The Reverend H. K. Perkins was missionary in charge of the station here at The Dalles. He and Mrs. Perkins and all their household gave the Frémont party a hearty American welcome. It seemed good to be among wooden houses, and ploughed fields, and gardens; and the lieutenant and the French said that it reminded them of Missouri. Fort Vancouver was ninety miles on, down the Columbia and beyond the Cascade Range. Lieutenant Frémont decided to leave the party and the animals to rest at the mission, while he went ahead, by canoe, to finish his survey by reporting at Vancouver. This would connect the survey with the survey made along the coast by Lieutenant Wilkes; and besides, at Fort Vancouver resided Dr. John McLoughlin, chief of the Hudson Bay Company in Oregon. To call upon him was a necessary courtesy from the American Government to the British Government. Furthermore, at Vancouver probably could be purchased supplies of a kind that could not be found at the missionary stations.
The fifth of November being Sunday, of course this was a day of rest for everybody at The Dalles; but on[204] Monday the Reverend Mr. Perkins helped the lieutenant to hire a large canoe from the Indians here, and three Indians, who owned it, were engaged as crew. With them, and taking Mr. Preuss, Jacob Dodson the colored youth, and Baptiste Bernier, the lieutenant launched off for Vancouver.
He appointed Kit Carson in charge of the camp, and up the back trail he sent a note for Thomas Fitzpatrick, instructing him to drop the carts at Dr. Whitman’s, and to come on to The Dalles with pack-saddles. Kit Carson also was instructed to be making pack-saddles.
All this was very interesting.
“Do you think we’ll go back by the same trail we came out, Kit?” queried Oliver.
“Wall, I dunno,” mused Kit Carson. “But I reckon not. That’s not Frémont way. We found the trail out hyar already made, an’ nothing left for us to do but to follow along an’ calkilate figgers. So the government at Washington’ll know all about the Oregon Trail an’ about the lake, too; an’ it won’t be like Frémont to take the back track. He prefers the new to the old. Once or twice he’s spoken of going back by the north, around the head o’ the Missouri, an’ down. But these hyar pack-saddles mean a new trail somewheres.”
The Reverend Mr. Perkins had suggested to the lieutenant that he could reach Washington quickest and easiest by chartering a small brig, which was[205] anchored in the river below Fort Vancouver, and sailing down the coast to the Isthmus of Panama, there to cross and charter another vessel for the United States. Consequently, with this in prospect, and with the return by way of the sources of the Missouri in prospect, the future looked bright. Besides——
“Or else,” remarked Kit, “thar’s the southern trail, to find that Buenaventura River emptying from the desert into the ocean, and to strike the Spanish Trail for the mountains an’ the States. The lieutenant has been mightily interested in the Buenaventura. He’s talked considerable about it.”
Here was the third route.
The lieutenant returned on the afternoon of the eighteenth. At once was it known that he had decided for the southern trail, into the unexplored, where awaited the fabled Buenaventura.
According to the lieutenant, and to Kit Carson, and all, this was a country well-nigh unexplored, this country south, lying between the Wasatch Range of the Great Salty Lake on the east and the Sierra Nevada Range bordering California on the west. All accounts agreed that it was a great basin, of sandy, salty, sagy bare-rock desert broken by sudden peaks and ridges. In it Lieutenant Frémont anticipated finding strange peoples and wild valleys and curious waters.
First to be encountered, upon the march down from the Columbia of the north, was a lake called Tlamath or Klamet or Klamath Lake, which in the[206] spring was a real lake, but which in the summer and the fall was only a green meadow. This lake was at the head of the Rivière des Chutes or Falls River, which from it flowed north for the Columbia. From the neighborhood of the lake the Sacramento River of California flowed south, and the Tlamath River flowed west to the ocean. Moreover, the Tlamath Indians, living at the lake, were said to be treacherous and hard fighting.
Next to be encountered, as the lieutenant hoped, was a flat desert lake called Mary’s Lake, down in the Great Basin.
Next should come the fabled Buenaventura, or Good Fortune River, flowing across from the vicinity of the Great Salt Lake clear to the Pacific, and emptying into the Bay of San Francisco!
With the Buenaventura located, as a water-way from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, then the Frémont party might head eastward more, for the Rockies themselves, and the Arkansas River, and Bent’s Fort below.
Now everybody was enthusiastic. No one objected to starting out at once, in the beginning of winter, after hard travel already of 2000 miles, for the unknown. The talk was of hidden lakes and rivers and boiling springs, and of marvels of man, beast and plant such as the Great Salty Lake had failed to produce.
“Hooray for the new country!” was the cry.
The lieutenant had brought back from Fort Vancouver[207] provisions of flour, dried peas and tallow, for three months. The tallow was to be used in frying, etc. Enough horses had been engaged from the Indians about the mission to recruit the number of animals, saddle and pack, to 104. The Reverend Mr. Perkins prevailed upon two of his Indians to be guides as far as the Tlamath Lake. One of these Indians had fought the Tlamaths there, and had been wounded, so he was not likely to forget the route. The pack-saddles were finished rapidly, and other preparations responded, as fast, to the enthusiasm.
On the twenty-first Thomas Fitzpatrick and his party, including Mr. Talbot the tenderfoot (soon to be a veteran), Alexander Godey of the handsome hair, Sergeant Zindel the Prussian artillerist, arrived. When they had heard, they also were eager for the trip. Mr. Gilpin must proceed on, to Vancouver; Mr. Dwight already had gone.
Upon the twenty-fourth all arrangements were completed. At the last the Reverend Mr. Perkins brought to the camp a Chinook Indian boy, aged nineteen, who wished “to see the whites” and learn how the whites lived in their homes of the east. He had been in the Perkins household and could speak a little English. Him the lieutenant enrolled, promising to return him to his relatives and friends, after the journey.
This night of November 24 the camp was so excited over the new trail and the homeward way, that nobody[208] slept well, and all rose before daylight, to breakfast and pack by the cold star-shine.
Twenty-two or three whites there were—American, French, German, Canadian—to take the trail for the Buenaventura: twenty-two or three whites, Jacob the young negro, the Chinook stripling, 104 horses and mules, a number of cattle, the howitzer, and Oliver’s dog from the River of Weeds. The trusty spring wagon was left behind, as a gift to the mission. Its glass lamps had been broken, and one of its front panels had been kicked in by a horse; otherwise it was of good condition. The mission was pleased to have it.
In a long line, about noon of this November 25 (Thanksgiving season!) of 1843, amidst flurries of snow, the expedition set forth from the Dalles of the Columbia. The Reverend Mr. Perkins rode out with them for a few miles, to wish them God-speed. Finally he must stop.
“Good-by, good-by, and God bless you,” he said, beginning with the lieutenant, and shaking hands all down the line. “Good-by and good fortune.”
“Good-by,” they responded; and “Au revoir, monsieur.”
The course was south, up the long valley of the Rivière des Chutes, with the white Cascade Mountains on the right, and many an icy stream to ford.
At the headwaters of the River of the Falls a pine forest was entered, December 8; a pine forest cloaking magnificently a yellowish-white soil of pulverized[209] pumice-stone whereon grew not a blade of grass. The Indian guides pointed out, as great curiosities, pine cones a foot and a half long.
Now the trail was good, the weather pleasant, if crisp, but the horses and mules and cattle fared badly for lack of grass. Then, on December 10, from the pines the cavalcade emerged upon a wide green meadow—a lake of grass; and—
“Tlamath Lake! Tlamath Lake! Lac du Tlamath!” welled the glad cheer.
This must be it. Thus the two Indian guides declared it, and by its meadow character it answered to descriptions. The horses and mules and cattle eyed wistfully the green expanse extending to their feet; and they fell greedily to cropping.
Surrounded by timbered slopes was the lake-meadow. It looked peaceful. But according to trapper theories, “Whar thar ain’t any Injuns to be seen, th............