It was while in California that Kelly fell in with a man who was destined to have a more immediate effect upon his fortunes, and upon the history of Oregon than all others of this period. This man was Ewing Young, an American trader from Taos, in New Mexico, whence he had led a small party, trading goods to the Californians for horses, and to the Indians for furs. Young was a man of intelligence and of an adventurous spirit. Kelley revealed to him his plan for a settlement on the Columbia, together with his views of the American claim, and his desire to see the Hudson's Bay Company's hold on the country loosened. With this sentiment Young was in full accord, and being quite willing at any time to have an adventure, was persuaded to accompany Kelley to Oregon.
If readers will take the trouble to look up the matter in Lee and Frost's "Oregon," they will find mention of seeing at their unfinished mission house on the Wallamet, in the autumn of 1834, "A party headed by Mr. Ewing Young, an American from one of the western United States, arrived in the Wallamet from California, embracing about a dozen persons, most of them from the United States. Some of them had been sailors, some hunters in the mountains and in the regions bordering on California to the south, and one, Mr. Kelley, was a traveler, a New England man, who entertained some very extravagant notions in regard to Oregon, which he published on his return."
Concerning the party, Young himself says: "When we set out from the last settlement I had seventy-seven horses and mules. Kelley and the other five men had twenty-one. The last nine men that joined the party had fifty-six." The inference from this account is that the party of Young and Kelley at the start consisted of seven persons with ninety-eight horses. They were joined
