514 THE IMMIGRATION OF 1845.

A hurried consultation took place, and by the advice of Samuel Hancock, Meek, who was supposed to have fled, was to secrete himself, while some of his friends would prepare to start with him the following morn- ing for the Dalles. 16 This plan was carried out, and on the afternoon of the second day they reached a tributary of Des Chutes River; the joy of the suffer- ing men, women, and children, expressing itself in silent tears or loud cries, according to age and tem- perament.

Continuing down the stream and coming to the main river, they found it to flow through a deep canon with walls so precipitous that the only way in which water could be procured was by lowering a vessel at the end of two hundred feet of rope in the hands of a man, himself held by a strong rope in the grasp of his fel- lows. Following the river, they came at last to a place where the cattle could be driven down and crossed by swimming ; but which was not considered a safe ford- ing-place for the wagons. To overcome this difficulty, a wagon-bed suspended from a cable stretched be- tween the banks was drawn back and forth by means of rollers and ropes ; and in this vehicle families and goods were transported to the other side.

While this aerial ferry was in process of construc- tion the main body began to overtake them, and Meek was informed that the father of two young men who had died that day, in consequence, as he believed, of the hardships of this route, had sworn to take Meek's life before the sun should set. Not doubting that the vow would be kept, if the incensed father met him while his wrath was hot, the unfortu- nate guide fled with his wife to the camp of some

south-west as Silver Lake, or Klamath Marsh which ^ d J»™J™^ them opposite Diamond Peak pass. It is doubtful if they .vent so far, as there were other marshes more central. , .

V Hancock's Thirteen Years, MS., 75. Elisha Packwood jlso says that Meek was not so bad a man as he was pictured by the immigran te an d tha t at the very time they were so anxious to hang him, if they ^submitted he would have brought them to the settlements. Morses Wash. Jet., mo., i. 59.