whom they found in the Bear River country. At Fort Bridger they obtained fresh horses, and avoiding the hostile tribes between Independence Rock and Ash Hollow by travelling at night and lying perdu by day, supplying themselves afresh at forts Laramie and Rubideau, they succeeded in reaching the frontier just as the immigrants were crossing the Missouri River on the 4th of May.[1]
Here all his remaining men left him; and after a brief visit to his relatives in Missouri, Meek hastened to Washington, being forced to make diplomacy supply the place of money[2] with steamboat captains and stage proprietors, and arriving at the capital in a costume sufficiently ragged and bizarre to command the attention of men, small or great, anywhere in the world. Nor was the messenger at all indifferent to his exalted position and the mighty power of dress. The rags and dirt which covered him, and which might have been the envy of any Peter the Great, were worth more to him at this juncture than twelve suits of broadcloth. He would see the president at once, before civilization should rob him of any particle of this prestige.[3] It was better than a bear-fight, better than a Blackfoot's scalp, the glory of being forever known
- ↑ Ebbert's Trapper's Life, MS., 24-31; Barnes' Or. and Cal., MS., 2.
- ↑ The moneyless condition of both the Oregon messengers was about equal. Thornton states that at one time he had only a half-dime; but remembering to pray, that day his wants were supplied.
- ↑ In Mrs Victor's River of the West, 439-62, is an amusing account of Meek's début in Washington. The book was in fact written by Mrs Victor at the suggestion of Meek, who furnished the incidents of his life, on which thread is strung a sketch of the American fur companies and of the colonial history of Oregon. All that part of the book relating to the movements of the fur companies and Meek's personal affairs was written from notes furnished by Meek; the remainder was gathered from various other sources. Of Meek's characteristics, to which I have referred in his biography, Mrs Victor seems to have had a ready appreciation, and to have presented him very nearly as he was—a fine man spoiled by being thrust out into an almost savage life in his boyhood.
Frances F. Victor, née Fuller, was a native of Rome, New York; her father was born in Connecticut, and her mother, Lucy A. Williams, of the Rhode Island family of that name. Her father removed to Wooster, Ohio, in her girlhood, where her education was completed. Most Ohio people of the period of 1851 will remember a volume of poems brought out by Frances and her sister Metta Victoria, about this time, and while the authors were still in their teens. The sisters married brothers by the name of Victor. Frances, who
