28 LIEUTENANT HOWISON REPORT ON OREGON, 1846
though the population has quadrupled itself within seven years past, and will doubtless continue to increase, it cannot be ex- pected to do so at the past ratio.
California invites many off who are seeking new lands ; and the emigrants of 1846 who reached Oregon were not computed at over seven hundred, while the two previous years had each increased the population two thousand or more.
The privations and sufferings of the first overland emigrants to this country are almost incredible, composed, as they were, of persons who, with families of women and children, had gathered together their all, and appropriated it to the purchase of meahs to accomplish this protracted journey.
They would arrive upon the waters of the Columbia after six months' hard labor and exposure to innumerable dangers, which none but the most determined spirits could have sur- mounted, in a state of absolute want. Their provisions ex- pended and clothes worn out, the rigors of winter beginning to descend upon their naked heads, while no house had yet been built to afford them shelter ; bartering away their wagons and horses for a few salmon, dried by the Indians, or bushels of grain in the hands of rapacious speculators, who placed themselves on the road to profit by their necessities, famine was staved off while they labored in the woods to make rafts, and thus float down stream to the Hudson's Bay Company's establishment at Vancouver. Here shelter ahd food were in- variably afforded them, without which their sufferings must soon have terminated in death.
Such was the wretched plight in which I may say thousands found themselves upon reaching this new country ; but, in the midst of present want and distress, the hardy pioneer saw around him all those elements of comfort ahd wealth which high hope had placed at the terminus of this most trying jour- ney. At Vancouver he found repose and refreshment, the offerings of a disinterested benevolence. Aided by advice and still more substantial assistance, he prosecuted his journey up the Wilhammette, and on the banks of this river could make
