manufactured myself. However, on the fifth day in the evening a committee visited us and we were allowed to enter the house in full dress.
The reader must not infer from the foregoing that we were always idle and bent on amusing ourselves. We were each required to do our share of work of whatever kind we were capable of doing. Every boy had to put his hands to the plow as soon as he was old enough to guide a yoke of oxen or plow a straight furrow. Rails had to be cut and split, for all the fences were built of rails. There were the hundred and one chores to be done on a farm, and so we earned our hours of leisure. We were also required to attend school throughout the winter season, and we had some very excellent teachers during the seven years we lived in the Willamette Valley.
In the year 1846 my father, with a number of other pioneers, resolved to go on an exploring expedition, the object being to find a more direct route for immigrants coming to Oregon. They hoped to find a route by which others might reach the new country without having to suffer the hardships they had endured but could never forget. Another reason which had much influence in determining the pioneers to undertake the expedition was the fact that the question as to which power, Great Britain or the United States, would eventually secure a title to the country, had not been settled. In case war should occur, and Great Britain be successful, it was Important that we should have a way by which to leave the country without running the gauntlet of the Hudson Bay Company's forts, or falling a prey to the Indian tribes which were under British influence. Fifteen men were found who were willing to undertake the hazardous enterprise, father and Uncle Jesse making two of the party. Each man had a saddle horse and a pack horse. After making arrangements for the subsistence of their families this little party started out into an unexplored wilderness among tribes of hostile Indians. They left their homes in the Willamette Valley on the 20th day of June, 1846. The route they followed led across the Kalapooya mountains into the valley of the Umpqua, thence south through the mountains into the Rogue River Valley to the base of the Siskiyou mountain chain, thence east over the mountains into the Klamath country between the upper and
