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

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Although not the first exhibition of Vigilante justice, the one I here record was the most thorough and severe, and stands as an example for all new settlements that in the future may be similarly afflicted, for it was not until driven to it both by the frequent and unremitting villainies of the ruffians, and by the necessities of a condition for which there was no law in existence, that the people resorted to measures of their own, and made and enforced laws suited to the exigency. But enough! If the history fails to remove the prejudices of my readers, nothing I can say will do so. It speaks for itself, and though there are a few of its later occurrences I would gladly blot, there is nothing in its early transactions, nothing in the design it unfolds, nothing in the results which have followed, that on a similar occasion I would not wish to see reproduced.

VIGILANTE DAYS AND WAYS

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The Snake River or Lewis fork of the Columbia takes its rise in a small lake which is separated by the main range of the Rocky Mountains from the large lakes of the Yellowstone, that being less than twenty miles distant from it. The Yellowstone, the Madison, Jefferson and Gallatin, forming the head waters of the Missouri, and the Snake, the largest tributary fork of the Columbia, all rise within or near the limits of the territory recently dedicated by the Government to the purpose of a National Park.