The emigration started on the 22d under Captain Gantt, a man experienced in the route as far as Fort Hall, who had been employed to pilot the company to that point. Whitman remained at the Shawnee mission for some days and joined the emigrants on the Platte river about the middle of June, and continued with it to Fort Hall. During this part of the route he travelled for the most part with Jesse Applegate, who after the division of the emigrants was captain of one of the divisions. This division was generally in advance, as appears from the diary of J. W. Nesmith, who was made orderly sergeant of the company as first organized. It was perhaps while traveling with this division in advance that Whitman obtained information from the Catholic missionaries, who were somewhat in advance of the immigration, of a shorter route by Fort Bridger, known afterwards as the Fort Bridger cut-off. Of this Peter H. Burnett writes: "On the 12th of August we were informed that Dr. Whitman had written a letter, stating that the Catholic missionaries had discovered by the aid of their Flathead Indian pilot a pass through the mountains by way of Fort Bridger, which was shorter than the old route. We therefore determined to go by the fort. On the 14th we arrived at Fort Bridger, situated on Black's fork of Green river, having traveled from our camp on the Sweetwater two hundred and nineteen miles in eighteen days. Here we overtook the missionaries."
Fifteen days later on August 27, the immigration arrived at Fort Hall. Of the route up to this point Burnett writes: "Up to this point the route over which we had passed was perhaps the finest natural road of the same length to be found in the world. Only a few loaded wagons had ever made their way to Fort Hall and were there abandoned. Dr. Whitman was at the fort and was our pilot from there to the Grande Ronde, where he left us in charge of an Indian pilot, whose name was Stickus, and who proved to be faithful and competent....
"We had now arrived at the most critical period in our journey, and we had many misgivings as to our ultimate success in making our way with our wagons, teams and families. We had yet to accomplish the untried and difficult portion of our long and exhaustive journey. We could not anticipate at what moment we should be compelled to abandon our wagons in the mountains, pack our scant supplies upon our poor oxen and make our way on foot through the terribly rough country as best we could. We fully comprehended the situation; but we never faltered in our inflexible determination to accomplish the trip, if within the limits of possibility, with the limited resources at our command, Dr. Whitman assured us we could succeed, and encouraged and aided us with every means in his power."
This from Burnett's recollections was not so much a forecast of the trip as a description of what it proved to be. Others who had passed over the trail by which they must go represented its manifold difficulties and perils, and did not hesitate to present in the strongest terms the obstacles to their taking wagons successfully over it. It was to the minds of the hardy mountaineers a trail for a pack train only, and a difficult one at that. It was no wagon road over which a company of a thousand men, women and children could hope successfully to pass, taking their wagons as they had come thus far. Whitman, however, although knowing the difficulties, was confident that it could be done, and his counsel prevailed. The emigration left Fort Hall August 30 and reached the Whitman mission the loth of October. Whitman had left the company in charge of a skillful Indian pilot when he saw it safely past Fort Hall, and was already at the mission on its arrival. He there had the gratification of seeing encamped near the banks of the Columbia the largest immigration that had ever entered Oregon, and as he looked on it with its unbroken families, with their wagons and goods and herds, having successfully passed through all the difficulties and perils of the journey, he knew that the road to Oregon was now fully open. In his letter to the secretary of war a few weeks later he writes:
