INCOMERS BY SEA.
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daughters, were put on shore between the Dalles and Cascades, the son and father remaining with the raft. When darkness came, the raft could not be found, and the desolate women, after building a fire, sat down by it to spend the night in the wet forest. But the fire attracted others in similar trouble, and they were rescued from impending dangers.[1] The incidents, pathetic and humorous, which attended the journeyings of three thousand persons would fill a volume. I only attempt to point out such as led to certain results in the history of the colony, and gave rise to certain legislation.[2]
- ↑ W. P. Herron, in Camp-fire Orations, MS., 17; James Morris, in Id., 18.
- ↑ One of the most curious chapters in the history of overland travel is that which relates to a party who probably never reached their destination. It appears that a man named James Emmet, a Tennessean, in the winter of 1844-5 gathered from Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee principally, a company of men, women, and children, amounting in all to over one hundred persons, about forty-five of whom were able to bear arms. In the month of January they left Iowa City for Oregon with twenty-one wagons, a number of horses, cattle, and farming utensils—Emmet being chosen guide of the expedition. Instead of rendezvousing at any of the points from which companies usually started, or waiting for the grass to come up in the spring, they proceeded at once, under Emmet's direction, to take a north-west course, which soon carried them beyond the settled portion of the territory. After travelling north-west for a couple of weeks they turned a little more north to the Iowa River, which they ascended for a considerable distance, and then turned due west, plunging into an ocean of wilderness and prairie, without compass or anything to guide them except the rising and setting sun. After pursuing this course for forty days, and not reaching the Missouri River some of the men became alarmed, and only the most strenuous exertions of Emmet and his adherents prevented their turning back in a body, The persuasions and threats of these men, together with the consciousness of being already so far into the wilderness that to return was about as dangerous as to go forward, kept them from abandonding the effort to reach the Missouri, In the mean time their provisions were becoming exhausted, game on the prairie was scarce, bridges had to be built, and numerous difficulties beset them that had not been expected, such as being obliged to keep along the bottoms of streams in order to find feed for their cattle, whether those streams flowed from or toward the west, the direction they wished to pursue, and to keep near the timber for game to eke out their own rapidly dwindling stock of food. After three months of aimless wandering over a trackless desert, they reached the Vermilion River, which empties into the Missouri about one hundred and fifty miles north of the Platte, where the Missouri makes a great bend to the south; but they were still several days from the main stream, and following down the Vermilion, they reached the fort at the junction, with eighteen men, and about half the number of women and children that had started from Iowa City. Some had turned back, in spite of persuasion, and some had camped higher on the Vermilion to rest and hunt buffalo. While they were encamped at Vermilion, the steamer General Brooks came down from the mouth of the Yellowstone River with a cargo of furs. When this company reached the post at the mouth of the Vermilion River
