When the rumored discovery in the year 1861 of extensive gold placers on
Salmon river was confirmed, the intelligence spread through the states
like wild fire. Hundreds of men with dependent families, who had been
thrown out of employment by the depressed industrial condition of the
country and by the Civil War, 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 and 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 to occur in some form
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. Some of these expeditions,
after entering the unexplored region which afterwards became Montana,