"I just put an advertisement in the Pennsylvania papers that a Presbyterian minister intended starting for Oregon in the spring of 1852, and would be glad for any Presbyterians to join him and found a colony there."
"Did you get many answers?"
"About eighty agreed to go, but a good many weakened before the time came, and only about forty of them started; some twenty came in afterward, so that our party was sixty strong. When we left St. Joe, in Missouri, we had twenty wagons. I had a nice carriage with four mules for my wife, and a half-share in a wagon and ox-team. We left St. Joe in May, 1852, and arrived in Oregon four months and a half afterward."
"Did you travel all the time?"
"We laid over for Sundays, and I preached every Sunday on the journey but one, when we were crossing an alkali desert, and had to push on through to water."
"Were there many emigrants on the road, minister?"
"There was the heaviest emigration to Oregon that year that there has ever been. Many times I have climbed a hill just off the great emigrant trail, and counted a hundred wagons and more ahead, and more than a hundred behind us."
"Did you carry any feed for your stock?"
"Not any, and it was terribly hard on stock, as the bunch-grass on and near the trail was eaten down so close. It was harder on the oxen than on the mules. I brought all my mules safe into Oregon, but only one ox out of our team."
"How did you do when the oxen gave out?"