Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/190

150 maze of mountains and valleys drained by the Snake River and its tributaries as these swept west to join the Columbia and thence proceed to the Pacific. With that vision before them, they spread the Stars and Stripes to the breeze and kneeling upon the turf, they took possession of the great unknown to the westward in the name of God and the American Union. Nobly was the claim maintained, though with it came the crown of martyrdom.

Whitman desired above all other things to demonstrate the feasibility of a waggon road to the Pacific. He therefore insisted on taking his waggon,—"Chick-chick-shaile-kikash," the Indians called it, in attempted onomatopœia. His demonstration was successful, though the trouble was infinite. He was compelled to leave the waggon at the Hudson's Bay Fort on the Boisé, near the present site of Boisé City, with the intention of getting it the next year. The Hudson's Bay people used every effort to discourage Whitman in his waggon enterprise, though according to Gray, they made much use of the vehicle in their fort.

On September 2, 1836, the mission party reached the Hudson's Bay Company's fort at the mouth of the Walla Walla, a little more than four months and two thousand two hundred miles from the banks of the Missouri to those of the Columbia.

But the journey was not complete, for their definite location must yet be selected. They proceeded now in bateaux down the Great River to Vancouver, the headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company's empire. There Dr. McLoughlin, the chief factor, met them with his own peculiar cordiality, and yet with the dignity