The weekly miner. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1878-1881, 1881-01-04

sweet a name, and its memories SO dear |
to all, to brave the dangers and uncer-
tainties of an almost unknown path that
led to the new found Ell Dorado.
Fired by ambition, filed with hope, y
Astounding in energy and guided by
chance, they formed a band of rough,
hardy, brave and enteFprising men who
endured privations, faced dangers, and
when necessary met death with a Spar
tan's fortitude and heroism. No noun
tains were too precipitous, no canyons
too deep, 10 forest too dense, and no
rivers too broad or too rapid to cause
them to halt in their mad pursuit of
gold. Without system to direct their
energies, and without experience to
shape their course, they beat wildly
about, now here, now there, ever rest
less and never satisfied, now enjoying
the full fruition of their hopes,
then enduring the bitterest priva-
lions of poverty, yet always cheerful,
hopeful and determined ever ready to
hazard their lives for a friend, or to lay
it down in defense of their rights. For
years divorced from the restraints Of
society, and removed from the influence
of a present mother and home, they be-
came strangers to law, and knew none
save that implanted in a kind and gentle
heart.
Of such were the pioneers of the far
West. They blazed a way through
a trackless wilderness, and lined the
course of the present great thoroughfare
that now spans the continent. They
fixed the sites for villages, towns and
| cities that are now the centers of a rich
and populous country. They laid the
foundation of an empire that is now the
wonder and admiration of the world.
They extended the domain of civiliza-
ton and awakened therein the music Of
progress where all was silence before.
These are some of the victories of the
'49ers. But they were not gained with
out sufferings. Their curse has been
marked by their blood shed by the
providing savage. Their unsepulchred
bones have whitened the desert plains
of the West. Their graves were the
m%ile-stones that directed the course and
marked the distances Of the thousands
that followed them. But few remain of
that little band. They are fast passing
away. Though time has dealt gently
with some of them, too many have not
dealt gently with themselves. Though
they have been favoredrb by a climate that
stays the diecrepitude of age, and imparts
a life and vigor to the frame unknown in
the East, though they have been sur
that feed their ~imaginations and give to
their spirits a flavor of freshness and
youthfulness that their grizzled locks be-
Lies, yet their exposures and privations,
their designations and disappointments
render them an easy prey to the shafts
of death. Their once sturdy frames are
insensibly yielding to the memorable
DEGREES of Time. The murmuring OF
the clark waters' is indistinctly sound
ing in their ears. While their souls for
a moment revel in the still bright past,
they look with wistful, longing eyes to
the great Ell Dorado on High. They feel
that they are a belated part of a past
generation, and they cannot somehow
fit themselves in the new ways or the
present. In a few years the heroic lit
tie band that carved the fortunes of the
thousands that followed them, will bt
no more. May they meet upon the
: Golden Shores of another, brighter anc
better world.