Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/351

 Missouri to Oregon, which will serve to mark permanently the route for larger numbers, each succeeding year, while they have practically demonstrated that wagons drawn by horses or oxen can cross the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River, contrary 317 to all the sinister assertions of all those who pretended it to be impossible.

In their slow progress, these persons have encountered, as in all former instances, and as all succeeding emigrants must, if this or some similar bill be not passed by Congress, the continual fear of Indian aggression, the actual loss through them of horses, cattle and other property, and the great labor of transporting an adequate amount of provisions for so long a journey. The bill herewith proposed would, in a great measure, lessen these inconveniences by the establishment of posts, which, while having the possessed power to keep the Indians in check, thus doing away with the necessity of military vigilance on the part of the traveler by day and night, would be able to furnish them in transit with fresh supplies of provisions, diminishing the original burdens of the emigrants, and finding thus a ready and profitable market for their produce—a market that would, in my opinion, more than suffice to defray all the current expenses of such post. The present party is supposed to have expended no less than $2,000