Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/569

518 them to travel northward toward Mount Hood; darkness overtaking them thirty-six miles from camp.

On the following morning a descent to the bottom of the canon was effected, and a stream was discovered which evidently came down from Mount Hood, the waters overflowing the banks during the night, and subsiding during the day. It had a sandy bottom, and was very irregular in width, varying from two rods to half a mile. On this low ground there were scrubby pines, alder thickets, rushes, and a little grass. Returning to the higher ground, and exploring back beyond the point where they first came to the bluff, a descent was discovered, gradual enough to admit the passage of wagons. Unacquainted with, the extent and roughness of the Cascade Mountains, Palmer believed that by travelling up this gulf he would arrive at. the summit, imagining that Mount Hood rose from or upon the axis of the range, whereas it is far to the east of it. In this belief he returned to camp for provisions to prosecute his explorations in that direction, being soon followed by Barlow, who had taken the same general route with no definite success.

Observing that in the mountains, owing to the density of the forest, the grass was insufficient for their cattle, the leaders thought proper to send the greater part of the herds back toward the Dalles to be driven over the trail north of Mount Hood, sending at the same time a horse-train to that place for a further supply of food, it being evident that some time would be consumed in getting through to the Willamette.

Work was then commenced upon the road, which was opened in three days as far as Rock Creek, chiefly by means of fire, which consumed the thickets of arbutus, alder, hazel, and other growths very difficult to penetrate and laborious to cut away.

On the morning of the 11th Palmer, Barlow, and