Later wagon trains and travelers have complained, and justly, of sage brush and the difficulties of this route. Whitman and his four men opened it as far as they could with a light wagon and a cart. To him must be given the credit of the first practical experiment, though Ashtley, Bonneville, and Bridger had taken wagons into the Rocky Mountains and left them, and pronounced the experiment a failure, and a wagon road impracticable. Whitman's perseverance demonstrated a great fact--the practicability of a wagon road over the Rocky Mountains. You that have rolled over those vast plains and slept in your Concord coaches or Pullman palace cars, have never once imagined the toil and labor of that old off-hand pioneer, as he mounted his horse in the morning and rode all day in the cold and heat of the mountains and plains, to prove that a wagon road was practicable to the waters of the Columbia River. Even Fremont, seven years after, claims to be the discoverer of the passes through which Whitman took his cart and wagon, and kept up with the pack-train from day to day. From Rock Independence the health of Mrs. Spalding seemed gradually to decline. She was placed in the wagon as much as would relieve her, and changed from wagon to saddle as she could bear, to the American rendezvous on Green River. From Rock Independence information was sent forward into the mountains of the arrival of the caravan, and about the time and place they expected to reach the rendezvous. This information reached not only the American trapper and hunter in the mountains, but the Snake, Bannock, Nez Percé, and Flathead tribes, and the traders of the Hudson's Bay Company. Two days before we arrived at our rendezvous, some two hours before we reached camp, the whole caravan was alarmed by the arrival of some ten Indians and four or five white men, whose dress and appearance could scarcely be distinguished from that of the Indians. As they came in sight over the hills, they all gave a yell, such as hunters and Indians only can give; whiz, whiz, came their balls over our heads, and on they came, in less time than it will take you to read this account. The alarm was but for a moment; our guide had seen a white cloth on one of their guns, and said, "Don't be alarmed, they are friends," and sure enough, in a moment here they were. It was difficult to tell which was the most crazy, the horse or the rider; such hopping, hooting, running, jumping, yelling, jumping sage brush, whirling around, for they could not stop to reload their guns, but all of us as they came on gave them a salute from ours, as they passed to the rear of our line and back again, hardly stopping to give the hand to any one. On to camp we went.