But the British trading-post lay on a sandy plain, where scarce a blade of grass or a shrub grew. Dr. Whitman had chosen a pleasant and fertile nook, not far from the fort, where emigrants might recruit themselves among friends; for at the fort itself every effort was made to turn them back or send them into California. Thus everywhere, except at the missions, emigrants found this Oregon Trail a hard road to travel, for our Government left them to the mercy of the Hudson's Bay Company's agents, who hindered them in every way, or failing to stop them, charged exorbitantly for every thing furnished.
Finding emigration would increase in spite of them, this company chose to save itself by bringing in British emigrants from the Red River of the North. It meant to occupy the best lands, as it had the best trading sites. The first colony was on the Upper Columbia when Dr. Whitman heard of it. If Oregon were to be saved to us, there was not a moment to lose. He instantly started for Washington with the news of this threatened invasion.
Dr. Whitman's ride to St. Louis, by way of Santa Fé, will ever be memorable in the annals of Oregon, as well for its perils as for what it accomplished. He found our Government had just signed the Ashburton Treaty,[9] by which Oregon was still left out in the cold, without a boundary or the protection of our laws or flag. His great energy, however, enabled him to get together on the frontier an emigrants' train of two hundred wagons with which, as the leader of an army, he started back in the spring. It was these people whom Fremont had seen setting out, had tracked a thousand miles on their way, and finally come up with at their journey's end. As the Government would not lead, it now had to follow the people's grand march for the Pacific.
With fresh horses Fremont pushed on down the left bank of the Columbia to the Dalles, Mount Hood towering in the distance. Here the whole river rushes through a long and narrow trough of rock, with so swift a tide that in the season of high water boats cannot stem it.
A few miles below, Fremont emerged from the sterile and inhospitable region through which he had been travelling, upon a green spot in the valley, where, among groves of noble forest-trees, the Methodist mission had reared its two dwellings, its one schoolhouse, and its barn, cleared ground for planting, gathered to it a colony of Indians for instruction in the ways and religion of the whites, and so dropped in the wilderness the seed of Christian civilization.
From the Dalles, Fremont sailed down the river to Vancouver, finding here still more emigrants, most of whom were waiting to cross over into the fertile Willamette Valley, which was then their land of promise.
At this point Fremont's journey ended. His explorations had now connected with surveys conducted by Captain Wilkes from the Pacific coast. Fremont therefore turned homeward again, taking with him the most exact knowledge of the country traversed, so far obtained.
FOOTNOTES
[1] J. Nicolas Nicollet had first established the sources of the Mississippi. He had returned from exploring a considerable part of Minnesota and Dakota.
[2] The South Pass cuts the south part of the Wind River chain.