.e. Battered, bruised, exhausted, they yet recovered and lived to a good old age to tell the tale of their fight with the Columbia River.