Told by the Pioneer's - Washington Secretary of State

Told
by the P'ioneers
stricken from the loss of so many that they were traveling along in
small parties, apparently not caring whether they lived or died. Finally
the cholera subsided but then came another difficulty for those
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who were left behind to contend with that was feed for their teams.
If you remember, there was the heaviest emigration that year that
ever crossed the plains before or since, and of course, there were certain
camping places that we all had to make in order to get water. So,
of course, we parties that had sickness in our trains got behind and
the result '""as our teams nearlv all died.
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We were then traveling 'with a man by the name of Scott, who had
a great deal of bad luck on the road. He had more or less sickness,
but had had no deaths in his family up until this time. 'Ve were now
approaching the Blue Mountains, where one of Mr. Scott's men, ,,,ho
had been complaining for some time of the scurvy, got so bad that he
had to be hauled. A bout this time J\Irs. Boatman commenced to get
ill with the scurvy. 'Ve expected to cross the Cascade .:\fountains by
this time, but concluded to go by The Dalles and get some more provisions,
as we had not enough to last us into the settlement on the
west side of the Cascades. On arri,-ing at The Dalles, Mr. Scott's
man ,vas so low we could not move him. He died, and we buried him
at The Dalles. ~1T brother was taken down with mountain fever. Theu
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Mrs. Boatman was still sick and I was taken with the flux there. Not
one of ns was able to help the other. ]\fy wife lay for three days with
a broken tooth in her mouth and could not open her mouth widt'
enough to get it out. At last I got so bad that I did not expect to ever
recover. I called my wife to the bed and told her that I never expected
to be up again and that I wanted her and J olm, if they lived, to sell
the wagon and remaining team and try and get back to the States to
her people. \Ve all lingered along for a few days and my wife commenced
to get a little better. J\fy brother still got worse and before
we were able to travel it had commenced clouding up and the old settlers
at The Dalles told us that it was not safe to start across the
mountains as it was then snowing there and we would likely be snowed
under. There were several parties there in the same fix, and so we
began to look around to see if we could find any conveyance by wa-­
tel'. Finally we found a man who had a small boat, so we hired him to
take us down to the Cascade Falls on the Columbia river, and we got
all our stuff aboard. I hired a man to help drive my cattle down the
river by the trail. Myself and wife and brother got aboard the boat,
then everything being ready, we pushed out from the shore and started
down the river. But we had only gotten a few miles when the wind
commenced to blow a perfect gale and blew us up against a rocky bluff
where the rocks were probably thirty or forty feet high and almost
perpendicular. :F'ortunately we all had our tent ropes on board, so the
men all got a pole apiece and stood on the edge of the boat next to the
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