rustling over the leaves below, and the golden oriole, the blue-jay, and the flaming red-bird darted among the shadowy branches. We hailed these sights and sounds of beauty by no means with an unmingled pleasure. Many and powerful as were the attractions which drew us toward the settlements, we looked back even at that moment with an eager longing toward the wilderness of prairies and mountains behind us. For myself, I had suffered more that summer from illness than ever before in my life, and yet to this hour I cannot recall those savage scenes and savage men without a strong desire again to visit them.

At length for the first time during about half a year, we saw the roof of a white man's dwelling between the opening trees. A few moments after we were riding over the miserable log-bridge that leads into the centre of Westport. Westport had beheld strange scenes, but a rougher looking troop than ours, with our worn equipments and broken-down horses, was never seen even there. We passed the well-remembered tavern, Boone's grocery, and old Vogle's dram-shop, and encamped on a meadow beyond. Here we were soon visited by a number of people, who came to purchase our horses and equipage. This matter disposed of, we hired a wagon and drove on to Kansas Landing. Here we were again received under the hospitable roof of our old friend, Colonel Chick, and. seated under his porch, we looked down once more on the eddies of the Missouri.

Delorier made his appearance in the morning, strangely transformed by the assistance of a hat, a coat, and a razor. His little log-house was among the woods not far off. It seemed he had meditated giving a ball on the occasion of his return, and had consulted Henry Chatillon as to whether it would do to invite his bourgeois. Henry expressed his entire conviction that we would not take it amiss, and the invitation was now proffered accordingly, Delorier adding as a special inducement that Antoine Lajeunesse was to play the fiddle. We told him. we would certainly come, but before the evening arrived a steamboat, which came down from Fort Leavenworth, prevented our being present at the expected festivities.

Delorier was on the rock at the landing-place, waiting to take leave of us.

"Adieu! mes bourgeois, adieu! adieu!" he cried out as the boat put off; "when you go another time to de Rocky Montagnes I will go with you; yes, I will go!"

He accompanied this patronizing assurance by jumping about, swinging his hat, and grinning from ear to ear. As the boat rounded a distant point, the last object that met our eyes was Delorier, still lifting his hat and skipping about the rock. We had taken leave of Munroe and Jim Gurney at Westport, and Henry Chatillon went down in the boat with us.

The passage to St. Louis occupied eight days, during about a third of which time we were fast aground on sand-bars. We passed the steamer "Amelia," crowded with a roaring crew of disbanded volunteers swearing, drinking, gambling, and fighting. At length one evening we reached the crowded levee of St. Louis. Repairing to the Planters' House we caused diligent search to be made for our trunks, which, after some time, were discovered stowed away in the farthest corner of the storeroom. In the morning we hardly recognized each other; a frock of broadcloth had supplanted the frock of buckskin; well-fitted pantaloons took the place of the Indian leggings, and polished boots were substituted for the gaudy moccasins.

After we had been several days at St. Louis we heard news of Tête Rouge. He had contrived to reach Fort Leavenworth, where he had found the paymaster and received his money. As a boat was just ready to start for St. Louis he went on board and engaged his passage. This done, he immediately got drunk on shore, and the boat went off without him. It was some days before another opportunity occurred, and meanwhile the sutler's stores furnished him with abundant means of keeping up his spirits. Another steamboat came at last, the clerk of which happened to be a friend of his, and by the advice of some charitable person on shore, he persuaded Tête Rouge to remain on board, intending to detain him there until the boat should leave the fort. At first Tête Rouge was well contented with this arrangement, but on apply

ing for a dram, the bar-keeper, at the clerk's instigation, refused to let him have it. Finding them both inflexible in spite of his entreaties, he became desperate and made his escape from the boat. The clerk found him, after a long search, in one of the barracks; a circle of dragoons stood contemplating him as he lay on the floor, maudlin drunk and crying dismally. With the help of one of them the clerk pushed him on board, and our informant, who came down in the same boat, declares that he remained in great despondency during the whole passage. As we left St. Louis soon after his arrival, we did not see the worthless, good-natured little vagabond again.

On the evening before our departure, Henry Chatillon came to our rooms at the Planters' House to take leave of us. No one who met him in the streets of St. Louis would have taken him for a hunter fresh from the Rocky Mountains. He was very neatly and simply dressed in a suit of dark cloth; for although since his sixteenth year he had scarcely been for a month together among the abodes of men, he had a native good taste and a sense of propriety which always led him to pay great attention to his personal appearance. His tall athletic figure, with its easy flexible motions, appeared to advantage in his present dress; and his fine face, though roughened by a thousand storms, was not at all out of keeping with it. We took leave of him with much regret; and unless his changing features, as he shook us by the hand, belied him, the feeling on his part was no less than on ours. * Shaw had

* I cannot take leave of the reader without adding a word of the guide who had served us throughout with such zeal and fidelity. Indeed, his services had far surpassed the terms of his engagement. Yet, whoever had been his employers, or to whatever closeness of intercourse they might have thought fit to admit him, he would never have changed the bearing of quiet respect which he considered due to his bourgeois. If sincerity and honor, a boundless generosity of spirit, a delicate regard to the feelings of others, and a nice perception of what was due to them, are the essential characteristics of a gentleman, then Henry Chatillon deserves the title. He could not write his own name, and he had spent his life among savages. In him sprang up spontaneously those qualities which all the refinements of life and intercourse with the highest and best of the better part of mankind fail to awaken in the brutish nature of some men. In spite of his bloody calling, Henry was always hu

given him a horse at Westport. My rifle, which he had always been fond of using, as it was an excellent piece, much better than his own, is now in his hands, and perhaps at this moment its sharp voice is startling the echoes of the Rocky Mountains. On the next morning we left town, and after a fortnight of railroads and steamboats we saw once more the familiar features of home.

mane and merciful; he was gentle as a woman, though braver than a lion. He acted aright from the free impulses of his large and generous nature. A certain species of selfishness is essential to the sternness of spirit which bears down opposition and subjects the will of others to its own. Henry's character was of an opposite stamp. His easy good-nature almost amounted to weakness; yet, while it unfitted him for any position of command, it secured the esteem and good-will of all those who were not jealous of his skill and reputation.

THE END

NOTES

The Oregon Trail was first published in the Knickerbocker Magazine, beginning in 1847. Two years later it appeared in book form. The excitement following the discovery of gold in California induced the publishers to change the title to The California and Oregon Trail. In the fourth edition, 1872, the original title was restored.

The present edition follows the full text of the original volume of 1849. The edition of 1872 was revised and greatly abbreviated. Parkman's punctuation differs in many respects from our usage to-day, but it has been retained as far as possible. His spelling has also been retained except when wrong or following a usage now entirely discredited.

CHAPTER I

5. the journey to Oregon and California. From Independence and Westport, Missouri, northwest and southwest led two great trails. The Oregon Trail ascended the Platte River to the Rocky Mountains, where it followed the famous South Pass between the Rocky and Wind River Mountains. From this point it descended the Snake River and the Columbia to the heart of Oregon country. Northwest of Great Salt Lake a branch trail three years after Parkman's trip led the “FortyNiners" to California. The Oregon Trail, in its more than two thousand miles between Independence and Fort Vancouver, presented to the emigrants no signs of civilized habitation except at four trading posts. Parkman reached only the first of these, Fort Laramie. The Oregon Trail was the longest and greatest continuous highway known to history. In places it was more than one hundred feet wide, as can still be seen after many years of disuse. It was not built, but made-explored by traders and carved into a deep furrow by the thousands of emigrants who took advantage of the last great opportunity of empire-building that the West can offer.

Santa Fé. The trail leading southwest from Independence crossed Kansas diagonally, and continued in the same general direction to Santa Fé. At the Arkansas River the trail crossed into what was in 1846 Mexican territory. In 1843, there were 350 men and 230 wagons engaged in the Santa Fé trade, and the merchandise was valued at $750,000. levee, a term applied in the West to the also to a landing place, wharf, or quay. wharf region at St. Louis.

steep bank of a river, Here it refers to the

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