Doubtless the immigrants, as they stood by the River in the pleasant haze of the October afternoon, felt as though their journey was substantially at an end. Being now at Fort Walla Walla on the river of that name, they paused to make ready for the last stage of the journey, little realising what perils and sufferings it would entail. Dr. Whitman and Archibald McKinley, the chief factor at the fort, advised them to leave their cattle and waggons to winter on the Walla Walla, while they pursued their way down the stream on flatboats. Part of the company accepted the advice, but a number determined to keep all their belongings together and to take their road along the bank of the River to The Dalles, and there make their flatboats. To those who remained on the Walla Walla now fell the difficult task of constructing flatboats. Huge, uncouth, structures they were, made of timber gathered on the river bank. But when loaded and pushed out into the swift current, steered with immense sweeps in the stern, these flatboats afforded to the footsore and exhausted immigrants a delightful change. Out of the dust, off the rocks, away from the sage-brush, with more of laugh and song than they had had for many a day, they swept gaily on. For a hundred miles or more the elements were propitious. With the bright sunshine, the clear, cool water, the majestic snow-peaks in the distance, the easily gliding boats,--this seemed the pleasantest part of the entire journey. But after The Dalles had been reached and the two divisions of the company were again united and on their way down the River to the Cascades, disaster began to haunt them. At the Cascades, a boat with several members of the Applegate family, one of the most prominent in the immigration as well as afterwards, was overturned in the rapids, and three of the party drowned in the boiling surge. Two were saved in a way that seems almost miraculous. One of these was a young boy, the other a young man. The boy was very active and an excellent swimmer. After the overturning of the boat he was carried two miles in the current, part of the time being entirely sucked under by the whirling under-current. After being tossed with violence betwixt rock and wave till it seemed that he must expire, he was suddenly spewed forth upon a ledge of slippery rock, to which he clung desperately till he had recovered breath. Then he drew himself up on a narrow shelf, and at the same instant saw the young man swept by. Reaching forth, the brave boy managed to bring the struggling man to the same shelter with himself. But when they had regained sufficient strength to examine their surroundings, they discovered that they were on a rocky niche from which they could find no ascent of the ragged precipitous cliff. They were in a trap. Looking across the River, they could see that the bank was smooth and that on that side lay the trail. Young Applegate saw that a reef extended a considerable part of the