Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/596

Rh The exploring company proceeded south by the California trail. On arriving at the canon of the Uinpqua River, where trappers and travellers had formerly taken to those high, wooded ridges, where drought, chaparral, and savages had so vexed the soul of R L. Edwards, and tried the firmness of Ewing Young in 1837, finding that no wagon-road could be made over them, they returned to explore the canon, which they found to be a practicable pass, though rocky and filled with a thick growth of scrubby trees and underbrush requiring much labor to cut away. The greatest vigilance being used in guarding against natives in the Rogue River Valley, the company encountered no hostilities, although they discovered the evidences of trouble to a California party of about eighty persons who had left the rendezvous on La Créole two weeks before. This party had been detained in camp in the Rogue River Valley by the loss of some of their horses, which they had endeavored in vain to recover. Signal-fires were seen burning on the mountains nightly, but finding the road-hunters, watchful, the natives finally left the explorers, and followed the California company to ambush them in the Siskiyou Mountains.

On arriving in the Rogue River Valley the course followed was along the river to a branch coming from the south-east, which led them to the foot of the Siskiyou Range, where the California trail crossed it, from which they turned eastward toward the Cascade