Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/71

Rh years, and while in office he arrested Aaron Burr in 1806."

The foregoing brings us into line with the mind that conceived Oregon and planned its exploration, who appointed Meriwether Lewis to lead the exploration and commissioned William (Mark as his associate not without knowledge (we may easily conceive) of the services of Generals Andrew Lewis and George Kogcrs Clark to liberty and progress.

Just seventy years from the date of the battle of Point Pleasant the writer emerged from the west timber line of the Blue Mountains of Oregon in company with Daniel Clark and S. B. Crockett. Learning recently that the latter was yet living in his 84th year, I wrote to learn if he was a family connection with the Colonel Joseph Crockett before mentioned, and received an affirmative reply. S. B. Crockett was one of the most effective helpers in the pioneer movement of 1844, and in that which reached Puget Sound in 1845, settling on Whitby's Island in the Sound, he induced his father's family to follow him also.

We will now return to the rank and file of those who fought the Battle of Point Pleasant. Mr. Randall tells us: "The volunteers who were to form the army of Lewis began to gather at Camp Union, the levels of Greenbrier (Lewisburg), In-fore the 1st of September. It was a motley gathering. They were not the King's regulars nor trained troops. They were not knights in burnished steel on prancing steeds. They were not cavaliers, sons from the luxurious manors. They were not drilled martinets. They were, however, determined, dauntless men, sturdy and weather-beaten as the mountain sides whence they came. They were undrilled in the arts of military movements, but they were in physique and endurance and power Nature's noblemen, reared amid the open freedom of rural life." * * * It was one hundred and sixty miles from Camp Union to their destination at the mouth of the Great Kanawha. The regiments passed through a trackless forest so rugged and mountainous as to render their