Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/362

344 Over this route, also, were made those world renowned expeditions by Fremont, Stansbury, Lander, and others of lesser fame, to the heart of the Rocky Mountains, and beyond, to the blue shores of the Pacific Ocean. Over the same trackless waste the pony express executed those marvelous feats in annihilating distance, and the once famous overland stage lumbered along through the seemingly interminable desert of sage brush and alkali dust avant-courieres of the telegraph and the railroad."

The body of the book touches upon topics ranging in time from Jonathan Carver's explorations in 1766-'68 to the building of the Union Pacific Railroad. Its map lays "The Old Salt Lake Trail" exactly on the route of the Oregon trail as far as Fort Bridger, in Southwestern Wyoming. But the Oregon migrations are not hinted at by a single word in the body of the book. The authors' account of them could not have been crowded out by more weighty matters, as all the disjointed fragments of Indian hunting and fighting and drunken carousal, whether happening on the line of the trail or not, are crowded in. Either the story of the Oregon movement during the thirties, forties and fifties was absolutely unknown to Colonels Inman and Cody, or, if known, thought worthy of relegation to oblivion by them. In interviews last summer with people living along the line of the trail, only those whose experiences extended back to the time of the Oregon migrations recognized the trail as the Oregon trail. It was always the "California trail" or the "Mormon trail."

It is, of course, to be conceded that more people traveled this road to California than to Oregon. But the Oregon movement was first in time. By it the feasibility of the route was demonstrated, and people susceptible to the western fever were accustomed to think of