Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/14

 6 T. W. DAVENPORT. our team of four strong horses was occasionally incompetent to extricate the coach from the holes wherein it had sunk to the hubs, and the calls of the driver to unload were jovially responded to by the passengers, to whom nothing came amiss. Oregon City was reached late in the afternoon, and our toilsome stage ride, of hardly forty miles, was ended at a cost of $7 in gold coin. Thence we avoided the mud road by board- ing the little steamboat plying to Portland. At that time the 0. S. N. Co. furnished travelers with very comfortable passage from Portland, by steamboat, to the Cas- cades of the Columbia, around which there was a portage rail- road of six miles; from there another magnificent steamboat ride to The Dalles; thence a stage ride of fifteen miles to Celilo, at the head of the Dalles, where steamboat navigation began again and continued uninterruptedly to Lewiston, on the Snake River. My river journey ended at the mouth of the Unmtilla. From, there I walked and rode, as I could catch it, up the Umatilla, about forty miles, to the agency, where I arrived without detention or accident on the 10th of October, 1862. Immediately upon my arrival, my credentials were pre- sented to Mr. Barnhart, whom I had never met, along with a kind of letter of introduction given me by Hon. B. F. Hard- ing, at that time United States Senator from Oregon. I found Mr. B. a very intelligent gentleman, ready and willing to show me around, introduce me to the chiefs and headmen of the tribes, explain existing conditions and relate the history of the agency doings during his residence there. He likely saw that I was green in such business and therefore made several suggestions which he thought would aid me in avoiding trouble with the Indians. As to the employees, he deemed it essential that Dr. Teal should be retained as resident physi- cian, and informed us both of his opinion. He also recommended the retention of John S. White, the superintendent of farming, on account of his knowledge and influence with the Indians. The interpreter, Aiitoine Placide, a half-breed Indian, and a man of giant proportions, he char-