heavy articles not easily injured by water low in the bed of the wagon. _The Buffalo Country_ Here the caravan entered the buffalo country, where they were likely to meet large bodies of armed Indians who came there from long distances, to lay in their winter stores of meat and furs and skins. Many of these tribes were jealous of each other, and of white men who intruded upon their domain on such occasions, and bloody encounters frequently occurred while upon the way. The caravan had elected a captain to direct affairs and a guide to make orders for travel. But now they found so many questions arising in this large company, that a council or superior court was organized, from which there was no appeal. It held its sessions at night and upon rest days, and many of the members of that court upon the plains, after in the territory and states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, held the highest offices of trust and honor. A halt to lay in a supply of buffalo meat was looked forward to with great satisfaction. But it was found impracticable for so large a company to make a permanent halt, so they kept moving. The hunters in large numbers went out each morning, with pack horses, and came in loaded at night with spoils of the chase. The noble bison was there by the million. When reaching the dusty alkaline plains, where both good water and grass were scarce, naturally the best tempered people often turned grumblers. One of the chief causes of complaint laid before the superior court was that which arose between the horse companies and the cattle companies. They did not agree well together. The court decided to divide the caravan into two columns, "the horse" and "the cow" column. In 1876 the Honorable Jesse Applegate, a member of that immigration, delivered an address before The Historical Society of Oregon, entitled "A Day with the Cow Column." It is one of the most precise and graphic pictures ever drawn of life as it was, in this advance column of civilization, destined for its great work in the future Pacific states. The last third of the distance of that memorable journey proves the courage of the American, and at the same time arouses our commiseration and pity. I passed over the larger portion of the same road a few years later, with goggles drawn over my eyes, and a handkerchief bound about my face, as a defense from the dust and the myriad buffalo gnats, and can the more easily sympathize with those hundred mothers, often forced to travel on foot with little and well-nigh helpless children pulling at their skirts. As I think, I can but say, "O the pity of it!" Mr. Applegate remarks: