Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/142

{{rh|96|THE CITY OF PORTLAND of the state. John McBride was legislator, congressman, and afterwards chief justice of Idaho. And many others might be named.

All sorts of incidents of human life break the monotony of the march. Suddenly a wagon is seen to pull out of the train and off to the wayside. The only doctor in the train (Marcus Whitman) goes off with it. Many are the inquiries of the unusual event; and grave fears expressed of the danger of leaving a lone wagon behind in an Indian country. The lumbering caravan moves slowly on, passes behind the bluffs and out of sight, and the anxiety and fears for the lone wagon left behind increase. The train halts for the night, forms its defensive circle, fires are lighted for the evening meal and the shadows of the night are creeping down upon the camp—when, behold the lone wagon rolls into camp, the doctor smiling and happy—it was a newborn boy—mother and child all right and ready for the continued journey.

Applegate, in the article mentioned, speaking of Dr. Whitman, who had been over the trail once before, says his constant advice was "travel, travel, TRAVEL; nothing else will take you to the end of your journey; nothing is wise that does not help you along; nothing is good for you that causes a moment's delay." And Applegate adds his testimonial as follows: "It is no disparagement to others to say, that to no other individual are the emigrants of 1843 so much indebted for the successful conclusion of their journey as to Dr. Marcus Whitman."

The watch for the night is set; the flute and violin have ceased their soothing notes, the enamored swain has whispered his last good night, or stolen the last kiss from his blushing sweetheart, and all is hushed in the slumber of the camp of one thousand persons in the heart of the great mountains a thousand miles from any white man's habitation, with savage Indians in all directions. What a picture of American ideas, push, enterprise, courage, and empire building. Risking everything, braving every danger, and conquering every difficulty and obstruction. We are a vain, conceited, bumptious people, boasting of our good deeds and utterly ignoring our bad ones. But where is the people who have accomplished such a work as these Missourians and their neighbors from Iowa, did in literally picking up a commonwealth in pieces, on the other side of the continent and transporting it two thousand miles to the Pacific coast and setting it down here around and about this Portland townsite in the Willamette valley, and starting it off in good working order at Champoeg, with all the state machinery to protect life and property and promote the peace and happiness of all concerned, and all others who might join in the society. In is something to be proud of.

To accomplish this result the pioneers who founded the city of Portland passed through every phase of human experience. Toils, labors and dangers beyond number or description; joys, sorrows, pains, suffering and death. The unmarked graves by the wayside of those who fell in the march to Oregon were thousands. The dust and heat at times were intolerable. Think, if you can, of a moving mass of humanity and dumb brutes, often mixed in inextricable confusion, moving along in a column twice as wide as Portland street. Here and there were drivers of the loose cattle lashing them to keep moving. Young girls riding astride ponies with a younger child behind, and all packed, jammed into a roadway, too narow for a tenth of its travelers through mountain defiles, and all looking ahead as if the next turn of the trail would bring them the promised land. To all this was added to the train of 1852, the panic and scourge of the Asiatic cholera. This was the largest train ever started to Oregon, and it suffered proportionately. This caravan was in fact made up of many trains from different localities in the border states. Mrs. M. E. Jones of North Yakima, relates that forty persons of their train died of cholera in the Platte valley in one day. A family of seven person from Hartford, Warren county, Iowa, all died of cholera in one day and were buried in one grave. While camped with a sick brother, above Grand island on the Platte, Ezra Meeker states he saw six-