lowed it into Oregon. When a company came by sea to Fort Vancouver, or a small party overland to Walla Walla, every facility for continuing their journey or prosecuting their designs was tendered to them by the Hudson's Bay Company. White's party, which was only a pack-train, arrived early, and proceeded direct to the settlements without any serious hinderance. But here were nearly nine hundred people with their household goods and a large number of cattle and horses. It was impossible to meet this whole colony as guests, and help them to their destinations with all manner of courtesies as had so often been done in regard to smaller parties. They must help themselves, and help themselves they did.
Going into the pine forest which beautifies the foothills near the Dalles, they felled trees and made rafts of logs from a foot to eighteen inches in diameter and twenty feet long, which being securely lashed together, the wagons were taken apart and with their loads placed upon them. Sometimes one covered wagon-bed was reserved as a cabin for the use of women and children. A child was born in one of these cabins on a raft, 35 between the Dalles and the Cascades. Others who had come from Walla Walla by boats kept on to the Cascades in the same manner. Some left their wagons and stock at the Dalles, while the greater number drove their cattle down the river, swimming them to the north side, and ferrying them back again to the south side opposite Vancouver.
On arriving at the Cascades a formidable bar to further progress was discovered. The rafts and boats could not be taken over the rapids. Two weeks were occupied in cutting a wagon-road round the Cascades by which the wagons brought down on rafts could reach the lower end of the portage. In the mean time the autumn rains had set in, and the weather in the heart of the great range was cold and wintry.
The few immigrants who had friends or relatives in
35 [1]
- ↑ Ford's Road-makers, MS., 15.
