Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/138

122 following, when he was eighteen years of age. By means not now remembered he had heard of the Rocky Mountains, and of Oregon, and the subject coming up between his father and a few friends at their first Christmas dinner together, he rather surprised his elders at the table by remarking, "If I live, I will go across the Rocky Mountains."

The idea never left me for long, but furnished me dreams by night and thoughts by day, and finally caused me to seek information from the few books and papers coming within reach of the foreign-born miners, in my Pittsburg home, and to break away from the clannishness of my class, and to determine to observe American country life.

In 1844 a deck passage on a steamer was the cheapest and most common way for people of moderate means to reach any point of the frontier drained by the Mississippi system, and that means I adopted. Observing, however, that the boat was short-handed I offered to ship as a deckhand, and after a few questions by the mate, I was accepted. An extraordinary storm of wind and rain set in soon after starting, and continued until we reached the mouth of the Ohio, at which time half the crew were sick, and the rest nearly so from overwork. In this condition we arrived at Saint Louis, and in order to get a good night's sleep, away from the disturbance of the boat, two of us went far back in the city to a lodging house. I had a bed, the top cover of which was a fine buffalo robe, which carried me in fancy to the top of the Rocky Mountains, when the mate of another steamboat came in, known to my comrade, who asked him on what boat he was and its destination. The mate named his boat, and said he, she was "bound up the Mississippi;" but he was sorry it was not the Missouri instead, as there was a party assembling at Weston intending to cross the Rocky Moun-