Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/942

658 In the midst of the enthusiasm of this report, Colonel T'Vault was chosen editor of the Oregon Spectator, the first newspaper published west of the Rocky Mountains, and amid general rejoicing, in February, 1846, the initial number was run off the new Hoe hand press that had arrived from New York around "the Horn."

Three thousand people are estimated to have come in 1845. Never the world saw more eager, restless, self-directing spirits, splitting into innumerable caravans, and dividing at the very start. William B. Ide led off a party to California, where the next year they raised the famous bear flag for independence from Mexico. Many came trooping down The Dalles on frail barks at the risk of their lives, and up the Willamette to Oregon City. It was a season of constant excitements. News arrived of the "Lost Immigrants," a party that turned off at Fort Boise to find a shorter route than the one by The Dalles. "I have trapped on the headwaters of the John Day, and often met Canadians from the Willamette who came over a pass by the Santiam," said Stephen L. Meek, and sixty wagons and several hundred people set out for the new short cut race into the Willamette valley. But wandering in the wild highlands of eastern Oregon they became frightened and lost. There was a pass, but they could not find it. Horsemen scoured the hills for water, provisions failed, stock died, mountain fever came, seventy coffinless graves were dug in the grassy, rocky desert. Word of their sufferings reached Oregon City. Captain Cook, an Englishman at Oregon City, had built a scow schooner, the Calapooia, and engaging this, the townspeople dispatched it loaded with necessaries to meet the lost train that was now falling back on The Dalles. Lost for six weeks in the inhospitable wilds of eastern Oregon, the decimated company of men, women and children at last reached Oregon City with nothing at all.

Immediately followed another sensation, Capt. Samuel K. Barlow, impatient of the crowding throng and the lack of boats at The Dalles, resolved to make or break a road of his own by a cattle trail around the south side of Mt. Hood. Thirteen wagons and forty people followed, and they, too, were lost, in the frightful snowy mountains. Half perishing with exposure, William Barlow, the son, got out ahead and carried word to Oregon City. Eleven horses laden with flour, sugar and other provisions for their relief were sent up the devious deer trails of Mt. Hood. For days the rescuers searched, and discouraged, turned back, but when six miles on the homeward course, determined to try again, met the famishing people and saved their lives. Of the eleven horses sent with that relief party, every one perished. Today pleasure parties traversing that historic Mt. Hood route, look up at that special frowning ridge where the immigrants wandered, and are amazed that any emerged alive. Still another company that started for Oregon City in 1845, wandered into the Sioux Indian country and never were seen, never were heard of again.

Each year brought new and unforeseen alarms and suffering in the untried paths that entered Oregon. In 1846 a party attempted to enter by the southern route; heavy rains set in; the deep, dark canyons were flooded with water, and abandoning property and wagons, on the backs of their trusty oxen, the entrapped fugitives barely escaped with their lives. For years the Umpqua canyon was strewn with the wrecks of wagons, crockery and featherbeds, looted by the Indians and scattered to the winds. Many of these people became founders of towns on the Willamette, but a goodly number came back with the relief parties sent out from Oregon City.

Out of this, disaster George L. Curry, editor of the Spectator, and future governor of Oregon, rescued his sweetheart, Chloe Boone, greatgranddaughter of Daniel Boone; but the old compass was lost, the one that Lord Dunmore of Virginia, gave Daniel Boone when he went out to explore Kentucky in 1774- Judge and Mrs. John Quinn Thornton escaped out of this wreckage, and arriving at Oregon City in February, 1847, Mrs. Thornton opened a private school for young ladies in which were taught "all the branches usually comprised in a thorough English education, together with plain and fancy needlework, drawing