our sorrow, would be ample compensation for all our labors and hardships in opening the south road. Of course our enterprise was opposed by that mighty monopoly, the Hudson Bay Company, whose line of forts and trading posts on the Columbia afforded them rare opportunities for trade with the immigrants. Many of the immigrants who followed us during the fall of 1846, had a hard time, though not so hard as they would probably have experienced on the other route; and some of them, not understanding the situation fully, became infected with the spirit of persecution which had its origin with the Hudson Bay Company, and joined in charging us with leading the travel away from the northern route for purposes of personal speculation. Certain members of the party were singled out to bear the burden of persecution, whereas, if any member of the party was animated by improper motives in seeking to open the road, all were equally guilty, as the party was governed in all its proceedings by a majority vote of its members.
"The efforts of the Hudson Bay Company to put down the road proved an eminent failure. Its superior advantages were better and better known and appreciated every year. It never ceased to be an important route of travel, and a large portion of the population of our state entered by this channel. It is a very significant fact that the great thoroughfare of today, from the Willamette to the Siskiyou chain, and thence out through the Lake country and on to the Humbolt, departs rarely from the route blazed out by the road company 31 years ago."
In 1847 occurred the tragedy of the Whitman massacre, and the Cayuse Indian war followed. A number of young men who had come to Oregon in our train in 1843 aanswered the call for volunteers. These young men had followed the fortunes of the Applegate families and had been faithful and loyal friends and helpers, and I recall with pride their ready answer to the call for volunteers to follow the treacherous Indians who had murdered the whites at the Whitman mission. Whatever was lacking to complete the equipment of these young men, father and my uncles supplied. We boys were too young to go to war, but we turned over our little lead cannon to Billy Doke to be melted and moulded into bullets.
I believe it is well understood that the discovery of gold
