Then the question arose, how should they know when they would reach the falls? Would they be able to discover the falls in time to make a landing? Their fears finally got the better of them and a line was run ashore; but instead of making a landing, they found themselves hard aground out of reach of land, except by wading a long distance. This occurred while they were many miles above the falls, or Cascades. At last they gave up the raft and procured a scow. In this they reached the head of the Cascades in safety. As we neared Portland we felt that a long task had been completed. Yet reaching the end of the Overland Trail did not mean that our pioneer struggles were over. Before us lay still another task--the conquest of the new land. And it was no easy work, we were to learn, to find a home or make one in the western wilderness. PART TWO SETTLING IN THE NORTHWEST COUNTRY [Illustration: This is the region in which Ezra Meeker settled in 1852, when it was all known as the Oregon Country and had not been divided into Washington and Oregon. The journey from Portland to Kalama, where the first cabin was built, is shown by line 1. The line marked 2 shows the route followed in the journey to explore the Puget Sound region. The brothers went as far as Port Townsend, but turned back to make the second home at Steilacoom. Line 3 is the trail through the Natchess Pass, the trail that Ezra Meeker followed to meet his father's party coming up through the Blue Mountains.] [Illustration: Looking for work on the good ship _Mary Melville_.] CHAPTER TEN GETTING A NEW START IN THE NEW LAND ON the first day of October, 1852, at about nine o'clock at night, with a bright moon shining, we reached Portland. Oliver met us; he had come ahead by the trail and had found a place for us to lodge. I carried my wife, who had fallen ill, in my arms up the steep bank of the Willamette River and three blocks away to the lodging house, which was kept by a colored man. "Why, suh, I didn't think yuse could do that, yuse don't look it," said my colored friend, as I placed my wife on the clean bed in a cozy little room. This was the first house we had been in for five months. From April until October we had been on the move. Never a roof had been over our heads other than the wagon cover or tent, and no softer bed had we known than the ground or the bottom of the wagon. We had found a little steamer to carry us from the Cascades to Portland, along with most of the company that had floated in the scow down the river from The Dalles. The great Oregon Country, then including the Puget Sound region, was large enough to swallow up a thousand such migrations. Portland was no paradise at that time. It would be difficult to imagine a sorrier-looking place than the one that confronted us upon arrival. Some rain had fallen, and more soon followed. With the stumps and logs and mud and the uneven stretches of ground, it was no easy matter to find a resting place.