Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/613

 American Falls, Idaho, Sept. 12. — It is a stretch of six hundred miles from Fort Laramie to the American Falls. ... As the Sweetwater enters the Platte. . . the pioneers necessarily left the valley of the Platte and struck up that of the Sweetwater. This they followed up a hundred miles, turning to the right through South Pass. A few miles farther on they found the Pacific Springs, whose waters flow into the Green. Down the valley of the Green the trail was made. . . . This led to Fort Bridger, 150 miles to the southwest —a roundabout way. The Sublette and the Laribie cut-off. . . soon opened and led more directly to Fort Hall on the Snake. . ..

Near Fort Hall some would cross the Snake and continue in a nearly direct course west ward, skirting the foothills of the Salmon Mountains. The main stream of the migrations, however, wound along the south bank of the Snake, passing the American Falls. There was one fording of the Platte and several of the Bear and beyond the American Falls there were two fordings of the Snake. . . . The trail through this 600 miles is still largely used as a road. One is compelled to admire the practical sagacity as engineers which the pioneers, or those who were the original locaters of the trail, showed. ... At Independence Rock we came up to a man with a large family on his way to some place in Washington. He had, as a young man, passed this place in 1850. . . . They stopped to scan the crevices and chambers of the rock for his name and those of his erstwhile companions. Names in great numbers appear on the rock; but the earlier, unless deeply carved or painted in protected places, are obscured by moss and the weathering. While we found some that appear in the annals of Oregon, none that was especially familiar was read during our short stop.

We found many interesting and obliging hosts among the proprietors of ranches on the Platte and Sweetwater. . ..

To describe the old Oregon trail by these references to the aspects of its environment does not suggest its significance. The 2000-mile groove across the continent —deep and