w coming on, none would get farther west than Fort Hall that
year. Our own party, although over the Rockies, had yet the Plains to
cross. I was glad enough when we staggered into old Fort Laramie in the
midst of a blinding snow-storm. Winter had caught us fair and full. I
had lost the race!

Here, then, I must winter. Yet I learned that Joe Meek had outfitted at
Laramie almost a month earlier, with new animals; had bought a little
grain, and, under escort of a cavalry troop which had come west with the
wagon train, had started east in time, perhaps, to make it through to
the Missouri. In a race of one thousand miles, the baroness had already
beaten me almost by a month! Further word was, of course, now
unobtainable, for no trains or wagons would come west so late, and there
were then no stages carrying mail across the great Plains. There was
nothing for me to do except to wait and eat out my heart at old Fort
Laramie, in the society of Indians and trappers, half-breeds and
traders. The winter seemed years in length, so gladly I make its story
brief.

It was now the spring of 1846, and I was in my second year away from
Washington. Glad enough I was when in the first sunshine of spring I
started east, taking my chances of getting over the Plains. At last, to
make the long journey also brief, I did reach Fort Leavenworth, by this
time a five months' loser in the transcontinental race. It was a new
annual wagon train which I now met rolling westward. Such were times and
travel not so long ago.

Little enough had come of my two years' journey out to Oregon. Like to
the army of the French king, I had marched up the hill and then marched
down again. As much might have been said of the United States; and the
same was yet more true of Great Britain, whose army of occupation had
not even marched wholly up the hill. So much as this latter fact I now
could tell my own government; and I could say that while Great Britain's
fleet held the sea entry, the vast and splendid interior of an unknown
realm was open on the east to our marching armies of settlers. Now I
could describe that realm, even though the plot of events advanced but
slowly regarding it. It was a plot of the stars, whose work is done in
no haste.

Oregon still was held in that oft renewed and wholly absurd joint
occupancy, so odious and so dangerous to both nations. Two years were
taken from my life in learning that--and in learning that this question
of Oregon's f