Page:The Pacific Monthly volume 17.djvu/742

364 things indispensable to their calling that the wilderness did not furnish them.

This he did, starting back to California with a number of others attracted by his tale of "a land where it was always afternoon." This return was made by the way of the "Old Spanish Trail" from Santa Fe, N. M., to Monterey, Cal. While in the neighborhood of the Colorado River, the party was attacked by Indians and only Smith and two others escaped to continue the journey and rejoin the party of the previous year, which they did after almost incredible hardships. They found them on the headwaters of the American River. They had been so successful in their trapping that a return trip over the mountains and across the desert with their heavy loads did not commend itself, and then a market could be found much nearer to the north among the Hudson Bay posts. Consequently in the Fall of 1825 they traveled from the Sacramento to the Columbia. They, however, followed the coast, in ignorance of the much easier route through the interior valleys.

Three years later, in 1828, a second party of trappers are known to have made the trip, this being a "brigade" of the Hudson Bay Company under the captaincy of Peter S. Ogden, one of their most noted leaders. This party, accompanied by Smith, went up the Columbia and Snake Rivers to the headwaters of the latter, where Smith left them to rejoin his friends on Green River, Ogden and his party proceeding by way of the Humboldt to California, and in the locality where the other party had trapped they were equally successful, returning home by way of the Sacramento, across the Siskiyous and down the Willamette. This might be considered as the first known expedition over the Shasta route. It proving successful the years following, it became a well and favorably known trail of the trappers.

Emigrants were next in order and not a few of them reached their new homes over this route. The movement into the Northwest preceded that into California by several years, as was only natural. California was Mexican territory, the people as well as the language foreign, while the Northwest was peopled by English-speaking settlers and was United States Territory. When the tide turned toward California a great many did find their way into the mines by

the way of the Northern route and even through Oregon. In fact, "Oregon men" constituted a class not any too popular among the miners. As a rule they were clannish and little given to the good fellowship and dissipation so prevalent in the mining camps.

Before this, however, the route was fairly well known and used by quite a few emigrants. Bancroft gives an account of one party of settlers from Oregon who had come to San Francisco by ship. Purchasing a large number of horses and cattle from the Mexicans, they proceeded to drive them to their home in the Willamette Valley, reaching there in 1837 with over seven hundred head.

The Government Survey was also duly represented in its order. Lieutenant Emmons of Wilkes' expedition traversed it in 1841, to be followed a few years later by "Pathfinder" Fremont and others of that ilk.

Then came the days of the stage lines. As early as 1850 there was a daily stage between Sacramento and Marysville, which, by the year following, had grown to five coaches each way every day.

In 1852 the California Legislature authorized one James L. Freaner to construct a wagon or stage road from Sacramento to the Oregon state line, and to reimburse him for the outlay he was to be permitted to make the following charges or tolls : For each road wagon 5 cents a mile ; each mail wagon or stage, 8 cents; pleasure carriage, 6¼ cents; horses, cattle or sheep, 1 cent a mile per head. These charges to be in addition to tolls over the bridges across the Sacramento and Pit or Klamath Rivers, which were to be extra. Freaner and four employes started to lay out the road, but were never seen again. Four years afterwards it developed that the entire party had been killed by Indians.

In 1860 the California Stage Company operated a line of stages between Sacramento and Portland, 710 miles, having sixty stations en route, using thirty-five drivers and 500 horses. The fare was $45.00.

In 1807 the California and Oregon Stage Company was operating a line in connection with the railroads that were being constructed from Portland south and from Marysville north. This was continued until the two were connected in 1887, the gap be-