Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 37.djvu/106

 This missionary party traveled from Rendezvous at Green River in western Wyoming in company with, and under the guidance and protection of, Chief Trader John McLeod of the Hudson's Bay Company, who was returning by way of Fort Hall to Vancouver on the Columbia with the annual shipment of furs. This narrative takes up the journey at Fort Boise (also then called Snake Fort) where Mr. McLeod had rested for two days out of courtesy to the ladies. That trading post of the Hudson's Bay Company was then located on the south side of the Boise River near the present town of Parma, Idaho, and was a temporary, flimsy enclosure, which had been built only two years before. Its location was soon afterward changed to the mouth of the river on the east bank of Snake River, where a more pretentious and permanent establishment of adobes was erected. This became the Fort Boise known to the emigrants to Oregon in later years. Mrs. Whitman's own story of the first day's events is as follows:

"22nd (August, 1836). Left the fort for Walla We came a short distance to the crossing on Snake River crossed & encamped for the night. The river had three branches, divided by island as it was where we crossed before. The first & second flues were very deep but we ſhad) no difficulty in crossing on horseback. The third was deeper still we dare not venture on horseback. This being a fishing post of the Indians, we easily found a canoe made of rushes & willows on which we placed ourselves & our saddles (Sister S & myself) when two Indians on horseback with each a rope attached to the canoe towed us over. (O if Father Mother & the girls could have seen us now in our snug little bark floating on the water) we are favourites of the company no one else was privaledged with a ride on it. I wish I could give you a correct idea of the little bark. It is simply bunches of rushes tied together & attached to a frame, made of few sticks of small willows. It was just large enough to hold us & our saddles. Our baggage was transported on the top of the tallest horses without wetting.”

Mr. W. H. Gray, one of the missionary party in a letter written to David Ambler on September 9, 1836, at the Columbia River, says the distance from Fort Boise to the crossing place was