Page:Emergence of Frances Fuller Victor-Historian.djvu/15

 On October 8, 1870, Mrs. Victor departed once more from Portland, this time for California and the East. So she could see more of southern Oregon she traveled by railroad to Salem, then by stagecoach from Salem to the railhead in California at Chico. With the coming of spring she returned to Oregon to resume her travels to gather more material for her book. Again in October 1871 she sailed for San Francisco there to complete the writing of All Over Oregon and Washington and see it through the press. The following April she came back to Portland just long enough to arrange for the sale of her book before leaving for another visit with her mother and sisters in the East.

On her return to San Francisco in April 1873 Mrs. Victor found invitations from Jesse Applegate and Oliver C. Apple gate to visit them in the Klamath country and write the history of the Modoc War. The proposition proved irresistible, and May 1873 found her in Portland preparing to leave for Ashland where she was to join the Applegate families returning to their homes in the Klamath country now that the Modoc War had ended. The party traveled with an ambulance, a baggage-wagon, and horses, riding or walking as they chose, taking three days for the seventy-mile trip across the mountains to Linkville. As they walked along Jesse among many other things told Mrs. Victor of the opening of the southern immigrant road in I846. At night they set up camp and after a dinner of fish or venision roasted on sticks over a log fire sang songs and told stories.

Mrs. Victor spent most of her six weeks in the Klamath country at the Klamath Indian Agency learning about Indian life, customs, and mythology from young Oliver C. Applegate. With hinm as guide she witnessed the trial of the Modoc Indian prisioners at Fort Klamath and traveled to the lava beds, to Yainax, Clear Lake, and Crater Lake. The trip to Crater Lake proved the crowning event of the