Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/91

EARLIEST TRAVELERS ON OREGON TRAIL 83 quite certainly located about five miles from this city and ap- propriately called Ogden's Fountain; and from here by the regular road to the Snake River at Huntington. It was along in this Valley that Mr. Ogden would begin to divide his party into detachments, sending them in different directions upon different streams with instructions to meet again at a certain place and date ; and rarely were the appointments missed. The whole party would return to Fort Nez Perces again in June or July following. In the summer of 1829 Mr. Ogden was ordered to conduct a party to California and he turned over the Snake Country Brigade to his worthy companion John Work (or Wark as spelled in Scotland) who succeeded to its difficulties and dan- gers. Our record of the journeys of John Work is not yet en- tirely available and we are unable to speak at length. John Work was another forceful fur trader who left his track along most of the streams of the Columbia basin. His journals were kept very regularly and usually with some elaboration, and to him we are indebted for much of the detail that can be stated with accuracy concerning those early days. His body lies buried at Victoria in British Columbia where the family line is perpetuated through descendants of William Fraser Tolmie, who married one of his daughters. Mr. John Work continued in charge of the Snake Country trade (as far as we know), until 1832-4, when that irrepressible Yankee from Cambridge, Mass., Nathaniel J. Wyeth, twice crossed the plains and moun- tains to compete with the Hudson's Bay Company for the com- merce of the Columbia and built Fort Hall on the Upper Snake. And with the advent of the American travelers from across the Rockies we will consider this chapter complete. The development of the "Oregon Trail" may be otherwise termed an example of "the survival of the fittest to survive." The white man has followed in the track of the red man ; first on foot, then on horseback, then in the wheeled wagon or "horse-canoe," a little later in the passenger coach, later still in the Pullman, and finally in the automobile. When Wilson Price Hunt fell into direst extremity the Shoshone Indian con-