- alive; and only the regular guard of four went with them. We lost only one horse, however, on the trip, and that was bitten by a rattlesnake on Burnt River. (In the above brief description are included many adventures. Once, when the horses were needing good pasture most, Mr. Warren was guided out a long distance from camp over the parched plains to a bit of grass, selected by an inexperienced or unobservant companion, only to find that the "grass "was simply a patch of wild flag, or iris, which the horses would not touch; and the disgust of Captain Mercer, as the animals came back hollow and weakened by further fasting, knew no bounds.)
- Our route.—As before stated, we crossed the Missouri at Omaha; thence up the north side of the Platte River and up the Sweetwater River to the South Pass: thence to Green River. At Soda Springs, on Bear River, we diverged from the California route toward the northwest to Fort Hall, on the Snake River; thence practically down the Snake River (cutting across the Blue Mountains by the Grande Ronde) to the Columbia. Our whole route being substantially that of the Union Pacific Railroad (and the Oregon Short Line branch).
From The Dalles, where the first outposts of the Oregon settlements were seen, the older settlements on the Walla Walla having been abandoned after the Whitman massacre, and that valley not being occupied again by whites until after the war of 1855-56, the journey was by the Columbia. The wagons were embarked upon flatboats and transported down to the cascades, and thence by the old portage to a steamer, on which they came to Portland.
First experiences in Oregon were even more adventurous than on the Plains, and the four young men found that hard work and privation were as necessary here as ever in Illinois; but to this they were not averse, being both by nature and training disposed to take work or danger wherever these met them . They arrived at Portland, September 9, 1852, then a small but ambitious town in the woods; but were here detained by the sickness of his brother, P. C. Warren. Upon his convalescence the others began the search for employment. George and Frank went down the Columbia and found
