journey. The good wife many times mourned that the doctor should "Wear himself out in getting that wagon through." "Yesterday," she says, "it was overset in the river and he was wet from head to foot getting it out; to-day it was upset on the mountain side, and it was hard work to save it." The dear woman did not know it was an inspired wagon, the very implement upon which the fate of Oregon would turn. Small events are sometimes portentous, and the wagon that Whitman wheeled into Oregon, as we shall soon see, was of this character.
One of the Providential events was, that the little company had been turned aside from the attempt to make the journey over the direct route and sent over this unexplored course, fully one thousand miles longer. The winter of 1842-43 was very cold, and the snow throughout the West was heavy. From many of these storms they were protected by the ranges of high mountains, and what was of great value, had plenty of firewood; while on the other route for a thousand miles they would have had to depend mainly upon buffalo chips for fire, which it would have been impossible to find when the ground was covered with snow. To the traveler good fires in camp are a great comfort. 117
Even as it was, they suffered from the cold, all of them being severely frosted. Dr.
