The immigration of 1847 between 4,000 and 5,000 The immigration of 1848 about 700 The immigration of 1849 about 400 The immigration of 1850 about 2,000 The immigration of 1851 about 1,500 The immigration of 1852 about 2,500 No doubt this one summer on the plains was an ordeal under which some sensitive natures were strained and weakened for life. It may be, too, that living for five or six months, as families, on the simplest, barest necessities of life, fixed standards of living lower than they otherwise would have been. The effect, however, on strong, resourceful natures of these months on the plains could not have been other than salutary. The pioneers, when they started, were most distinctively American in their characteristics. As such they needed to be socialized. No better school could have been devised than the organization and regimen of the trip across the plains for socializing their natures. F. G. YOUNG. [Illustration: 16.—The “Three Crossings” of the Sweetwater. ] A DAY WITH THE COW COLUMN IN 1843. By JESSE APPLEGATE. (Read before the Oregon Pioneer Association in 1876; reprinted from transactions of that society.) The migration of a large body of men, women and children across the continent to Oregon was, in the year 1843, strictly an experiment; not only in respect to the members, but to the outfit of the migrating party. Before that date, two or three missionaries had performed the journey on horseback, driving a few cows with them, three or four wagons drawn by oxen had reached Fort Hall, on Snake River, but it was the honest opinion of the most of those who had traveled the route down Snake River, that no large number of cattle could be subsisted on its scanty pasturage, or wagons taken over a country so rugged and mountainous. The emigrants were also assured that the Sioux would be much opposed to the passage of so large a body through their country, and would probably resist it on account of the emigrants’ destroying and frightening away the buffaloes, which were then diminishing in numbers. The migrating body numbered over one thousand souls, with about one hundred and twenty wagons, drawn by six-ox teams, averaging about six yokes to the team, and several thousand loose horses and cattle. The emigrants first organized and attempted to travel in one body, but it was soon found that no progress could be made with a body so cumbrous, and as yet so averse to all discipline. And at the crossing of the “Big Blue” it divided into two columns, which traveled in supporting distance of each other as far as Independence Rock on the Sweetwater.