Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/397

 and bore off too far to the south. They struck the desert country in Central Oregon, where the cattle suffered severely from lack of pasture and lack of water. In place of saving 200 miles as they had expected, and having an easier way, they suffered severe hardships, lost three weeks, and finally made their way to The Dalles.

"Stephen Meek guided them by the old trail for some time, but when they got into the foot-hills of the Malheur Mountains all signs of the old trail had disappeared. The alkaline water was the cause of many of the immigrants becoming sick with mountain fever. My sister, Emaline, who was a babe in arms, died, and for three days they carried her body in the wagon until they could find a good place to bury her.

"The cattle became restless and tried to take the back track. The wagon train would have to halt while the immigrants hunted for the lost cattle. While Dave Herron was out looking for his lost cattle, he noticed in the bed of a small stream, a piece of metal that looked like copper or brass. He picked it up, put it in his pocket and took it with him to camp. Another member of the party also brought a lump of dull yellow metal to camp. They were unable to determine whether it was gold, copper, or brass. This was in 1845 before the discovery of gold in California. One of the gold nuggets was given to a member of the party, who hammered it flat with a hammer on his wagon tire. He threw it into his tool chest and paid no more attention to it. The immigrants were more interested in finding the lost trail to the Willamette valley and securing water for their thirsty children than in discovering gold, so no attention was paid to the stream on which the nuggets had been found. The stream ran in a southwesterly direction, but whether it was a branch of the Malheur river or not the immigrants did not know.

"A few years later, when gold was discovered in California, the finding of these nuggets was recalled. When my brothers went to the Oro Fino mines in Idaho, my