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vow was plighted in that westward march from Missouri to the sea. Hunters swept in from the buffaloraid and scouts reported the trail of Indians. Future senators, governors, generals, divines, and judges were in that train; founders of cities and carvers of empire. Burnett, a brisk lawyer, good-looking and affable, became the first governor of California; William Gilpin, the first governor of Colorado. Nesmith sat in the national Senate; McCarver, the founder of Burlington, Iowa, became the founder of Sacramento, California, of Tacoma, Washington, and missed by only ten miles the metropolis of Oregon. Journeying leisurely in the rear, by a somewhat different route, came Lieutenant Fremont with fourteen government wagons, following the emigrants out to Oregon.
Here, there, everywhere, Dr. Whitman attended the sick, encouraged the weary, and counselled with the pilot over the safety of the route. He was patient with complaints. "The best of men and women, when fatigued and anxious by the way, will be jealous of their rights," he said. For them he sought the smoothest route, the shallowest ford, the most cooling pastures for their fainting cattle.
Men were in that train who had inherited a hearty hatred of the British, men whose fathers had fought in the Revolution, and to whom 1812 was fresh in memory. Burnett, the lawyer, struck a responsive chord when he cried: "Let us drive out those British usurpers, let us defend Oregon from the British lion. Posterity will honor us for placing the fairest portion of our land under the stars and stripes."
Along the Big Blue in the sweet June weather, ferrying the Platte in their wagon-box boats in the July sun, sighting the Rockies in August, they camped a
