Still, gaunt now and haggard, weakened in body but not in soul, we pressed on across.
That was the way to Oregon.
Gaunt and brown and savage, hungry and grim, ragged, hatless, shoeless, our cavalcade closed up and came on, and so at last came through.

Ere autumn had yellowed all the foliage back east in gentler climes, we crossed the shoulders of the Blue Mountains and came into the Valley of the Walla Walla; and so passed thence down the Columbia to the Valley of the Willamette, three hundred miles yet farther, where there were then some slight centers of our civilization which had gone forward the year before.
Here were some few Americans.

At Champoeg, at the little American missions, at Oregon City, and other scattered points, we met them, we hailed and were hailed by them.

They were Americans.

Women and plows were with them.