took the name of the three brothers who owned it. It was erected in 1832, and was a place of considerable consequence, being a parallelogram of one hundred by one hundred and fifty feet, with adobe walls several feet in thickness and eighteen feet in height, with a large gateway closed by strong doors of planking. The wall, which was surmounted by two armed bastions, enclosed several buildings, shops, and a warehouse. The country in which it was situated being a dangerous one, about sixty men were required to perform the duties of the place, including that of guarding the fort and the stock belonging to it.[1]
For men so lately swearing such fidelity, this was a bad beginning, but Farnham was not disheartened. On the 11th of July, the malecontents left the fort for another establishment of the Bents, on Platte River; and Farnham with three sound and good men, and one wounded and bad one, as he expressed it, resumed his journey to Oregon. His companions were Blair, one of the Woods, Smith, and a Kentuckian named Kelly, who was engaged as guide.[2]
Smith recovered rapidly, and about the middle of August the party reached Brown Hole, on the head waters of Green River, where was St Clair's fort called David Crockett. Here Kelly's services ended, Oakley and Wood determined to return, being so persuaded by Paul Richardson, a mountain man of some notoriety, who gave a dispiriting account of the Oregon country in order to secure volunteers for his own party about to start for the Missouri frontier. With only Smith and Blair for companions, and a Shoshone guide, Farnham pushed on to Fort Hall, then in
- ↑ Farnham's Travels, 65–6.
- ↑ Farnham describes Blair as an elderly man, a mechanic, from Missouri. 'A man of kinder heart never existed. From the place where he joined us, to Oregon Territory, when myself or others were worn with fatigue or disease or starvation, he was always ready to administer whatever relief was in his power. But towards Smith, in his helpless condition, he was especially obliging. He dressed his wound daily. He slept near him at night, and rose to supply his least want.' Smith he calls 'base in everything that makes a man estimable,' and says he had an alias, Carroll. Travels, 36–7, 120. In Oregon Smith was nicknamed Blubber-mouth. Gray's Hist. Or., 187.
