Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/595

544 Range, which forms the southern boundary of the Willamette Valley, and being deserted by four of their number on the border of the hostile Indian country, which left them not men enough to stand guard, they returned for reinforcements.

The head of the first company had been Levi Scott, a native of Illinois, who came to Oregon in 1844 from near Burlington, Iowa, a man of character and determination. He appealed to the patriotism of the Polk County settlers, and secured the cooperation of Jesse and Lindsey Applegate, who had privately promoted the expedition from the first, but who now left their homes and families with the fixed resolve never to retrace their steps, never to abandon the enterprise, until a good wagon-road should be found, if such existed, as they did not doubt, from what they knew of Fremont's expeditions, and the accounts given by the lost emigrants of 1845, of the level appearance of the country to the south of their route in the lake-basin. The company as finally organized consisted of fifteen men, well supplied for a protracted expedition, who set out from La Créole settlement June 22d.