Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/606

Rh J. Quinn Thornton dealt with the opening of the southern route to the Willamette Valley in a or 5 horsemen soon entered the river, and in 10 minutes had waded across and clambered up the loose sand-hank. They were ill-looking fellows, thin and swarthy, with care-worn, anxious faces, and lips rigidly compressed They had good cause for anxiety; it was 3 days since they first encamped here, and on the night of their arrival they had lost 123 of their best cattle, driven off by the wolves, through the neglect of the man on guard. This discouraging and alarming calamity was not the first that had overtaken them. Since leaving the settlements they had met with nothing but misfortune. Some of their party had died; one man had been killed by the Pawnees; and about a week before, they had been plundered by the Dakotahs of all their best horses. . .The emigrants recrossed the river, and we prepared to follow First the heavy ox-wagons plunged down the bank, and dragged slowly over the sand-beds; sometimes the hoofs of the oxen were scarcely wetted by the thin sheet of water; and the next moment the river would be boiling against their sides, and eddying fiercely around the wheels. Inch by inch they receded from the shore, dwindling every moment until a. length they seemed to be floating far out in the very middle of the river. . .As we gained the other bank, a rough group of men surrounded us. They were not robust nor large of frame, yet they had an aspect of hardy endurance. Finding at home no scope for their fiery energies, they had betaken themselves to the prairie; and in them seemed to be revived, with redoubled force, that fierce spirit which impelled their ancestors, scarce more lawless than themselves, from the German forests, to inundate Europe, and break to pieces the Roman empire. A fortnight afterwards this unfortunate party passed Fort Laramie while we were there. Not one of their missing oxen had been recovered, though they had encamped a week in search of them; and they had been compelled to abandon a great part of their baggage and provisions, and yoke cows and heifers to their wagons to carry them forward upon their journey, the most toilsome and hazardous part of which lay still before them. It is worth noticing, that on the Platte one may sometimes see the shattered wrecks of ancient claw-footed tables, well waned and rubbed, or massive bureaus of carved oak. These, many of them no doubt the relies of ancestral prosperity in the colonial time, must have encountered grange vicissitudes. Imported, perhaps, originally from England; then with the declining fortunes of their owners, borne across the Alleghanies to the remote wilderness of Ohio or Kentucky; then to Illinois or Missouri; and now at last fondly stowed away in the family wagon for the interminable journey to Oregon. But the stern privations of the way are little anticipated. The cherished relic is soon flung to scorch and crack upon the hot prairie. ''Parkman's Cal and Or. Trail'', 105-8.