Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/503

452 Samuel B. Crockett, and Daniel Clark. According to Clyman, they encountered at the Grand Kond James Waters of the previous emigration, who was going to meet his family, and who supplied them with provisions for the remainder of their journey.

Ford's company, being in advance of Gilliam's, also sent three young men to the Willamette Valley with Minto's party. Snow had now begun to fall in the mountains,while a large part of the emigration was between Fort Boise and the Dalles. The misery entailed upon the belated travellers by the change to winter weather was indescribable. Joseph Watt, born in Ohio, author of a manuscript called First Things, gives an account of the incoming of 1844, and of the importation of sheep from the States by himself in 1847, the erection of the first woollen-mills in Oregon, and other first things, and describes his passage from Burnt River to the Willamette. Watt was then a young man and poorly equipped for such a journey, but drove an ox-team as far as Burnt River. Here, probably because he thought there were too many mouths for the provisions, he went forward, afoot and alone. At the end of the first day he found a cabin, occupied by Blakeley, an emigrant who gave him a few crusts. Bowman, a destitute traveller, joined Watt, and they walked on together until they overtook Ford's company, from whom they obtained one meal. In the Grand Rond they lost their way, but regaining the road, met a family named Walker, who had nothing to eat, and thought of killing their oxen. Being overtaken by others who still had a little food, they begged them to divide; but want and fear had hardened their hearts, and they refused. The pedestrians made a fire of green wood, before which they sat throughout the night drying their wet clothing; and in the morning found it snowing, men, with soleless shoes and pantaloons half gone, they renewed their journey. Bowman had a family whom he left with the wagons while he hastened on to procure assistance. Says Watt: 'I think there were snow-flakes as large as my hat, and it was damp snow. Bowman was speculating what he and his son "Billy "could do when they got down to the valley. Waters, whom we had met on Powder River, had told him it was worth so much a hundred to make rails; and, says he, "Billy and I can make lots of money at that. Whiskey-barrels are worth so much; whiskey is worth something. I can make whiskey." Says I, "You old fool, you will never get out of these mountains! Proceeding, sometimes bewildered on account of the trail being hidden by snow, they came to the camp of some The road from