"Stout hearts in the party were not to be deterred from making the effort to go ahead. Go around this hill they could not; go down it with logs trailed to the wagons, as they had done before, they could not, as the hill was so steep the logs would go end over end and be a danger instead of a help. So the rope they had was run down the hill and found to be too short to reach the bottom. One of the leaders of the party (I knew him well) turned to his men and said, 'Kill a steer'; and they killed a steer, cut his hide into strips and spliced it to the rope. It was found yet to be too short to reach to the bottom. The order went out: 'Kill two more steers!' And two more steers were killed, their hides cut into strips and spliced to the rope, which then reached the bottom of the hill; and by the aid of that rope and strips of the hides of those three steers, twenty-nine wagons were lowered down the mountain side to the bottom of the steep hill.
"Now, my friends, there is no fiction about this story—it is a true story, and some of the actors are yet alive, and some of them live in this county. Nor were their trials ended when they got their wagons down to the bottom of that hill.
"Does it now seem possible for mortal man to do this? And yet this is only a plain statement of an incident of pioneer life without giving any names and dates, that can yet be verified by living witnesses; but these witnesses are not here for long.
"James Biles, who afterwards settled near Olympia, was the man who ordered the steers killed to procure the hides to lengthen out the rope. Geo. H. Himes, of Portland, who is still living, was one of the party; so was Stephen Judson, of Steilacoom; also Nelson Sargent, of Grand Mound, now a very old man.
"The feat of bringing that train of twenty-nine wagons in with the loss of only one is the greatest of anything I ever knew or heard of in the way of pioneer travel.
"With snail-like movements, the cattle and men becoming weaker and weaker, progress was made each day until it finally seemed as if the oxen could do no more, and it became necessary to send them forward on the trail ten miles, where it was known plenty of grass could be had. Meantime the work on the road continued until the third day, when the last particle of food was gone. The teams were brought back, the trip over the whole ten miles made, and Connell's Prairie reached at dark.
"The struggle over that ten miles, where to a certain extent each party became so intent on their particular surroundings as to forget all else, left the women and children to take care of themselves while the husbands tugged at the wagons. I now have in mind to relate the experience of one of these mothers with a ten-year-old boy, one child four years and another eight months.
"Part of the time these people traveled on the old trail and part on the newly-cut road, and by some means fell behind the wagons, which forded that turbulent, dangerous stream, White River, before they reached the bank, and were out of sight, not knowing but the women and children were ahead.
"I wish every little boy of ten years of age of this great State, or, for that matter, twenty years old or more, could read and profit by what I am now going to relate, especially if that little or big boy at times thinks he is having a hard time because he is asked to help his mother or father at odd times, or perchance to put in a good solid day's work on Saturday, instead of spending it as a holiday; or if he has a cow to milk or wood to split, or anything that is work, to make him bewail his fate for having such a hard time in life. I think the reading of the experience of this little ten-year-old boy with his mother and the two smaller children would encourage him to feel more cheerful and more content with his lot.
"As I have said, the wagons had passed on, and there these four people were on the right bank of the river while their whole company was on the opposite bank, and had left them there alone.