Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/93

Rh childish, petulant, and obstinate. I remember that while we were at the mission of Doctor Whitman, who had performed such hard labor for us, and was deserving of our warmest gratitude, he was most ungenerously accused by some of our people of selfish motives in conducting us past his establishment, where we could procure fresh supplies of flour and potatoes. This foolish, false, and ungrateful charge was based upon the fact that he asked us a dollar a bushel for wheat, and forty cents for potatoes. As our people had been accustomed to sell their wheat at from fifty to sixty cents a bushel, and their potatoes at from twenty to twenty-five cents, in the Western States, they thought the prices demanded by the doctor amounted to something like extortion, not reflecting that he had to pay at least twice as much for his own supplies of merchandise, and could not afford to sell his produce as low as they did theirs at home. They were somewhat like a certain farmer in Missouri at an early day, who concluded that twenty cents a bushel was a fair price for corn, and that he would not sell for more nor less. But experience soon taught him that when the article was higher than his price he could readily sell, but when it was lower he could not sell at all; and he came to the sensible conclusion that he must avail himself of the rise in order to compensate him for the fall in prices. So obstinate were some of our people that they would not purchase of the doctor. I remember one case particularly, where an intimate friend of mine, whose supplies of food were nearly exhausted, refused to purchase, though urged to do so by me. until the wheat was all sold. The consequence was that I had to divide provisions with him before we reached the end of our journey.

On the 16th of October we arrived at Fort Walla Walla, then under charge of Mr. McKinley, having traveled from Fort Boise, two hundred and two miles, in twenty-four days, and from the rendezvous, sixteen hundred and ninety-one miles, between the 22nd of May and the 16th of October, being one hundred and forty-seven days. Average distance per day, eleven and one-half miles.

A portion of our emigrants left their wagons and cattle at Walla Walla, and descended the Columbia in boats; while another, and the larger portion, made their way with their teams and wagons to The Dalles, whence they descended to the Cascades on rafts, and thence to Fort Vancouver in boats and canoes. William Beagle and I had agreed at the rendezvous not to separate until we reached the end of our journey. We procured from Mr. McKinley, at Walla Walla, an old Hudson's Bay Company's boat, constructed expressly