At Grande Rounde there was a party with the instruction as to whether we had better stop there or not.  It was a beautiful country.  They would have stopped and colonized it if we had had provisions.  We did not regard the Indians at all.  Peter H. Burnett was in favor of stopping and locating there but having no supplies we travelled on for the Blue Mountains cutting our way through the fallen timber.  We camped many times in sight of our former night's camp.  We found it very laborious and very hard cutting that (_____) timber with our dull axes that we had not ground since we left Missouri having no grind stone to grind them & our hands being very tender cutting those dry sticks which shruing (?) the skin loose on our hands.  But it was getting late in the season, and it devolved on some 40 persons to make that road.  The lazy ones dropped  back, not for the purpose of screening themselves, but to rest their cattle, so they stated, but we imputed it to a thin diffidence in regard to the work.  It devolved on the 40 persevering men to drive the wagons and cut the roads.

     The women frequently would drive the teams and the men would do the work.  The most of them had axes.  We had shovels but it was rarely that we used them.  I recollect we had to dig down the banks to get across the Grande Rounde River.  When we crossed the Grande Rounde River the snow had fallen to a depth of two inches but did not lay long.  I think it was in September it was an early snow.  We travelled under the guidance of an Indian  pilot that Dr. Whitman had sent back.  Wherever he directed us to go there we went, without searching for any other route since they have changed the road in many places.  He found us a pretty fair route for getting through.  The Indian did not look about much, he was familiar with the ground.  He proved to be a faithful Indian.  If I recollect right - he was the very Indian that afterwards killed Dr. Whitman.

     In some places the timber was very thick, so that you could not ride a horse through without cutting.  After we got on the top of the mountain the timber got lighter and more scattered and we got down the mountain comparatively easy.   We got out of the timber when we got pretty nearly down.  Went to Umatilla and then across to Walla Walla and to Whitman's station where he had established a mission.  It is some 25 miles from Wallula and 5 miles from Walla Walla City down on Mill Creek.  At Whitman's station we stopped only a few days.