Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/171

New England is the migration of Thomas Hooker and his church in June, 1635, from Cambridge, to the bank of the Connecticut River, there they forthwith made the beginning of the town of Hartford. The picture of that earnest party in pursuit of a lofty purpose—a party of husbands and wives with their children, taking with them their cattle and their household goods, and led by their sturdy pastor, a great founder of American democracy—is a very pleasant one, Mrs. Hooker being in poor health, was carried all of the way on a litter. That was a pilgrimage of something more than one hundred miles, through a country not hard to traverse, under June skies. Much more striking and not less sweet is the picture of our little party of devoted missionaries two centuries later, making their toilsome way across this continent and threading the intricate mountain passage between the upper Missouri and the lower Columbia, Mrs. Spalding much of the time ill and sometimes so exhausted as to make her recovery seem doubtful. That journey stands out as typical of the bringing across these rugged Sierras, the home with all its sacred and tender associations; and it will long live in history as it deserves to. An incident especially marked it; the resolute Whitman brought his wagon all the way, up hill and down dale, in spite of rocks and bushes and whatever hindrances the forest could offer until the rattle of its wheels was heard upon the banks of the Columbia.

With the obstinacy with which he clung to this wagon the Doctor had a purpose. There was a belief that the mountains which encompassed Oregon were impassable for wheeled vehicles. Doctor Whitman had now satisfied himself that this was not the case. What he had done once with a single wagon he could do again if need be with a hundred. It was well that the experiment had been tried. From 1838 to 1842 missionary parties and emigrant families kept coming to Oregon and for the most part abandoned their wagons at Fort Hall, as they were told it was impossible to take them over the Blue Mountains. In every way the agents of the Hudson's Bay Company did their best to spread such reports and to discourage immigration. They lost no chance of asseverating that Oregon was not only inaccessible, but worthless when reached, at least so far as the needs of permanent settlers were concerned. The secret, however, was one that could not long be kept. It needed but a brief experience to teach the settlers that for agricultural purposes this country about the Columbia River was unsur-