Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/118

112 had been to Oregon in 1843 and was returning, an aged brother-in-law, and a party of emigrants, she started on the long journey at the age of sixty-six years. Eager to reach her destination she yielded, with others, to the representations of an unknown guide who promised to show a shorter route than the one down the Columbia Valley. From a letter written to her friends in the East, in 1854, we are able to learn of the trials she was compelled to endure before finally reaching her destination. The account is indeed a graphic one and deserves to live as one representative of pioneer experiences. She was obliged to cross stretches of country sixty miles in width where there was neither grass nor water. There were mountains to be crossed and the canyon of the Umpqua River to be passed before she could be even on the edge of the Willamette Valley. For several days she traversed that deadly gateway into her promised land and emerged alive but destitute of almost everything else. The picture of her arrival at the head waters of the Willamette is vivid indeed. In her letter she says, "Pause a moment and consider my situation. Worse than alone in a savage wilderness, without food, without fire, cold and shivering, wolves fighting and howling about me. The darkness of night forbade the stars to shine upon me; all was solitary as death. But that kind Providence that has ever been, was watching over me still. I committed my all to him and felt no fear." With the arrival of help from her son and others who had gone by the well-known route and anticipated her need, she was able after a journey of nine months to enter the homes of the Methodist missionaries near the present site of Salem. On her return from a trip to a mission station near the mouth of the Columbia River she found transportation to the Tualatin Plain where the son who had preceded her to Oregon was living. It was this visit which determined her future work in