Breaking camp at Green River was a noisy and gleeful occasion. Half-starved Indian ponies, when they have rested a few weeks, generally rebel when packs are cinched with a "diamond hitch" around their well-marked ribs. Upon this occasion amusement was diversified and enjoyable, even to the actors. But both Indians and traders were no novices in such business, and soon the companies bade good by to each other and started along the trails to their widely scattered homes. It was the great exciting social event of Indian life, this distant visit to trade. The Indians there met friends and relatives, exchanged gossip, gathered the few luxuries and necessaries of life for the year to come. They brought with them squaws and some of their children, and enjoyed their outing in their savage way as much as the élite do the seashore or Saratoga, and judging of both, one would say they had more fun. The Oregon Indians were all anxious to be escorts to "the Boston teachers." There were two intelligent traders from Oregon, Messrs. McKay and McLeod, who offered escort to the little company, which was gladly accepted, and they were of invaluable service in that most difficult portion of the journey. The faithful Indian boys, however, held their places of honor and trust to the last. Mrs. Spalding had for some time been on horseback, and enjoyed it more than the wagon, traversing the rocky roads. There was no longer need of two wagons, and one was left at the rendezvous; but "the brides' wagon" pulled out with the pack-train. My young readers may think it an uninteresting object to write about, but they must remember it is "the brides' wagon," fitted up with all the little accommodations for the first two white women who braved the dangerous journey across the great stony mountains to the Pacific. True, it was battered and worn, dust and mud and storms had robbed it of style. It is well for those who ride in palace cars and whizzing 'autos to remember the days of their great grandfathers and grandmothers, who, amid privations and perils, with the parting blessings of Puritan homes, pulled across the Alleghanies in rough wagons and hewed out homes, and built this great empire of the Middle West. The more often we remember the heroines of the past the more we will enjoy this grandest inheritance of the present ever left to any people. But there was more than sentiment to this wagon as we shall see later on. It figuratively blazed the way, and "marked a wagon-road to the Columbia," and years after silenced the eloquence of America's greatest orator!