The Busy Life of Eighty-Five Years of Ezra Meeker Ventures and adventures; sixty-three years of pioneer life in the old Oregon country; an account of the author's trip across the plains with an ox team; return trip, 1906-7; his cruise on Puget Sound, 1853; trip through the Natchess pass, 1854; over the Chilcoot pass; flat-boating on the Yukon, 1898. The Oregon trail.

did. Senator Piles and Representative Cushman of the Washington State

Chapter 102271 wordsPublic domain

Congressional delegation had introduced me to the President in the cabinet room. Mr. Roosevelt showed a lively interest in the work from the start. He did not need to be told that the Trail was a battlefield, or that the Oregon pioneers who moved out and occupied the Oregon country while yet in dispute between Great Britain and the United States were heroes who fought a strenuous battle as "winners of the farther west," for he fairly snatched the words from my lips and went even farther than I had even dreamed of, let alone having hoped for, in invoking Government aid to carry on the work.

Addressing Senator Piles the President said with emphasis, "I am in favor of this work to mark this Trail and if you will bring before Congress a measure to accomplish it, I am with you, and will give it my support to do it thoroughly."

Mr. Roosevelt thought the suggestion of a memorial highway should first come from the states through which the Trail runs; anyway it would be possible to get congressional aid to mark the Trail, and that in any event, ought to be speedily done.

Apparently, on a sudden recollecting other engagements pressing, the President asked, "Where is your team? I want to see it." Upon being told that it was near by, without ceremony, and without his hat he was soon alongside, asking questions faster than they could be answered, not idle questions, but such as showed his intense desire to get real information—bottom facts—as the saying goes.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] William Allen White.

[26] See illustration, Chapter I.