Читать книгу Vigilante Days and Ways. The pioneers of the Rockies; the makers and making of Montana and Idaho онлайн

57 страница из 135

Harper needed no further information. He felt that the country was too hot to hold him, and that the bloodhounds were on his track. As soon as the miner was out of sight, he turned to the right, crossed the Clearwater some miles above Lewiston, and pursued a trail to Colville on the Upper Columbia, where we will take leave of him for the present.

ssss1

When the rumored discovery in the Summer of 1861 of extensive gold placers on Salmon River was confirmed, the intelligence spread through the Territories and Mississippi States like wildfire. Thousands of young men, thrown out of employment by the war, and other thousands who dreaded the evils which that great conflict would bring upon the nation, and still others actuated by a thirst for gain, utilized their available resources in providing means for an immediate migration to the land of promise. Before midsummer they had started on the long and perilous journey. How little did they know of its exposures! The deserts, destitute of water and grass, the alkaline plains where food and drink were alike affected by the poisonous dust, the roving bands of hostile Indians, the treacherous quicksands of river fords, the danger and difficulty of the mountain passes, the death of their companions, their cattle, and their horses, breakage of their vehicles, angry and often violent personal altercations,—all these fled in the light of the summer sun, the vernal beauty of the plains, the delightfully pure atmosphere which wooed them day by day farther away from the abode of civilization and the protection of law. The most fortunate of this army of adventurers suffered from some of these fruitful causes of disaster. So certain were they in some form to occur, that a successful completion of the journey was simply an escape from death. The story of the Indian murders and cruelties alone, which befell hundreds of these hapless emigrants, would fill volumes. Every mile of the several routes across the continent was marked by the decaying carcasses of oxen and horses, which had perished during the period of this hegira to the gold mines. Three months with mules and four with oxen were necessary to make the journey,—a journey now completed in five days from ocean to ocean by the railroad.