The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1893-09-23
Fhe Old Trails Of the west.
From the Washington star.

From the Washington Star
The old trails die hard, though Some
times agrain field will have outlined through
its whole length the spot where the old
trail crossed it, The grain that grows
there sprouts first, grows faster, is a richer
green and gives heavier yield at harvest
than the other land adjacent 1t is an
uncanny thought to harbor, but maybe it is
because those old trails have drunk so deep
of the blood of pioneer martyrs. In 1870
the plains were white with bleaching bones
Bison, Indians cattle, and too sadly often
carcasses of white men all lay there whit
ering in the sun. Cholera twice swept
along those old trails like cyclone and
lined the roadside with unburied dead
Indian battles and pitiless massacres spilled
human blood every day during the years
from 1900 to 1870. Smallpox was cpl
demie many seasons aud the unburied VIC
tins lay where they died miserable and
alone, Whole wagon trains were some.
times left abandoned when death drove,
aud humans, horses, mules, and cattle per-
ished together, the one Of disease, the 9th
ers of slow starvation and thirst. The bison
that once held full sway on the plains were
mercilessly shot by thousands for their fur
to make robes and their bodies were left
to rot where they fell
When the great Seattle drives" were on
the grass often dried up till there was no
nutrition in it, and the few streams went
dry. Then the cattle died by tens of thou
sands. In the first years of the settlement
of Kansas and Colororado, Nebraska, Da-
kota, and Wyoming, the giant industry of
the country was the collecting of these
bones, which sold for 81 and S5 a ton, to
be used as fertilizers. Along the railroads,
where they were hauled for shipment, they
were piled up high above the freight car
roofs, and extended for n mile or more
along the tracks. Men with teams pede
big money for years at this business. In
California they hedge farms with cactus;
in Virginia stumps Of trees answer the pur-
pose, and in Massachusetts the only thing
to do with the ''nigger heads is to build
stone fences that are always tumbling
down, but in Kansas and Nebraska "for-
ties and 'ssixties" were once set about
with chevaux de frise of buffalo and Texas
cattle skulls Ghastly and grinning with
enormous steers horns, interloeked with
the blunt ones Of the bison, the cattle that
had yielded up the ghost to the depletion
of some cattle baron's pocketbook, because
of too scanty forage, by irony of fate were
themselves set up as breastwork against
1.-The possible depredations their hungry
kindred might make on the corn and rye
fields of the thrifty settlers
If those old trails had tongues, their
ante-mortem stories would rival those of
the crusades, but well for the world the
victims of their scourges sleep soundly.
Sometimes in those vast wheat fields where
the grain grows tallest and thickest the
reaper will come. suddenly upon a spot Of
earth, bare Of herbage except for nod
ding sunhower perhaps, its sunken surface
almost covered with rafting cross clum-
silly made of tomato boxes, or a broken
wagon tongue Names and dates, if any
there were, are long years since obliterated,
but by that holy token the stranger knows
that the dust that once encased soul
slumbers as calmly in that wheat field and
as free from the despoiler's hands as though
reposing in Arlington under tons Of carved
stone There are hundreds Of these lonely
graves throughout the West, and legend
tells that women and little children. fill
them.