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454 boats, as they had been the previous year. The scenes of suffering at the Cascades in 1843 were repeated in 1844. Minto, who it will be remembered hastened to the Willamette for help for his employer and friends, tells us that on returning with a boatload of provisions to the Cascades he found "men in the prime of life lying among the rocks seeming ready to die. I found there mothers with their families, whose husbands were snow-bound in the Cascade Mountains, without provisions, and obliged to kill and eat their game dogs. Mrs Morrison had traded her only dress except the one she wore for a bag of potatoes. There was scarcely a dry day, and the snowline was nearly down to the river."

In such a plight did the immigration of 1844, which set out with high hopes to plant an independent colony in Oregon, find itself on reaching the promised land. The loss of life had been light notwithstanding the hardships of the journey; but the loss of property in cattle, clothing, and household and other goods had been great, to the ruin of many The cattle had become fat during the weeks of detention on the grassy plains, and were unfit for the hard work oi hauling loaded wagons for the remainder of the summer. Many died of exhaustion; some were taken by the natives, who, although not in open hostility, were troublesome at several places on the route, at the Kansas agency, at Laramie, in the Cayuse country and on the Columbia; although White had deputized