REMINISCENCES OF CAPT. W. P. GRAY 339
the rapids. He told me that he would have been just as glad to pay me $500 if I had asked that much. This was the first lumber raft ever taken down the Snake river, but it was the forerunner of scores of other rafts.
"For this lumber, which was worth only $900 at Lewiston, he got $3300 at Umatilla, or in other words, he made a profit of $2400 on the $20 investment in my services.
"That, by the way, is a fair sample of my financial ability, but what could you expect of the son of parents who thought so little of money that they made a trip across the desert and gave up all prospect of financial returns, to become missionaries among the Indians with Dr. Whitman? An indifference, too, and a disregard for money is bred in my bone.
"After working for three months as cub pilot with Captain Charles Felton on the steamer Yakima in the upper river, I secured a position as assistant pilot with the O. S. N. Com- pany. I was eighteen years old at the time. That summer the summer of 1864 the Oregon Steam Navigation Company made an effort to take a steamboat up the Snake river canyon to ply on the upper waters of the Snake between Olds Ferry and Boise. Olds Ferry is just above where the present town of Huntington is located.
"Boise in those days was a wonderfully prosperous mining camp. Olds Ferry was also a good point as most of the emi- grants crossed the Snake river by that ferry. The steamer Colonel Wright was selected to make the attempt and Captain Thomas J. Stump was chosen to take her through. I was as- signed to her as assistant pilot. Alphonso Boone was the mate. Peter Anderson was the chief engineer. John Anderson was the assistant engineer and my father, W. H. Gray, and J. M. Vansyckle, of Wallula, went along as passengers. We went up the river to about twenty-five miles above Salmon river. In attempting to make a dangerous eddy at this point, the boat was caught in a bad eddy, thrown into the current and upon a sharp rock reef jutting out from the Idaho shore. It carried away eight feet of her bow, keel and sides to the deck. Things looked desperate for a moment. Captain Stump gave an
