"In due time the summit of the Cascades was reached. Here there was a small prairie—really, it was an old burn that had not grown up to timber of any size. Now it was October, about the 8th of the month, and bitter cold to the youth with bare feet and fringed pants extending half way down from knees to feet. My father and the teams had left camp and gone across the little burn, where most of the company was assembled, apparently debating about the next movement to make. And no wonder, for as we came across we saw the cause of the delay. For a sheer thirty feet or more there was an almost perpendicular bluff, and the only way to go forward was by that way, as was demonstrated by an examination all about the vicinity. Heavy timber at all other points precluded the possibility of getting on by any other route. So the longest rope in the company was stretched down the cliff, leaving just enough to be used twice around a small tree which stood on the brink of the precipice; but it was found to be altogether too short. Then James Biles said: 'Kill one of the poorest of my steers and make his hide into a rope and attach it to the one you have.' Three animals were slaughtered before a rope could be secured long enough to let the wagons down to a point where they would stand up. There one yoke of oxen was hitched to a wagon, and by locking all wheels and hitching on small logs with projecting limbs, it was taken down to a stream then known as 'Greenwater.' It took the best part of two days to make this descent. There were thirty-six wagons belonging to the company, but two of them, with a small quantity of provisions, were wrecked on this hill. The wagons could have been dispensed with without much loss. Not so the provisions, scanty as they were, as the company came to be in sore straits for food before the White River prairie was reached, probably South Prairie[11] of today, where food supplies were first obtained, consisting of potatoes without salt for the first meal. Another trying experience was the ascent of Mud Mountain in a drenching rain, with the strength of a dozen yoke of oxen attached to one wagon, with scarcely anything in it save camp equipment, and taxing the strength of the teams to the utmost. But all trials came to an end when the company reached a point six miles from Steilacoom, about October 17th, and got some good, fat beef and plenty of potatoes, and even flour, mainly through the kindness of Dr. W. F. Tolmie. The change from salmon skins was gratifying.