Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/83

Rh Some of the party, Ezra Fisher among them, brought the cattle and horses down the Indian trail on the north bank of the Columbia. On the flatboat, laden with their wagons and possessions and a skiff for use in catching their flatboat below the rapids, the rest of their number embarked, and thus came to the portage at the Cascades where they camped in a drenching rain.

Their boat, which was set adrift to go over the Cascades, lodged in the rocks amid-stream and all efforts to dislodge it were in vain. In their extremity, they sent to Dr. McLoughlin for aid. With his usual kindness, he sent them a bateau.

At the Cascades, or, it would seem more likely, at a later camping point, those who had come down the north bank joined them. They were wet and in a nearly famished condition. Ezra Fisher and his son had been living for the last day or two, on a daily half-pint of milk, and a little wheat which they had in their pockets. Hot biscuits were a never-to-be-forgotten luxury of their repast that night.

Continuing their journey in the bateau, the party arrived at a point near Linnton on or near the sixth of December. Here the two families separated, Hezekiah Johnson and family continuing up the river to Oregon City, while Ezra Fisher and family, piloted by Edward Lenox, went to Tualatin Plains.

In the log cabin of David T. Lenox, well known as captain of the first company to reach Oregon in 1843, they found shelter from the rain and cold. It was the same cabin in which had been organized, on May 25, 1844, the first Baptist church west of the Rocky Mountains. It was about eighteen by twenty-two feet, and had a "lean-to." Although the family of David Lenox numbered thirteen and the "lean-to" was occupied by a widow and three children, with the utmost hospitality the six new arrivals were made welcome. Together