a point one mile above the falls, where it encamped to await the arrival of wagons from The Dalles with supplies. The new recruits, says a veracious chronicler, on being fed with Cayuse beef, acquired all the bucking qualities of that animal, and refused to march before the provisions provided by the commissar-general came up, which they did about the twenty-third, when the army resumed its march.
The line of march was westward across the barren plain between the Palouse and the Columbia, which was reached at White bluffs. The sixty miles covered by this march, under a hot sun, without good water or grass, caused a loss of nearly half the horses of the command, which was compelled to lay by long enough to remount itself from the Indian herds, and refill its larder from the same store. On the thirtieth, the march was continued, doubling on its former course and returning to the Walla Walla valley, whence after foraging for a few days and finding only a little camas and potatoes, a detachment was ordered to the Umatilla to search for caches and fat Cayuse fillies to prevent starvation. Such was the difficulty with which the Oregon government supplied its volunteers in the field, that for many days together on different occasions the men were subsisted entirely on horse meat. At other times, in the Umatilla country, cattle could be found, and were seized upon without inquiry as to ownership. Sometimes the Indians by a sudden raid nearly dismounted a command, and were in turn dismounted. Meantime, the regulars had not yet taken the field, and the time for which the recruiting battalion had enlisted was about to expire. Colonel Cornelius, who wished to confer with Governor Curry, on the sixth of April took up his line of march for The Dalles with a portion of his command, his route lying along the north side of the Columbia. At Cañon creek, four days' march from Walla Walla, he was attacked by Kamiakin and a force of nearly three hundred Indians, when an engagement took place in which the
