"A Day with the Cow-Column," by Captain Jesse Applegate. The leader of the second division was Captain Jesse Applegate, a man whom the people of Oregon delight to honour as one of the noblest of the pioneers. He is remembered as a statesman, a surveyor, a pathfinder through the southern mountains, and in general a leader in all the varied activities of frontier life in the Northwest. But, fortunately, he was also a writer of elegant English prose; and one of the most delightful productions of his pen is an account which he wrote in 1876 of a typical day on this long march "with the cow-column." Since this essay gives us so lifelike a picture of the great emigration in motion toward the west, and since it describes the camping methods in use for many years among trapping parties and traders, as well as emigrants to Oregon and California, we cannot do better than to transcribe a portion of it.i
Daybreak; arousing the camp. "It is four o'clock A.M.; the sentinels on duty have discharged their rifles — the signal that the hours of sleep are over—and every wagon and tent is pouring forth its night tenants, and slow kindling smokes begin largely to rise and float away in the morning air. Sixty men start from the corral, spreading as they make through the vast herd of cattle and horses that make a semicircle around
- The paper was read by Mr. Applegate before the Oregon Pioneer Association in 1876, and published in their proceedings; it was reprinted in the Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society for December, 1900.
