Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/311

Rh educational life of the young commonwealth of Washington, as that part of Oregon was soon constituted, and from his labors sprang the University of Washington. Mr. Horton is still in his vigor, and Mr. Bagley still enjoys a green old age at eighty-three. Captain Mercer is no longer living.

Mr. Warren recalls his life on the Plains as furnishing the basis of a thrilling story, with its daily round of toil and change, with the alterations of plains and mountains and deserts, and incidents of buffaloes, Indians, and wolves, "along a track of more than 150 camp fires, which dotted the line for nearly 2,000 miles." He makes note, however, of only the following particulars of his journey:—

In regard to the general health of our company.—That dread scourge, the cholera, broke out among- the emigrants along the Platte River, and for days and weeks we were rarely out of sight of a new made grave. Our company, however, left but one, Mrs. Gould, from Iowa, who died with cholera at Elm Creek, on Platte River; but many members of our company were sick along this part of the route. My health was good until we reached the Powder River in Eastern Oregon, where I was taken with mountain fever and did not recover until I reached the end of the journey. The wife of Capt. Thomas Mercer died at the cascades of the Columbia, within but one day's travel of the end of her journey, leaving four little girls.The Indians.—We were very fortunate in getting through without serious trouble from them. On one occasion, a very dark night, they made a bold attempt to steal our horses, but were promptly checked by the guards, who were Dexter Horton and myself. The Indians were armed with bows and arrows, and in the skirmish for the possession of the horses an arrow was shot through my coat and vest under the left arm. With the knowledge that we now have of the Indian character, it seems. remarkable, and we were indeed fortunate, that we were not left on the desolate plain without a single horse, as they could easily have stampeded our horses in spite of the guards almost any day or night between the Rocky Mountains and Snake River. On account of the scarcity of grass through that desolate region we were compelled to keep horsemen constantly scouting for grass, and at times sending from one to three miles from camp in the night in order to obtain sufficient grass to keep the horses 