Identifier: oxteamdaysontheor1922eng (find matches)
Title: Ox-team days on the Oregon Trail /by Ezra Meeker ; revised and edited by Howard R. Driggs
Year: 1922 (1920s)
Authors: Meeker, Ezra 1830-1928
Subjects: Overland journeys to the Pacific Oregon Trail
Publisher: Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York: World Book Company, 1922
Contributing Library: Church History Library, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Digitizing Sponsor: Corporation of the Presiding Bishop, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

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g from the crossing of the Missouri, wedragged ourselves on to the end of the Overland Trail atThe Dalles on the Columbia River. From here my wifeand I, with the baby, went by boat down the river, whileOliver took the ox team on to Portland by the land way. The Dalles is a name given to the peculiar lava rockformation that strikes across the Columbia, nearly twohundred miles from the mouth. These rocks throw thegreat stream into a fury of foaming rapids. An Indianlegend says that the Bridge of the Gods was once nearThe Dalles, but that the bridge broke and fell. On the September day in 1852 when we reached TheDalles, we found there a great crowd of travel-worn people.This assemblage was constantly changing. It was acoming-and-going congregation. The appearance of this crowd of emigrants beggarsdescription. Their dress was as varied as pieces in acrazy quilt. Here was a matronly dame in clean apparel,but without shoes; her husband perhaps lacked both 60 Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail
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Reaching the End of the Trail 61 shoes and hat. Youngsters of all sizes were running aboutwith scarcely enough clothing to cover their nakedness.Some suits and dresses were so patched that it was impos-sible to tell what was the original cloth. The color ofpractically everybodys clothing was that of desert dust. Every little while other sweat-streaked, motley-dressedhomeseekers would straggle up to this end of the longtrail. Their thoughts went back to their old homes, or tothe loved ones that they had laid away tenderly in theshifting sands of the Plains. Most of them faced the futmCwith fortitude; the difficulties they had met and masteredhad but steeled them to meet the difficulties ahead. Therewas an undercurrent of gladness in their souls with thethought that they had achieved the end of the OverlandTrail. They were ready now to go on down the Columbiato find their new homes in this great, unknown Land ofPromise. Almost every nationality was represented among them.All traces of r

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