(1868)

     The only exciting thing that occurred while in Boise was my boat ride.  The boys (little boys) dammed the small creek until it was perhaps twelve or fifteen feet wide.  Then they built a raft.  They wanted someone to ride across on it.  They were to pull from the shore.  I stood up - held to the branches of a willow.  When I was ready the boys pulled.  The limb broke and I landed flat on my back - went clear under.  I was "Eve on a raft" and they sure ducked [dunked?] me.  They gave up boat building from that hour.  Boise did not appeal to our folks.  George Holbrook rented a farm and lived there the rest of his life.  His family live there yet and are very well off financially.

     It was along in August when we started on to Oregon.  The horses had such a good rest, they traveled pretty well and we we no time crossing the Blue Mountains.  I remember well our entry into Oregon.  It was at a Snake River ferry.  As soon as we touched land, the ferry man said, "Well, Sis, you're in Oregon now.  Going to be picking up red apples not many days from now."  We came the Meacham road through the Blue Mountains down on the edge of the valley at Cayuse Station.  Everything was parched and dry, but where we camped there  was a spring poured out of the bank like a hydrant.  No sign of water anywhere else.  All that could be seen was dry dust.  All the folks went to Walla Walla to see town and country.  They came back next day and we all went to the town.  Uncle William Holbrook thought he had reached his foot of the rainbow, but our folks were not favorable impressed with the country.  They were tired of the road, however, and rented a farm on Garrison Creek.  We could look up and see the Fort buildings.  The stock destroyed the crop the renters had in, so they told the landlord he would have to put a lawful fence around it or they would not keep it.  He brought a man who claimed he had bought the farm and wanted possession right away, which was agreeable to us.

     They lost no time in packing their wagons.  [Jacob] Houk had sold his wagon.  He bought our light wagon.  That left us with one, so Molly and one of the boys rode the mules, some of the time a pair of horses.  We had seven head to one wagon.  It was on the twenty-fifth of September [1868], I think, that we again started for Oregon.