XXXI
THROUGH THE OREGON MOUNTAINS
After moving across the Grande Ronde valley through a veritable Eden of untamed verdure, and crossing the Grande Ronde River by ford, our travellers began the ascent of the Blue Mountains.
The air was cool and delicious. The cattle, much refreshed by their luscious feed in the bountiful and beautiful valley, moved more briskly than had been their wont, and were soon in the midst of the grand old forest trees, which, at that time untouched by the woodman’s ax, stood in all their native grandeur upon the grass-grown slopes. In the midst of one of these groves of stately whispering pines the company halted for the night near a sparkling spring, with scenery all around them so enchanting that Jean exclaimed in her journal, “Oh, this beautiful world! how big it is compared to the pygmy mortals who roam over its surface; and yet how little it is compared to the countless stars that gaze upon us from above this ‘boundless contiguity of shade’!”
For several days she had written little. Her thoughts wandered to the Green River experience that had awakened within her being a new life, from which, for her at least, there was to be no ending. She could not write, so she strolled aimlessly away to a mossy rock in a starlit ravine, at the foot of which a rivulet was singing.
“Why can’t I see you, mother dear?” she asked. “And you, Bobbie, can’t you say a word to your sister Jean?”
For a long time she sat thus, lost in reverie, while the eternal silence around her was broken only by the low cadence of the whispering pines.
Suddenly there came into her inner consciousness a call, unspoken yet heard, “Jean!”
She closed her eyes and saw, as plainly as with physical vision, Ashton Ashleigh’s border home; and he was gazing hard at Le-Le, who was kneeling at his feet in beseeching attitude.
“Jean!”
Gradually, as the demon Doubt aroused her senses, a wild, unreasoning jealousy crept into her heart. She turned her face to the eastward and sent out to him an answering call, “Ashleigh!”
She listened eagerly; but no response was felt or heard, and no mental vision reappeared. With her heart like lead, she returned to the wagon and crept into bed.
When she awoke the sun was shining, and she could not recall the vision that had distressed her. Had her soul visited the abode of her heart’s idol? Who knows? and who can tell?
On and on the teams kept crawling, until on the 6th of September the summit of the Blue Mountains was passed, and the wearied travellers gazed for the first time upon the Cascade Mountains, lying to the westward in the purple distance; and in their midst arose, supported by a continuous chain of undulating, tree-crowned, lesser heights, the majestic proportions of Mount Hood, the patriarch of the solitudes, his hoary head uplifted in the shimmering air, and at his feet a drapery of mist.
The Umatilla River left the gorges through which it had fought its way, and glided peacefully through a sagebrush plain toward the great Columbia. But no settlements were yet to be seen. No navigation had yet been started on the broad bosom of the upper Columbia. The rock-ribbed Dalles frowned far below in the misty distance; and no dream of a fleet of palatial river craft, with portage railways around otherwise impassable gorges, had yet taken practical shape. The Cascade locks had not entered the liveliest imagination, and a transcontinental railroad was considered an engineering impossibility, existing only in the mind of an impractical theorist or incurable crank.
A vast and practically level plain or upland lay between the Blue and the Cascade mountains. The Whitman settlement had already made the existence of the infant city of Walla Walla possible. Wallula and Umatilla were not, and the site of Pendleton was an unbroken plain.
But game was plenty and grass was good. Choke-cherries and salmon-berries grew thickly among the deciduous groves that bordered the Umatilla River; and but for the sad bereavements in the Ranger family, which time alone could heal, the company would have been in exuberant spirits.
At Willow Creek station, which is now a veritable oasis in the desert, the party found a trading-post, where some fresh potatoes and onions made a welcome change in the diet.
On the 13th of September Jean wrote: “Old friends and relatives, tried and true, have come to meet us from the Willamette valley, and their unexpected coming fills us with gratitude unspeakable.”
After stopping merely to exchange greetings and gather what meagre tidings they could obtain from each end of the long and tedious road, the jaded immigrants pushed onward through the heat and dust till nightfall, when they came to a small stream, where they were compelled to halt for the night on account of the water, though the grass was poor and the cattle fared badly.
The relief party reported the Willamette valley as the “Garden of Eden,” and gave glowing accounts of the soil, climate, scenery, and plenty with which the western part of the great Oregon country abounded. Even the dumb animals seemed to understand and take courage; for they stepped more briskly under the yoke and chewed the cud to a later hour than had been their wont.
Guided by the advice of the relief party, the train was again put in motion at midnight.
“It is fully twenty miles to the next camping-ground where there are wood and water,” said a kindly recruit who had recently been over the road. It was a forced march, but the animals were well repaid for making it, as they found good water and a tolerable supply of grass.
“September 16. We are encamped near the mouth of the Des Chutes River,” wrote Jean. “It is a clear, swift, and considerable stream which empties its waters into the Columbia.
“I know to-night just how Balboa must have felt when he discovered the Pacific Ocean. For have I not set eyes upon the lordly Columbia, the mighty river of the West, which
The Des Chutes was safely forded by the teams, under the direction of an Indian guide, and the women and children were taken across it in a canoe.
The wild and broken desolation of the plains now gave way to vast alluvial uplands,—dry, owing to the season, but giving promise of great prosperity for future husbandmen. Numerous gulches intersected the otherwise unbroken level, upon which the teams would often come without warning; therefore travel was difficult and progress slow.
“If the season were not so far advanced, I’d like to stop over at The Dalles and visit the mission,” said Captain Ranger; “but a storm is threatening, and it will never do to risk such an experience in the Cascade Mountains.”
“Quite right you air!” exclaimed a mountaineer, who visited the train avowedly in search of a wife. None of the women or girls saw fit to accept the negotiations proposed; but his advice as to a coming storm was good. The train, in seeking to slip through the mountains by the way of Barlow’s Gap,—a road made passable for teams by the indefatigable labors of an honored pioneer, whose name it perpetuates,—was halted just in time to prevent a disastrous ending.
Captain Ranger’s worn and famishing cattle were reinforced at Barlow’s Gap by two yokes of fat oxen sent to the rescue by an immigrant of 1850,—a grand and enterprising preacher of the gospel, who, all unknown, even to himself, was a striking example of a working parson, imbued with the practical idea of what constitutes a “Church of the Big Licks.” Not that he was pugnacious, but he was philanthropic and practical and enterprising; and many are the beneficiaries of his industry and skill who have long survived his ministry, and date their material progress in Oregon, as well as their spiritual welfare, to this practical promoter of an every-day religion.
Provisions were by this time running short, and the necessity of reaching the settlements was imperative; but there was no appeal from the borderer’s experience, and the impatient wayfarers were compelled to remain in camp for four consecutive days and nights, while the excited heavens warred among the serrated steeps, as
The storm, which condensed its forces into a deluge of rain at both the eastern and western bases of the Cascade Mountains, had raged as snow in the forest-studded heights; and this, melting rapidly under the sunny skies which succeeded the heavy precipitation, made Barlow’s Gap so slippery that the teamsters had to exercise the utmost care in guiding the oxen and to keep their own feet.
Provisions ran lower every day, and finally gave out entirely; and one jolly wayfarer, who had for many weeks professed to be enjoying the prospect of a ten-days’ famine, grew so ravenous when compelled to face the reality at the foot of Laurel Hill, that he begged piteously for some coffee-grounds to ease the cravings of his stomach.
The next morning the three girls crossed the raging torrent of the glacial river Sandy by jumping from rock to rock over the roaring and perilous current, and gathered a bountiful supply of salal-berries for the children; but it was almost night before the half-starved men (who would not eat the purple fruit) were met by a packer, who brought beef and flour; and as soon as a fire could be kindled, a meal was made ready.
On the 27th of September the company descended the last long and rocky steep, and halted with a shout at the foot of the mountains on the famous Foster Ranch, where fresh vegetables, milk, cream, and butter were added to the beef and flour on which they had been glad to subsist when necessary.
On the thirtieth day of the month they reached Oregon City, and were royally welcomed by Dr. John McLoughlin,—the renowned, revered, and idolized hero of Old Oregon.