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Show CHAPTER IV STAMPEDERS. Many of the new arrivals were mere surface deposits, having come with Utopian ideas in regard to the wealth of the country, expecting to find great nuggets of yellow metal lying around loose, and streams burdened with liquid silver. These romantic fortune-seekers soon returned East, anathematizing the country and declaring Pike's Peak to be an unmitigated swindle, and under the inscription, " Pike's Peak or Bust," was written, in larger, blacker letters, " Busted, by Thunder." The plains for six hundred miles were the theatre of a restless, surging wave of humanity. D. C. Oakes- had published a pamphlet, describing and lauding the country. It was the means of inducing many to emigrate. He had returned to the States, and was on his way back with a saw-mill, when he met the stampeders. They said he had "sworn deceitfully"-in other words, had told outrageous falsehoods, which they spelled with three letters, and they threatened to hang him and burn his mill. He met them bravely, by stating the fact of his having invested every dollar he was worth in that mill, which ought to be proof conclusive of his faith in the country. They gave him his life, but had the satisfaction of pelting him with execrating epithets. A little farther on he came to a new-made grave, and on the headstone, which was the storm-polished shoulderblade of a buffalo, was written the following epitaph: " Here lies the body of D. C. Oakes, Killed for aiding the Pike's Peak hoax." 27 |
