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Show THE CENTENNIAL STATE. 475 friend lying dead near him. In his own breast was a gaping wound, from which his life had nearly ebbed away; and the little stream into which he had rolled in his delirious thirst, was vermilion with his blood. When picked up by his friends he made his first and last al-lusion to the trouble : " A d d good man killed for a d d bad woman better stuck to my old idees." Varied only by such incidents as these, the first half of the century rolled away with little of historic interest. But the expeditions of Fremont, the Mexican war, and acquisition of new territory, the gold hunters' invasion of California, the opening of Kansas to settlement, and the Mormon war of 1857, caused the whole region to be thoroughly explored, with a view of finding some shorter and better route to the Pacific. All who came this way were eager for gold. If gold there was, it was only an accident who should find it. Traditions of its presence had been numerous for a hundred years. Many an explorer, white or Mexican, had returned with specimens which good judges pronounced gold, but somehow the clue was always lost. At last, in 1858, came the right men. John H. Gregory, Green Russell, and other Georgians, old miners and familiar with the precious metals, found what was unmistakably gold; but it was not till the 6th of May, 1859, that Gregory struck the gold diggings on North Clear Creek, which soon became world renowned as the Gregory Lode, and settled affirmatively the question as to whether this was a rich mineral region. But the country could not wait for verification ; nothing was needed so badly in 18.58 as a new excitement. The Kansas troubles had been happily settled, the Mormon war was over, and newspaperdom was dying of ennui. So, soon after a few ounces of gold dust reached Leavenworth, the whole country was stirred, and for months " Pike's Peak" glared at us in display type from the head of a thousand news columns. Along with the prospector went the able- bodied correspond-ent, and beat the old Spanish chroniclers on their own soil. AVonder was piled on wonder, and a patient public accepted all as truth ; but at last, extravagance run mad effected its own cure. Here is a speci-men from an Iowa paper : " We learn from a gentleman just returned from the Peak that the gold lies in bands or strata down the slope. The custom of the best miners is to construct a heavy wooden float with iron ribs, similar to a stone boat; this is taken to the top of the Peak, where several men get in and guide it down over the gold strata. The gold curls up on the boat like shavings, and is gathered in as they progress. This is the usual method of collecting it." Within one year this region received seventy- five thousand Amer-icans. The romance and tragedy of this invasion have often beeii |
