Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/87



REMINISCENCES 79

was nearly all I ever received for my summer's work, and carried it thirty miles on my back in a sack, traveling over deep snow in cold weather, and got home about midnight. That was one of my very hard and unpleasant experiences. The winter was very cold and we gave up trying to live there in the bleak prairie, so far from timber. Early in 1853 we started on to Oregon with one ox and one horse team and arrived in the Willamette Valley September 29, 1853.

On the 5th day of May, 1855, I started alone on foot from Eugene with my provisions and bedding on a little Indian pony, for the mines in Southern Oregon and California.



After there was no longer a chance to get work in the mines, on account of the Indian war, I and a young man named John Williams, took our blankets, frying pan and provisions on our backs and walked over the Coast Moun- tains from Althouse Creek to Crescent City on the Pacific Coast in California. I was not yet twenty years old and was slim and light built, but very strong and active. Williams was a good deal larger and several years older and stood the

trip better than I did.



In the spring I left my "partner" there at Crescent City and went to San Francisco, and have never seen nor heard of him since. There was no harbor nor wharf at Crescent City. Steamers anchored out in the ocean and little lighter boats carried passengers and freight to and from them. I took passage in the steerage of a little steamer called the Goliath and paid $20 for the trip to San Francisco.

I took passage on a steamboat at San Francisco and went up the Sacramento River to Sacramento City. There was a bar on the lower deck which was well patronized. Ex-U. S. Senator, who was then Governor of California, John B. Weller,