relief, twelve dragoons being assigned to this duty. The detachment carried dispatches for San Francisco, and was instructed to wait at Fort Orford for the answer; but the captain of the mail steamer, which carried the answer, and also Quartermaster Miller, under an agreement to stop at Port Orford, being new to the coast mistook Rogue river entrance for this port, and being alarmed at his error, proceeded direct to the Columbia with the quartermaster, who did not reach his destination until the twelfth of April. He then took a train of mules from Port Orford to Camp Castaway over the trail opened in January, and which was found to be a most trying one, consuming four days in the fifty miles of travel.
Miller proceeded to the Umpqua, where he found the schooner Nassau, which he chartered, and brought round to Coos bay, this being the first vessel to enter this harbor. The brig Fawn soon after arrived at the Umpqua with wagons for the quartermaster s department, and the mules were sent to haul them down the beach to Camp Castaway, where they were loaded with the shipwrecked cargo, which was thus transported across some miles of sand dunes to Coos bay and taken on board the Nassau for Port Orford, where they arrived May twentieth. Such were some of the difficulties of Indian warfare in this wild region of perilous coast, rough and steep hills, forests and morasses, interspersed with spots of Eden-like beauty.
It is only necessary to add to this picture of the situation that no road to the valley was yet opened. But, on finding that dragoons could be of no service in the Coquille county, Casey detached Stanton from his command to escort Lieutenant Williamson of the topographical engineers in the winter of 1851–52, while exploring for a practicable route; and in the autumn of the latter year one was surveyed out and opened. In the meantime, Fort Orford was garrisoned by twelve dragoons under Lieutenant Stanton and twenty artillerymen under Lieutenant Wyman, neither of any use in pursuing Indians in the
