Before the Applegates left the caravan at Thousand Springs to smooth as far as possible the road which the wagons were to follow, they instructed the immigrants *to be careful in passing through the country occupied by savages, no companies of less than twenty wagons being considered safe; that diligence should be used in travelling, and that in making the long drives over the desert portions of the road certain precautions should be observed. With these explicit directions, and two reliable men as guides, they apprehended no difficulty for those who were to follow.[1]
The first companies to take the road after the explorers were those led by Harrison Linville, and a Mr Vanderpool; and although upon them fell the severer toil of breaking the track, and reopening the road over the Cascade Mountains made by Applegate's company, which a fire had filled in places with fallen timber, they arrived in the Rogue River Valley on the 9th of October;[2] while the rear companies, disregarding the instructions of the guides, loitered by the way, some, indeed, from circumstances over which they had no control,[3] but many from dilatoriness and a desire to evade sharing in the labor of road-making. These detained the main companies, some of whom were compelled to wait for them at the parting of the California and Oregon roads on the Humboldt, because Goff, their guide, was compelled to do so, lest they should mistake the turning-off point.[4]
- ↑ Or. Spectator, April 15, 1847; L. Applegate'e Klamath Lake Road, in Ashland Tidings, Oct. 1877 to July 1878; Zabriske, in U. S. Surveyor-general's Report, 1868, 1042; Burnett's Recollections, 229-30.
- ↑ D. Goff, in Or. Spectator, April 29, 1847.
- ↑ On the 13th of August a young man named Roby who had long lingered in a consumption died. On the 21st a Mr Burns died, leaving a wife and three children; a few others were ill.
- ↑ Thornton says that Applegate affirmed that the distance from Fort Hall to the Willamette Valley by way of the Dalles was from 800 to 850 miles; that the distance by the southern route was 200 miles less; that the whole distance was better supplied with grass and water than the old road; and that the road was generally smooth, and the dry drive only 30 miles long. 'If the total absence of all truth in each of these affirmations affords any means by which to judge of the principles of the man making them, he may unhesitatingly
