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appeared, they speedily gravitated again into their natural creep. We were all day long making our last twenty-six miles out from Le Grande, and it was clear we would never get over the Blue Mountains with this pokey team, if the roads were as reported. Fortunately, at Le Grande, we succeeded in hiring a fresh team, of four fine and spirited horses, and with these we swung out of the town (Nov. 24th) on a good round trot--a delightful contrast to our snail-like pace on coming in. We had sighted the Blue Mountains--the northern prolongation of the Sierra Nevadas--two days before, soon after leaving Baker City, and all along had got ugly accounts of the condition of the roads there. Their bald summits already showed snow here and there, and for a day or two another snow-storm had been lowering in the sky, much to our anxiety. But as we rolled out of Le Grande, the sun came out bright and clear, and with our ambulance stout and strong, and our high-stepping steeds, all the auspices seemed to change in our favor. We soon struck the Le Grande river, and followed this up for several miles, through wild and picturesque cañons, or along the shelving sides of the mountains, where often two teams could hardly pass. The Le Grande carried us well up and into the Mountains, and every hour the scenery became grander and wilder. Grande Ronde valley soon passed out of sight; but, as we ascended, from various points we caught exquisite views of the wide-stretching ranges and valleys beyond. Farther up, we became environed with hills and gorges, covered thick with gigantic fir-trees, though here and there a clump of cedars or pines appeared. All along we met the wild snow-drop, loaded down with its berries, and in sheltered nooks saw the wild currant, with here and there harebells, though these were rare. The mountain-laurel also occurred frequently; but the great predominating growth was the Oregon fir, from the size of a bamboo cane to the leafy monarch,
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The road was constructed on the cork-screw principle--much around to get a little ahead--but after countless twistings and turnings, we at length reached the summit, long after noon. Here we found a comparatively level plateau, some two or three miles in width, with only a few scattered fir-trees, swept keenly by the wind, from which we slowly descended over the remains of a once corduroyed road to
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Meacham's. We arrived at
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Meacham's about 4 P. M.--only twenty-six miles from Le Grande, after all; but as it was still twelve miles to
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Crawford's,
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Jordan's a hard road to travel! The roads, indeed, as a whole, after we got up into the Mountains, were simply execrable, and our ride in that respect anything but romantic. All along the route, we found freight-trains, bound for Boisè City and the Mines, hopelessly
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Some of the wagons with a broken wheel or axle, had already been abandoned. Others were being watched over by their drivers, stretched on their blankets around huge fires by the roadside, smoking or sleeping, patiently awaiting their comrades, who had taken their oxen or mules to double-up on some team ahead, and would return with double teams for them to-morrow or next day, or the day after--whenever they themselves got through. Snow had already fallen on the Mountains, once or twice that season; we found several inches of it still in various places, and the air and sky both threatened more, as the day wore on. Yet these rough freighters looked upon the
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very philosophically, and appeared quite indifferent whether they got on or stayed. If it snowed, the forest afforded plenty of wood, their wagons plenty of provisions, and their wages went on just the same; so where was the use of worrying? This seemed to be about the way they philosophized, and accustomed to the rude life of the Border, they did not mind
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a little. An old army friend used often to parade a pet theory of his, that a man could not associate much with horses, without directly deteriorating.
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The horse, he would say,
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I always thought him about half-right; but if this be true as to intimacy with horses, what must be the effect on men of long and constant association with mules or oxen! I thought I saw a good deal of this in mule-drivers in the army, in Virginia and Tennessee; but a harder or rougher set, than the ox-men or
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(as they call themselves) of the Plains and Mountains, it would be difficult perhaps to find, or even imagine. On the road here in the Blue Mountains, with their many-yoked teams struggling through the mud and rocks, of course, they were in their element. _Outré_, red-shirted, big-booted, brigand-looking ruffians, with the inseparable bowie-knife and revolver buckled around their waists, they swung and cracked their great whips like fiends, and beat their poor oxen along, as if they had no faith in the law of kindness here, nor belief in a place of punishment hereafter. And when they came to a really bad place--in crossing a stream, or when they struck a stump or foundered in a mud-hole--it is hard to say whether their prodigious, multiplied, and many-headed oaths were more grotesque or horrible. To say
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would be but a feeble comparison; the whole Mountains corruscated with sulphur! Some few of the trains consisted only of horse and mule teams; but ox-teams seemed most in favor, and slow as they were, we took quite a fancy to them--they appeared so reliable. When the roads were good, they averaged ten or twelve miles per day, and subsisted by grazing; when they became bad, they managed to flounder through any how--some way or other. At extra bad places, the teams were doubled or trebled up, and then the wagon was bound to come, if the wood and iron only held together. Twenty or thirty yoke of oxen straining to the chains, with the
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all pounding and yelling like mad, their huge whip-lashes thick as one's wrist cracking like pistols, was a sight to see--