The herald., 1897-08-22
"REMINISCENCES Of GREAT GOLD RUSHES
THE KLoNDYKE FEVER RECALLS oTHERs--THE
CALIFORNIA EXCITEMENT
IN FoRTY-NINE

battues no fewer than 1856 men, women
and children were butchered. This oc-
CURED at place called Mountain Mead
ows, Utah, in September IS, 1857, and it
| is some satisfaction to be able to record
that the chief actor in this bloody drama,
Bishop Lee, was shot nearly twenty years
| later-March %, 1S77-after a fair trial,
by order of the United States govern
ment.
But neither hunger nor thirst, the
treachery of the savage. nor the enmity
! of the Mormons, sufficed to daunt the
ardor of the gold seekers. In two years
the population of California trebed.
San Francisco grew from a log village
to great city and the prosperity of the
country was assured.
| In 1860 occurred the Colorado rush"
when te,uo of thousands of families
| passed through Kansas, bearing aloft on
their white tented wagons the proud
| legend. pixies Peak or Bust"
From the Peak country the gold hunt.
ers spread southwark to New Mexico,
Texas and Arizona, and northward to
Nebraska, Wyoming, Dakota and Mon
/ tana. In all these wild and little known
territories gold in, more or less abund-
| ance was found, and some of the rush
es' even recalled the famous days Of
forty-nine. Perhaps the best re-
membered was that one to the
Black Hills in the spring of 1876. Sixty
thousand people swarmed into the dis
trict in the space of about three months,
and some enormous fortunes were made.
More than 5000 of the unucky ones,
however, perished, of starvation during
the VII nd Je,,
killed by the Sioux, in, the center of
whose country the Black Hills were sit
uated.
But even the Black Hills rush was
thrown completely into the shade by the
Leadville excitement. This famous rush
began in 1878, and curiously enough in
1877 the writer was over the ground
where the city OF Leadville row
stands, little dreaming, however, that
| within a stones throw there lay treas
| ures that would have placed him on an
equality with Vanderbilt or a Roth
schil6t
Just six weeks later two men named
Stevens and Wood, suspecting from its
weight that the dirt contained gold
| or silver made an assay. With blanched
| faces and trembling hands they returned
to their camp and recommended work
They kept their secret until by pur-
chase and locating" they had secured
nine claims. Then they allowed the
truth to leak out .and the Leadville
boom began. Mine after mine of un-
parallel richness was opened. Two years
later the writer stood on the spot again.
A Pullman car conveyed him there this
| time. On every side the homes of 40, 900
people extended, while through the busy
streets the newsboys rushed with special
editions of the Leadvile Evening News,
the Leadville Star and the Leadville
| Tribune.
The Leadville boom was, so far as
America is concerned. practically the
| last of the great "rushes," until the
Yukon excitement of this present sum-
mer. There have been many isolated
rich finds in Montana, Nevada, Ari-
zona and other gold bearing states and
territories, followed by local "rushes, y
but nothing to approach the general
movements of large masses of popula-
tion such as characterized the periods
of excitement to which reference has
been made.
In other parts of the world, however.
the gold fever has ragged badly, notably
at johannesburg and at Coolgardie, in
Western Australia.