Page:All Over Oregon and Washington.djvu/317

Rh long and exhausting overland journey. The location of a road from Dalles to Oregon City nearly cost two brave men their lives; but they secured their object. The first train of immigrant wagons which came over this road made from eight to ten miles per day; their forces being occupied most of the time in widening the track—for the pioneers had found it too much labor to open a very broad highway for those who were to follow.

The most skillful driving did not prove skillful enough to guide the staggering oxen through the way provided by the road-makers; and the constant tendency of a forward wheel to run up a tree, on one side or the other, was very trying to the drivers. But if the wagons would run up trees on ascending ground, what was their course when they came to an incline of nearly sixty degrees on the descending side, with a heavy load urging the jaded oxen from behind?

As succeeding trains gradually widened the way, a new difficulty arose. It was better to be stopped by a tree than not to be stopped at all, or to find one's team rushing down the side of a mountain, like an avalanche, to certain death and destruction; To overcome this danger, good-sized trees were attached by chains to the rear of the wagon, with the branches left on, to act like grappling-irons, and in this manner the descent was made in safety. But woe to the careless or the unlucky wight whose improvised "brake" became uncoupled. The best he could hope for, in that case, was that a fore-wheel would dash up a tree, even if an upset was the consequence.

It sometimes happened that the oxen struck their heads against a solid fir-trunk; in which case, their proprietor became suddenly minus that pair of oxen,