Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/264

 California.

was thus reduced to short rations and insufficient clothing.

On arriving at The Dalles the men presented the appear ance, familiar to Oregon immigrants, of naked feet and limbs hardly concealed by the tattered remains of cloth ing, their horses too worn out to carry them, and their own strength almost exhausted. They found the means of transportation down the Columbia to consist of three rnackinaw boats, one yawl, four canoes, and one whale- boat. A raft constructed to carry several tons of goods, chiefly private, and placed in charge of eight men, was wrecked in the rapids at the cascades, and six of the men drowned. That part of the command which took the wagon road over the mountains at the base of Mount Hood, lost two-thirds of their horses. The whole loss of government property on the march from Leavenworth was forty-five freight wagons, one ambulance, and over three hundred horses and mules. The number of men who died and deserted was seventy.

On arriving at their destination, the mounted riflemen found no quarters provided for them, and were housed for the winter in rented tenements in Oregon City at a great expense. In May, 1849, Captain Rufus Ingalls had been directed by the chief of the quartermaster s department of the Pacific division to go to Oregon and establish posts. He arrived on the Anita at Vancouver soon after Hatha way landed his command at that place, but the Walpole which followed with two years supplies being chartered for Astoria, landed the stores at the mouth of the river, whence they had to be conveyed at great labor and ex pense to Vancouver by means of the small craft in use on the Columbia, consuming much time in the transferance. Nor was this the only obstacle to dispatch. There were wanting both the material for building barracks and the mechanics and laborers to perform the work; and that which was accomplished was done by artillerymen at a dollar a day extra pay for cutting and hauling timber out of the woods, and rafting lumber from the Hudson's Bay