In due time we arrived in the Willamette Valley. Over three months elapsed before I received a copy of The Free Press containing my letter. By a strange perversion the printer had changed the word "cayuse" into "hans." This explained a mystery. Quite a number of letters directed to the chief of the "Hans" Indians, care of the superintendent of Indian affairs for Oregon, had been received by him. No one knowing anything about the Hans Indians. These letters were afterwards published in the Oregon papers. I will give from memory a synopsis of two of them. The first was written by a Michigan man, and he was endorsed by Lewis Cass, Henry Ward Beecher and many other noted persons. It was a plain, straight-forward letter and unconditionally accepted the chieftain's offer. He desired to be speedily notified, in order that he might come on to accept his patrimony and open his agricultural school. The other letter was written by a Virginian. He was endorsed by the Senators of that State and by most of its Representatives in Congress. A daguerreotype accompanied the letter. This gallant gentleman stated to the Chief that he would scorn to accept the hand of the daughter unless he could first win her heart. He flattered himself, however, that he would have no difficulty in that matter. The whole tone of the letter was that of a regular masher. I do not know whether these letters ever reached the chief and his fair dusky daughter or not, nor do I know whether he was blessed or cursed with a white son-in-law.
My belief is that the perverseness of that Detroit printer obstructed the civilization of a tribe.
In conclusion, the jolly Indian agent was gathered to his fathers years ago. The bow has fallen from the nerveless grasp of the generous chieftain. The princess may still be alive; if so, and if her eyes by chance should fall upon these lines, she will, no doubt, remember the bashful and ungallant young man who met her in front of her royal father's mansion in the beautiful Umatilla Valley in 1852.
On the morning of the fifth day after our arrival in the beautiful and fertile valley of the Umatilla we resumed our journey. Our first point of destination was The Dalles. There we replenished our nearly exhausted stock of provisions. From thence, our first camp was at the eastern base of the Cascade Mountains. We passed over this rugged and densely-timbered range by the Barlow Route. In addition to the stillness of the solemn and continuous woods, and the majestic splendor of the amphitheatre of surrounding mountains, there is the steep descent at once of Laurel Hill from a summit plateau to the valley of the Sandy River below. While it involves some sacrifice of truth to call this the descent of a hill, it requires a greater poetic imagination, from the few stunted Madronas, not laurels, standing on the western rim, of this summit table-land, to call the place Laurel Hill. I saw wagons with their household goods and gods descend this so-called hill. None but pioneers on whose brow and face sunshine and storm had stamped their heraldic honors, who had swam cold and turbulent mountain streams, had passed down steep, rocky and dangerous canyons, and had crossed treacherous streams of quicksand, would ever have attempted this descent. To such seasoned veterans, impossibilities had a constantly diminishing radius. With a steady yoke of oxen—or a true and biddable span of horses—with a long and strong rope fastened to the hind axle-tree of the wagon and wound around some contiguous tree and gradually loosened, the wagons were safely let down these rough and almost perpendicular descents. My information is that no wagons pass over this road now. It answers for a bridle-path and pack-trail, and no more. Old Mount Hood, along whose southern base we passed, stood forth in her imperial grandeur. The waters of the Columbia wash her northern base and the southern base of Mount Adams, her sister peak. A huge rock-ribbed canyon, at the bottom of which rolls the Oregon, separates the two.
An interesting Indian tradition connected with these mountains has a narrow yet substantial footing in fact, but a broader, more airy and more poetic foundation in myth. It runs thus:
Prior to the tremendous conflict and convulsions mentioned herein, the waters of the Columbia and of its many tributaries were confined in the great basin east of the Cascade Mountains. They had no outlet to the ocean. Mount Hood and Mount Adams had for ages been friends; but in process of time they became estranged. That estrangement deepened in intensity until it culminated in a tremendous conflict. They hurled giant boulders at each other. From their tops they sent against one another huge and flaming volumes of fire and molten lava. In their herculean and supreme efforts for victory they tore asunder the mountains and let the long-accumulated waters of the upper basin rush downward to the ocean. Thus, was their separation made final and irrevocable.
It is not in the line of this narrative to marshal the reasons for, or against the probability, or improbability, of Indian legends. If I should depart from this rule in this instance, I would say that the similarity of the rocks on both sides of the great Columbia River gorge; the presence of submarine shells embedded in the great eastern basin, as well as the formation of its converging ridges, and the character of its soil, lend a certain tinge of verification to a portion of this legend. The other portion may be taken as a poetic description of volcanic action, with an attendant earthquake or seismic convulsion of great intensity, and of tremendous force.
From this speculation, let us return to more solid ground. There are two rivers heading near the same point, in the marshes and the highest tableland of the Cascade Mountains. The waters of the one, flow eastward and find the Columbia by a tortuous course east of the mountains; the waters of the other, flow westward and empty in the Columbia above the mouth of the Willamette. The Barlow Road is located on the northern side of this depression, or break in the mountains. Let this brief, and imperfect geographic statement serve as an introduction to the following incident:
Late in the fall of 1847 a large ox-train, with many loose cattle, attempted the ascent of the mountains by the eastern river, but were finally blockaded by the constantly-increasing depth of snow. There were many women and children, as well as stalwart men, in the train. The situation was perilous, threatening great suffering, and the possibility of starvation; hence, two men were deputed to cross the intervening snow-fields to the Willamette Valley for assistance. R. and B. were the men chosen for the difficult task; and with both of them I subsequently became well acquainted. Equipped with snow-shoes, they successfully passed over the summit's ridges to the desolate base of old Mt. Hood. Here they were enveloped in a dense fog—that most fearful of all calamities to a man in unknown woods, or mountains. Even to the experienced hunter or trapper, familiar with the topography of a mountain range, or a dense forest, the coming-in or settling-down of a fog envelopment, is viewed with apprehension, and alarm. A fog obliterates all the landmarks. Darkness has different shades of blackness;—the depth before you has an intensified blackness; the shadow of a mountain peak makes its huge column, or wooded side still darker. R. and B. became bewildered in the continuous fog. Their provisions were exhausted, and they were subsisting on snails. R. was six feet and well proportioned—brawny and enured to toil; B. was smaller and of a more delicate constitution. R. was a pronounced skeptic; B. was a man of faith and inclined to look for safety to a higher power when immediate danger was impending: hence, while R. was eagerly hunting for food, B. was engaged in prayer. One day, deep down under the snow, R. found the slimy trail of a snail; it led directly under B.'s knee. R. pushed B. aside, saying: "Get out of my way—I am nearly frantic for that snail." The game was soon captured, and R. generously divided it with his starving companion. At the conclusion of their scanty feast, B. said to R.: "You are much stronger than I am, and you will probably survive me: now, if I die, what will you do with me?" "Eat you, sir: eat you!" was the emphatic reply. B., in his subsequent narration of the incident, said that the idea was so abhorrent to him that it nerved him up until their escape was made. The families were rescued, and they came down the Columbia River to the Willamette Valley, while most of the stock was left on good pasturage east of the mountains. R. and B. have long since been gathered to their fathers. Their trials, difficulties and dangers are over. May they rest in peace!
Crossing the Sandy we arrived at Foster's, situated at the west end of the Barlow Road and at the western base of the Cascade Mountains. We were now in the great Willamette Valley. What a change presented itself! Here were green fields, meadows and pasturage lands. The breezes were moist and balmy. For over three months we had been crossing over scorched and desolate plains, encountering quite a number of sunburnt, treeless and waterless deserts. In this valley vegetation of all kinds was luxuriant and the smaller fruits abundant. For over three months we had eaten no vegetable food, and we never before so warmly appreciated the beauty and poetry of beets, onions, cabbages, potatoes and carrots. I remained in the vicinity of Foster's for four days. On the evening of the fourth day a rancher by the name of Baker, who lived on the Clearwater offered me employment. He had let in the sunlight on about ten acres of very fertile soil in the dense forest. This he cultivated in vegetables. He took a canoe-load every day to Oregon City, distant about five miles by his water route. My business was to prepare these vegetables for transportation, for which I received five dollars per day; but one morning he set me to rail making and after working a day at it I struck. He was much amused at my rail making performance. He asked me if I could shoot well; I answered that that was just to my hand. So the next day we took our rifles and went up the creek-bottom and found deer very plentiful. I shot two fine bucks while they were bounding away, and Baker was much pleased by my ability in this line; so he offered me six dollars a day for every day that I would furnish him, on the bank of the creek, two deer. I successfully did this for ten days, when, the game becoming somewhat scarce in that vicinity, he wanted me to go out some six or seven miles into the foothills of the mountains. This proposition carried with it so much loneliness and isolation, that it was declined.