wagons,
and showed us the wagons which the emigrants of the preceding year had aban- doned, as an evidence of the impracticabihty of our determination. Doctor Whitman was persistent that wagons could proceed as far as the Grand Dalles of the Columbia river, from which point, he asserted, they could be taken down by rafts or batteaux to the Willamette valley, while our stock could be driven over an Indian trail near Mt. Hood. Happily Whitman's advice prevailed."
From the diary of Nesmith kept on the journey we learn that Whitman traveled much of the way in company with Jesse Applegate, who was captain of one division of the immigrants and traveled much of the time in advance of the others. In a paper written for the annual reunion of the Oregon pioneers in 1876, Applegate says of Whitman's services to this immigration :
"It is no disparagement to others to say that to no other individual are the emigrants of 1843 so much indebted for the successful conclusion of their journey as to Dr. Marcus Whitman."
At their organization at Independence, Missouri, the emigrants selected Peter H. Burnett, one of their number as captain. Burnett had an important part in the organization and conduct of the company, and on the journey kept a careful diary, by the aid of which years afterwards he wrote his Recollections of a Pioneer. In this book he thus spoke of Whitman and his services :
'T knew Dr. Whitman well ; I first saw him at the rendezvous near the western line of Missouri in May, 1843 ; saw him again at Fort Hall, and again at his own mission in the fall of that year. ... I saw him again at my home in Tualitin Plains in 1844. He called at my house and finding that I was in the woods he came to me there. This was the last time I ever saw him. Our relations were of the most cordial and friendly character, and I had the greatest respect for him. I consider Dr. Whitman to have been a brave, kind, devoted, and intrepid spirit, without mahce and without reproach. In my best judgment he made greater sacrifices, endured more hardships, and encountered more perils for Oregon, than any other one man, and his services were prac- tically more efficient, except perhaps those of Dr. Linn, United States senator from Missouri. I say perhaps, for I am in doubt which of these two men did more in efifect for Oregon."
Whitman's work for Oregon had little to do with its internal afifairs. He had little or no part in organizing its scattered settlements into a civil com- munity, and so in laying the foundation of the state, history will award the honor for this work to others. But in the work of bringing Oregon into close connection with the states of the union by opening the door through the bar- rier of the intervening mountains, he was among the foremost. Others contribu- ted to this end, but no one seems to have seen as early as did he the supreme importance of iinding, or making, this highway, nor to have seen it with so single and unclouded an eye. He saw almost from the first that if Oregon was to become the territory of the United States ; if England was to be brought to acknowledge the rightfulness of the American claim; if the American govern- ment itself was to be brought to take any serious and efifective steps toward pressing its claims to that to which it pretended to have a just title, American families must be brought through the mountains into the region claimed and the way be shown beyond all doubt to be open for others to follow. To this end Whitman addressed himself with tireless purpose, and when he discerned that the supreme moment for action had ar-rived, acted with heroic daring. He suc- ceeded, but his very success was
