which rafts of bulrushes were made, and on them men seated themselves, some to pull the raft over by a rope stretched across the river, and others to drag each an animal through the water by a rope about the horns. In this tedious labor the company engaged till the 20th; the work of herding and guarding at night being increased by the division of both men and cattle on the opposite side of the river. Edwards, who was on the north side, was obliged to be on horseback sometimes the greater part of the night, after toiling, as he says, "in sweat, water, and great danger" through the day, with myriads of mosquitoes which maddened the animals beyond bounds. There had been little opportunity to rest since the first of June, and this last trial taxed strength and patience to the utmost. But the climax came on the same afternoon that the crossing was finally effected. While driving to a new encampment, the horse on which the ammunition was packed ran into a small tule lake or pond, and all the powder became wet.
All day long Edwards had ridden hard, and far into the night he had labored to induce his charge to cross a slough, albeit but knee-deep; and now before he could sleep he must return to Yerba Buena for powder. If he had ever rebelled at the wild ways of the half-broken oxen of the Hudson's Bay Company in Oregon, he now remembered those days with regret. "The last month, what has it been!" he exclaims. "Little sleep, much fatigue, hardly time to eat, mosquitoes, cattle breaking like so many evil spirits, and scattering to the four winds, men ill natured and quarrelling; another month like the past, God avert! Who can describe it?"[1] And yet he was only sixty miles on his way, with five hundred miles still between him and the Willamette Mission. Again at Mission San Jose he exchanged two horses for cattle, to replace some which were lost; but when he brought the purchaser to Livermore's, where one of the horses had
- ↑ Diary, MS., 24.
