tion of going to Fort Hall, on learning which the governor sent a commissioner to Jesse Applegate requesting him to go to California, or if he could not leave home, to employ some suitable person to carry the despatches to Governor Mason. It was late m January before this request reached Applegate, who immediately organized a company of sixteen men, and about the 1st of February set out upon the mission.[1]
But notwithstanding the determined character of the men who led the expedition, and the urgent nature of their duties, they were compelled to return. An extraordinary depth of snow on the mountains between Rogue River and Klamath Lake prevented crossing with horses. To have abandoned the horses, attempting to carry their blankets and provisions for the journey, would have been discomfiture or death to most of them. So at the end of one day's painful march on snow-shoes improvised of willow sticks, which sunk into the seven feet of soft snow several inches at every step, and often pitched their wearers headlong, the undertaking was relinquished, and the company returned regretfully to the Willamette Valley,[2] after four weeks of toil and hardship.[3] The letters to Governor Mason with which Mr Applegate was charged were, on the 11th of March, placed on
- ↑ Applegate's company consisted, besides himself, of his former associates in laying out the southern route, Levi and John Scott, Solomon Tetherow, Thomas and Walter Monteith, Daniel Waldo, John Minto, Campbell, Smith, Hibbler, Dice, Owens, Lemon, Robinson, and James Fields.
- ↑ In a private letter of Applegate is an interesting account of this day's struggles in the snow, too long to insert here. See Or. Spectator, Feb. 10, 1848; John Minto, in Salem Mercury, Nov. 23, 1877; Ashland Tidings, Dec. 7., 1877. Solomon Tetherow, to whom Applegate refers as his faithful and valued friend and helper on this occasion, was of the immigration of 1845, as elsewhere mentioned. He was a native of East Tennessee, born in 1800. He resided for some time in Alabama and Missouri, and married, at the age of 21, Miss Ibba Baker. He accompanied General Ashley on his expedition to the head waters of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers. He subsequently ran a keel-boat on the Missouri to Council Bluffs, then a trading post of the American Fur Company, and was pilot of the first steamboat on the upper Mississippi. He afterward migrated to Texas, but finding that a sickly country, returned to Missouri, and finally went to Oregon, where he settled on the Creole River, where the town of Dallas later stood, removing afterward to the Luckiamute in Polk County, where he died in February 1879. Portland Oregonian, March 1, 1879.
- ↑ Or. Spectator, March 9, 1848.
