1859.] THE LUXURIES OF MODERN TRAVEL.

155

but seven days-a short respite after so long travel-and then turns his face eastward. Perhaps at St. Louis, three weeks later, he finds awaiting him a missive from home-a letter which has been seventy or eighty days on the way.

After seven months' absence and many hardships, he is overjoyed to reach home; for the journey has taught him that 'the world has a million roosts for a man but only one nest.' He is received as one risen from the dead. For the rest of his life Smith is a hero; he is lionized by everybody, regarded as one of the seven wonders of the world and pointed out to strangers on the street as a living man, who has actually been four hundred miles beyond the great Mississippi into the howling wilderness. Contrast that period with the present. Now, Mr. Brown of Boston, reflects on a Saturday night while walking home from his counting-room, that he is a little worn down by close attention to business, remembers that he has a few investments which need looking after and concludes to take a run' out to Kansas. So on Monday morning he gives a few directions about his business, packs half a dozen clean shirts, a Railway Guide and an Atlantic Monthly into his carpet-sack, says 'Good-by' to Mrs. Brown and the little Browns, and steps into the railway carriage.

For the next three days he lives at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour. At night he retires to his couch in, the sleeping-car, almost as luxurious and secluded as his own apartment at home. If an old traveler and familiar with the route, he spends the hours of darkness in unbroken slumbers, all unmindful of city and village, forest and prairie, that whisk by in panoramic beauty. In the morning he wakes two or three hundred miles further on, to find awaiting him his boots freshly polished by the porter, and convenient bathing and dressing saloons in which to make his toilet.

On Thursday morning he breakfasts in Kansas. He too, remains seven days and meanwhile receives daily telegrams announcing that all is well at home. Finally, on the second Thursday morning, he takes a return train. If he is fortunate enough to retain his head-for locomotives are quite as dangerous as Indians-he reaches home on Saturday evening after an absence of two weeks. He finds tea awaiting him, smoking hot on the

156

A LITTLE TRIP TO KANSAS.

[1859. table; for on the way he telegraphed that he should arrive by the six o'clock train. His journey attracts no attention. Ordinary acquaintances have not missed him. A few friends as they meet him on the street, remark:

Hallo, Brown! haven't seen you for a few days. Been in the country?' And he replies:

'Yes, just taken a little trip out to Kansas.'

In three days the locomotive has borne him sixteen hundred miles in its iron arms. In a period absolutely imperceptible, the telegraph has flashed to him messages from the loved ones at home along its sensitive nerves. Such the triumphs of forty years. The Florentine philosopher was right-'Still it moves!'

1859.]

GREAT STAMPEDE FOR THE MINES.

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CHAPTER XIII.

THUS far there were no trustworthy reports of gold in paying quantities among the Rocky Mountains. But every newspaper on the Missouri river expressed absolute confidence that rich mines existed; and demonstrated irresistibly that the town wherein said newspaper was published was nearer the mines than any other, and therefore the place for emigrants to purchase cattle, wagons, provisions and mining tools.

In the early spring of 1859, there was a grand stampede for the mountains. The hitherto solitary plains suddenly became densely peopled. A line of daily coaches was put on from Leavenworth to Denver, via. the new Republican route, costing three hundred thousand dollars before the first vehicle started, and involving a running expense of eight hundred dollars per day. Stations from 'One' upward were established from ten to twentyfive miles apart, over prairie and desert. A thousand mules and a hundred stages were scattered along the route. The fare from Leavenworth to the mountains was one' hundred dollars; way tariff twenty-five cents per mile.

But most emigrants went by private conveyances. Every great thoroughfare was white with wagons, and by night the smoke of ten thousand camp-fires curled to the astonished clouds. Some emigrants drew their entire supplies in handcarts, to which they had harnessed themselves; others bore them packed upon their backs-each a domestic Atlas, with his little world upon his shoulders.

Some who started too early had hands and feet frozen. Others consumed all their provisions before one-third of the journey was accomplished, and were fed for weeks by those more bountifully supplied. Thousands took an unexplored route, up the Smoky

158

THE SUFFERINGS ALONG THE ROUTE.

[1859. Hill river, where grass and water proved wofully scarce and fear. ful suffering prevailed. The road was lined with cooking-stoves, clothing and mining tools, thrown away to lighten the loads. In the absence of grass, many emigrants were compelled to feed flour to their exhausted cattle. Some wandered off upon the desert, in the hope of finding a shorter route and nearly perished from hunger. A few died from starvation; and one emigrant from Missouri actually subsisted for several days upon the body of his deceased brother, and when found was a raving maniac.

The rush to the mines was now succeeded by a panic quite as contagious. Reports that the exhibited gold had come from California and not from the mountains, turned back thousands of emigrants-some before they had gone fifty miles from the river and others when they were within twenty-five of the alleged gold region. Still many pressed forward, and large parties of undismayed adventurers continued to start daily. The country had known nothing like it since the great California excitement ten years before, when thirty thousand emigrants crossed the plains. It was an uncontrollable eruption-a great river of human life rolling toward the setting sun-at once a triumph and a prophesy.