pulled by jaded teams, and all the thousand men, women and children, and the loose stock across in safety, showed wise generalship.
We here copy "A Day with the Cow Column in 1843," by the Hon. Jesse Applegate, a late honored citizen of Oregon, who was one of Dr. Whitman's company in 1843. It is a clear, graphic description of a sample day's journey on the famous trip, and was an address published in the transactions of the Pioneer Oregon Association in 1876.
The migration of a large body of men, women and children across the Continent to Oregon was, in the year 1843, strictly an experiment, not only in respect to the numbers, but to the outfit of the migrating party.
Before that date two or three missionaries had performed the journey on horseback, driving a few cows with them. Three or four wagons drawn by oxen had reached Fort Hall on Snake River, but it was the honest opinion of most of those who had traveled the route down Snake River that no large number of cattle could be subsisted on its scanty pasturage, or wagons taken over a route so rugged and mountainous.
The emigrants were also assured that the Sioux would be much opposed to the passage of so large a body through their country, and would probably resist it on account of the emigrants destroying and frightening away the buffaloes,
