Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/94

84 called at the White House to see General Jackson, of whom he was a great admirer. The story of this journey is perhaps best and most succinctly told by extracts from Mr. Ball's journal, which opens as follows:

I met Captain Wyeth in Baltimore March 18, 1832. The company were in uniform dress. Each wore a coarse woolen jacket and pantaloons, a striped cotton shirt and cowhide boots. Each had a musket, some had rifles. All had bayonets on their broad belts, with a large clasp knife for eating and general use. Some had pistols, but each had also a small axe or hatchet in their belts. To complete this outfit were utensils for cooking, tents, camp kettles, and blankets. Each man paid Captain Wyeth $40 to defray expenses by wheel or steamboat.

We went by railroad to Frederick, sixty miles over the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad by horse power. This was then the longest railroad in the country. It had been built at enormous expense, and was constructed on a plan very unlike the present. A flat iron rail was used and was riveted onto granite blocks or stringers. The winter frost had so displaced these blocks that it was very rough. The railroad cuts gave a fresh and fine view of the geology of the country; the granite, the strata of marble of the BJue Ridge, and the Alleghany sandstone.

We arrived at Frederick March 29. From there we walked, having a wagon for our baggage, and then we commenced our camplife. We pitched our tents by the roadside, and built fires to cook by. So we continued on the National road to Brownsville, on the Monongahela River. There we took a steamboat for Pittsburgh, then a small village of smoke and dirt. April 8 we took a steamboat, "The Freeman," down the Ohio River to Saint Louis, Missouri. We stopped at Cincinnati April 12 for a day. It was a mere village, the buildings being of wood and of no great pretensions. The river had been so high that it had flooded the village, doing much damage. We passed Marietta, distinguished for its mounds, resembling modern fortifications, but doubtless the work of aborigines, now extinct. There was, too, a creek about a hundred miles from Pittsburgh, called "Seneka Oil Creek," which would blaze on the application of a match.

Captain Wyeth lessened our expenses (or tried to) by bargaining with the captain of the steamboat, that we should assist in helping bring wood on the boat. The sail from Cincinnati to Saint Louis was interesting, and passing the falls or rapids of the Ohio in the vicinity of Louisville was especially exciting. We arrived at Saint Louis April 18, 1832. Here we hoped to meet some of the traders who were going west on their annual trip, and called on Mr. Mackenzie, one of