Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 22.djvu/29



THE SOUTH ROAD EXPEDITION 19

tried in every way to provoke us. Our course was for some distance southeast along the bank of the river, and the Indians, some mounted and some on foot, passed on rapidly on the other side. There appeared to be a great commotion among them. A party had left the French settlement in the Wil- lamette some three or four weeks before us, consisting of French, half-breeds, Columbia Indians and a few Americans; probably about eighty in all. Passing one of their encamp- ments we could see by the signs that they were only a short distance ahead of us. We afterwards learned that the Rogue Rivers had stolen some of their horses, and that an effort to recover them had caused the delay. At about three o'clock, we left the river and bore southward up a little stream for four or five miles and encamped. From our camp we could see numerous signal fires on the mountains to the eastward. We saw no Indians in the vicinity of our camp, and no evidence of their having been there lately. They had evidently given us up, and followed the other company which the same night en- camped in the main valley above. Under the circumstances, we enjoyed a good night's sleep, keeping only two guards at a time.

On the morning of June 29th, we passed over a low range of hills, from the summit of which we had a splendid view of the Rogue River valley. It seemed like a great meadow, in- terspersed with groves of oaks which appeared like vast or- chards. All day long we traveled over rich black soil covered with rank grass, clover and pea vine, and at night encamped near the other party on the stream now known as Emigrant creek, near the foot of the Siskiyou mountains. This night, the Indians having gone to the mountains to ambush the French party as we afterwards learned, we were not dis- turbed. Here our course diverged from that of the other company, they following the old California trail across the Siskiyou, while our route was eastward through an unexplored region several hundred miles in extent.