Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/58



50 WILLIAM H. PACKWOOD

teamsters were immediately sent for, and the general took ten of them back on full pay. General Joel Palmer acted as guide, and they took Thompson and the 15 teamsters with them. They went by the Lawson route, while we took the Hangtown route. We beat them into California by two or three weeks. We crossed the summit on about October 25, at night, and none too soon for our safety from the winter storms.

"A few days out from Salt Lake City we were overtaken by a young man on foot traveling light.

"I think he was a Swede. He had about 30 pounds of flour, a tin cup and knife, and no bedding. He had started for the California gold mines. At night he would mix flour in his cup, make a fire, roll the dough from his cup on a stick and bake it by the fire and eat it. He traveled with us a day or two and then went on. It was pretty nervy of him. I never heard whether he got through. If he did it was largely a matter of luck, and because he did not have anything the Indians wanted, unless it might be his scalp. The Humboldt road was closely watched by the Piutes, to steal stock. The fact that the Indians were not on the war path may have saved him.

"We met relief parties on mules on the Sierra mountains, sent out by Governor Downey to pick up late emigrants on the road. So far as we knew we were the last on the road, as it was the 25th of October, 1849, when we met them.

"Hangtown consisted of a few miners' cabins along a dry gulch, where some mining was being done. One of our men saw a quarter of venison hanging on a tree and rushed up, meat hungry, and asked the owner of the butchershop how much it was. He answered, 75 cents/ Our man had just 75 cents, so he caught the ham and pulled out his money to pay for it. He was told it was 75 cents a pound, and it would cost him over $11. He concluded he did not want any ham of venison.