A small party of the belated immigrants being wind-bound behind Cape Horn for a number of days—a circumstance that frequently happened at this part of the river—were in danger of death by starvation, being reduced to eating boiled rawhide, which they had upon their boat. Ford relates that a Mr Delaney had a box of hemp-seed which he consumed. Among them was an immigrant who had been to Vancouver and returned to the Cascades to the assistance of his friends. Remembering that he had breakfasted at a certain spot on his way up the river, he searched upon his knees, in the snow, for crumbs that might have fallen, weeping bitterly, and expecting to perish. But McLoughlin, with his wonderful care and watchfulness over everybody, being satisfied, from the length of time the party had been out, that they were in distress, sent another boat with provisions to look for and relieve them, which arrived in time to prevent a tragic termination to their six months' journey.[1] A letter in the Oregon Spectator of January 21, 1847, written by one of the immigrants of 1843, declares that they experienced more hardships and sufferings in descending from the Dalles to the Willamette than in all the former portion of their journey, and that almost in sight of the promised land many were saved from perishing by the benevolence of the Hudson's Bay Company and the timely assistance of a fellow-immigrant—presumably Captain Waters.
It might be asked why help was not rendered by the American settlers in the Willamette Valley, and the Methodist Mission. In justice to the missionaries, I must say that some help was rendered, but it appears
- ↑ Ford's Road-makers, MS., 24-5; Letter of Lieut Howison, in Evans' Hist. Or., MS., 348. The only death that happened at the Cascades, and the ninth on the road, was of a negro woman, a servant of Mrs Burnett, who was drowned by stepping on the edge of a canoe which sheered from under her, when she fell into the river and disappeared. Ford, MS., 21.
sition;' and of McLoughlin, that 'he was one of the greatest and most noble philanthropists I ever saw; a man of superior ability, just in his dealings, and a faithful Christian.' Yet these were the men whom a certain portion of the immigrants of 1843 maligned and hated, although they were indebted to them for saving their lives.
