At Boisé the road again crossed the Snake, from right to left bank, and the faithful rubber boat came into good play. It, and a portion of a bullock carcass, were left at the post for the use of the Thomas Fitzpatrick party, toiling in second division.
On the third day out of Fort Boisé, sure enough the trail veered from the rushing Snake, and inland pointing would cross the northeastern corner of present Oregon State.
Rougher waxed the way. There were signs that the emigrants had been in much trouble. At one place a wagon had been overturned twice, in a short distance.
Straight down a steep rocky slant, as sharply pitched as a peaked roof, had plunged the emigrants, their wagon wheels scoring deeply the scant soil. And down by the same route went the Frémont party, holding hard on the howitzer and the spring-carriage.
Agent Payette had told the lieutenant of an Indian trail out which would prove better than that road which the emigrants probably would take. Following this to the Blue Mountains, the Frémont party climbed the heavily wooded divide, where logs must be chopped and trees must be felled to clear a way for the howitzer and the carriage. At last, from an open spot across the summit, westward could be descried the Walla Walla River, tributary to the Columbia, and light green patches which must be the settlements of American missions.
On the morning of October 24 these green patches were reached. They were the missionary station of Doctor Whitman himself. Fields had been cultivated to potatoes and corn; and here, at Waiilatpu, among the Waiilatpu Indians of the Cayuse nation, on the Walla Walla River near to present Walla Walla City in southeastern Washington State, was the Doctor Whitman house, made with adobe clay bricks.
Oliver had looked forward to seeing again this plucky Doctor Whitman, physician, missionary and Oregon enthusiast—that wayworn traveller with the mixed white and brown hair, the large mouth and the deep-set blue eyes, who had arrived, so nearly exhausted, in Taos last winter on his long trip from coast to coast. Doctor Whitman was absent down the river to bring back Mrs. Whitman. But here were many of the emigrants, resting and staring and eating potatoes.
On the way from Waiilatpu down along the Walla Walla to the mouth at the Columbia more emigrants were passed. They all were loud in their praises of Doctor Whitman.
Near the mouth of the Walla Walla was Fort Walla Walla, a third of the chain of Hudson Bay Company posts along the trail. A few hundred yards below flowed past the lordly flood of the noble Columbia River.