Mr. Roosevelt thought the suggestion of a memorial highway should first come from the states through which the Trail runs; anyway it would be possible to get congressional aid to mark the Trail, and that in any event, ought to be speedily done.

Apparently, on a sudden recollecting other engagements pressing, the President asked, "Where is your team? I want to see it." Upon being told that it was near by, without ceremony, and without his hat he was soon alongside, asking questions faster than they could be answered, not idle questions, but such as showed his intense desire to get real information—bottom facts—as the saying goes.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] William Allen White.

[26] See illustration, [Chapter I.]

CHAPTER LI.

THE RETURN TRIP.

I left Washington on the 8th of January, 1908, and shipped the outfit over the Alleghany Mountains to McKeesport, Pennsylvania, having been in Washington, as the reader will note, thirty-nine days. From McKeesport I drove to Pittsburg and there put the team into winter quarters to remain until the 5th of March; thence shipped by boat on the Ohio River to Cincinnati, Ohio, stopping in that city but one day, and from there shipping by rail to St. Louis, Missouri. At Pittsburg and adjacent cities I was received cordially and encouraged greatly to believe the movement for a national highway had taken a deep hold in the minds of the people. The Pittsburg Automobile Club issued a circular letter to all the automobile clubs of Pennsylvania, and likewise to the congressional delegation of Pennsylvania, urging them to favor not only the bill then pending in Congress, appropriating $50,000 for marking the Oregon Trail, but also a measure looking to the joint action of the national government and the states, to build a national highway over the Oregon Trail as a memorial road. I was virtually given the freedom of the city of Pittsburg, and sold my literature without hindrance; but not so when I came to Cincinnati. The mayor treated me with scant courtesy, but the automobile clubs of Cincinnati took action at once similar to that of the Pittsburg club. Again when I arrived in St. Louis, I received at the city hall the same frigid reception that had been given me at Cincinnati, although strenuous efforts were made by prominent citizens to bring out a different result. However, the mayor was obdurate and so after tarrying for a few days, I drove out of the city, greatly disappointed at the results, but not until after the automobile club and the Daughters of the American Revolution had taken formal action endorsing the work. My greater disappointment was that here I had anticipated a warm reception. St. Louis, properly speaking, had been the head center of the movement that finally established the Oregon Trail. Here was where Weythe, Bonneyville, Whitman and others of the earlier movements out on the trail had outfitted; but there is now a commercial generation, many of whom that care but little about the subject. Nevertheless I found a goodly number of zealous advocates of the cause of marking the Trail.

The drive from St. Louis to Jefferson City, the capital of the State of Missouri, was tedious and without results other than reaching the point where actual driving began in early days.