Waterbury evening Democrat., 1905-07-05
OVER THE OREGON TRAIL
How Ezra Meeker Will Travel
 From Portland to Iowa.
NOVEL TRIP IN PRAIRIE SCHOONER
Pioneer Who Crossed the Continent Half a Century Ago Will Return by the Same Route-His Outfit Is Near ly Like the One He Had Then-WilI Take Careful Notes.

Gee, Twist! Come on, Stub! Git 1 up!' cried Ezra Meeker, pioneer, his torian and good old fashioned citizen, as he touched his off OK with switch and turned the team into one of the gates of the Lewis and Clark exposi- i tion, writes the Portland (Ore.) core | spondent of the Boston Herald. Mir. Meeker is on his way back east, but he scorns the Pullman; he proposes to l along the old OK wagon trail over which he came to the Oregon country l fifty-three years ago.
 i His outfit is as nearly as possible an exact reproduction of the one in which he and his young bride made the trip across the plains in 1852. There is a prairie schooner tar bucket and all, and dog running underneath the rear axle which probablyis a direct descend ant of the Iowa dog that trotted all the way to Oregon in the pioneer days. The oxen, Stub and Twist, are pretty much like Buck and Dandy, MT. Meeker's 1852 team, though the pio- neer says they are not quite such good team.
 Ezra Neeker is now seventy-five years old. His wife of the pioneer days is still living. Meeker is man of mark in his own country, which Is the state of Washington. He lives near Tacoma. the metropolis of Pierce county. in which county he used to be the leading citizen because of his wealth. He is going back to Iowa this summer along the old Oregon trail, not because he wants to get back east, but because he desires to retrace the trail | and live over again the experiences of highly romantic, though strenuous and toilful, era in American history and because he wants to write another book.
 Ezra Meeker today is a sturdy old gentleman, with bushy white hair and a gray beard He is small man, light of build, and he wears overalls and soft hat. His manner is unostenta- tious, and his courtesy is of the old time kind. He tells his story modestly.
 Though Mir. Meeker does not say SO, others say that the little old man was one of the few white men in the early days who won the Indians confidence, and that this enabled him to employ them in his hop fields to such profit that when the hop lice pest wiped out his earnings in the early nineties he had raised for the export trade hops that had brought him S5O0.0O0. It was of the early days that Mir. Meeker talked as he sat on a cracker box in his tent ....z. .y-
 q was reared in Indianapolis and was married there in 1S51,' he said. shortly after our marriage my wife and I started west in search of land We spent the winter at Eddyville, Ia., and the winter was so cold that we de- cided to move to Oregon, so we started in the spring of 1852 with the same now. We reached Portland in the fall and spent the winter there. and in the spring we moved on to Pierce county, Wash. where I have lived ever since. I guess that's about all"
 And yet Ezra Meeker has written big book of more than 300 pages which he calls Pioneer "Reminiscences of Puget Sound-the Tragedy of Leschi." The book contains host of incidents which portray vividly the life of the time. and the mention of it recalled one of them to the author as he sat in his pioneer camp amid the splendors of 1905 and the exposition.
 ''I saw in paper awhile ago." he said. that the number of people who passed over the Oregon trail in 1852 and 1853 was 2.JO0. Now. you know. that can't I,., .-tr" Tn" estimate is far