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in the road; and on arriving at
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Meacham's, our gallant team, though by no means exhausted, yet seemed very willing to halt for the night. How we congratulated ourselves on securing them, before quitting Le Grande! Had we started with our pair of dilapidated donkeys, we would never have got through; but would probably have had to camp out in the Mountains over night, and send back for another team, after all. Once in rounding a rocky hillside, above a yawning chasm, our
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snapped short off, early in the forenoon; and again, in one of the worst quagmires, our drawing-rope by which the leaders were attached broke, and we would no doubt have been hopelessly ship-wrecked, had it not been for our forethought on leaving Le Grande. Fortunately, accustomed to army roads on the Peninsula and in Tennessee, we laid in a supply of rope and nails there, with a good stout hatchet, and these now stood us in excellent stead. With these we soon repaired all damages satisfactorily, and went on our way--not exactly rejoicing; but rather with grave apprehensions lest we should break down entirely, far away from any human habitation, and have to pass a supperless night by the roadside, or around a roaring fire, with wolves, bears, and such like
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Meacham's, at last, and to sit down to the generous cheer he gave us at nightfall. Though 8,000 feet or more, above the sea, and built wholly of logs, it was the cleanest, cheeriest, and best public-house we had yet seen in either Oregon or Idaho, outside of Boisè City; and even the
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Overland there indeed set no better table, if as good. We did ample justice to the luscious venison, sausage, and pumpkin-pies, that they gave us for dinner at 6 P. M.--having breakfasted at 6 A. M., and eaten nothing since. Mr. Meacham himself, our genial host, was a live Oregonian, who had come thither from Illinois several years before, and with his brother now owned this ranch, and the road over the Blue Mountains--such as it was. Bad as it was just then, it had cost them a good deal of money, first and last; and being the shortest road from navigation on the Columbia to Idaho and Montana, it had paid well in other years, when there was a
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of miners to those regions. But the emigration thither had now fallen much off, and besides a competing road had been opened from Wallula on the Columbia--flanking the Mountains in part--to Uniontown in Grande Ronde valley, and so beyond, which it was believed would hurt the Meacham Road seriously. The mail now went this new road, and trade and travel it was thought would be apt to follow the stage-coaches. Yet Mr. Meacham was not discouraged. He was a plucky, wide-awake man, some forty years of age, with brown hair and stubborn-looking beard, and in general looked like a person who could take care of himself well, travel or no travel. His wife was a really interesting lady, with several well-bred children; and in the evening, when we asked for something to read, he surprised us by producing a file of the _N. Y. Times_, Greeley's American Conflict, and Raymond's Abraham Lincoln. He had been a candidate for the Oregon Legislature at the recent election, and though running much ahead of his ticket, had been beaten by a small majority. He explained, that
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was still encamped in that part of Oregon, and that the Oregon democracy generally were only a step removed from Gov. Price and Jefferson Davis. The early settlers there, he said, had been mostly
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Pikes from Missouri, and they still clung to their old pro-slavery (and therefore Confederate) ideas. In '61, many of them had indeed favored secession, and later in the war when Price's forces were finally routed in Missouri, hundreds of his soldiers deserted and made for Oregon, where they already had acquaintances or friends. We had heard something of this before, and now understood what was meant by the popular expression--even at Salt Lake--that
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in Idaho and Oregon! Later in the evening, he gathered his little ones about us, and would have us talk about army experiences, during the war and afterwards, and affairs East generally. In return, he gave us his experiences West and incidents of border-life, by the hour together. Thus we spun yarns by his ample fire-side, until the