The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1913-09-27
OVERLAND TRAIL OF
PAST AND PRESENT
HForty.niner" Tells of a Big
Study in Con-
trasts.
"
DETAILS OLD TRAIL
Pioneers Made Soup From
Rancid Bacon Skins i'm
Emergency
DETAILS OLD TRAIL

Ten miles day-twelve, fifteen or
twenty sometimes, and rarely thirty
ncgawled YEARLY cavalcade of tented
wagons, oxen drawn; mules, with I'M
'wiely, swaying, slipping packs; In
dian ponies and American" horses,
whose riders fretted, mile by mile at
their snail's pace toward the setting
sun.
Not yet had begun the gold rush to
the Pacific coast, for this was in 1886.
But already mems hopes and dreams
OF little known region were drawing
them. invincible to hardship, to Mexi-
can California.
The route was the Overland Trail,
then and for twenty-three years to
come trail only, for no flight of pro-
iphetic imagination dared picture this
rugged trail becoming soon broad
smooth overland highway Of steel.
Among the company rode one Ed
win Bryant, destined to be the first
American "alcade" of San Francisco.
They were on the edge of the great
desert; certain provisions were run
ming low, and Bryant sought to trade
tobacco for meat with Indians who
visited the caravan. Meat there was
none, but the savages produced what
may be called the fruit cake Of
these poor children of the desert" and
their full stock in hand was purchas-
ed. "Our prejudice against It," writes
Bryant, soon wore off, and none of
the delicacy was thrown away or
lost"
And this fruit cake of the desert"
o you who nowadays travels the
same trail at ease in your railway
drawing room, idling over a ptrfect
dinner and quenching heat with a
cooling ice as your train of luxury
speeds you over that came desert,
guess, II you please, what that raw
ishing delicacy was! Let Bryant him
self tell: "A substance which, upon
examination, we ascertained to be SER
vice berries crushed to a jam and
mixed with pulveriZed grasshoppers!"
Stern Struggle.
In the age when miracles of science
in industry have become commonplace
it is scarcely to be wondered at that
4 generation surfeited with good things
and wonderful should fall of realizing
how the fathers struggled for infinitly
less than Is our free heritage. That
Overland traveller of 1916 just quoted
encountered less of hardship than
most of those who followed him, and
yet we read in his dairy:
"a soup of the hare killed on our
march today constituted our supper
and only meal for two days"
And again:
"Of the soup prepared from the ran
cid bacon skins remaining in our pro-
vision sack, single spoonful to each
seemed to satisfy the desires of the
whole party for this kind of food, II it
i kSoR,r ,~;x
But others there were Of the in
trepid 'Forty-niners" who suffered un-
believeable pangs of thirst, and
famine, and cold, and disease, while
many another yielded life itself, as
all bore their share in the winning of
the West"
Backward glances, then, are found
illuminating and likewise Christening
to undue pride. Contrasts between the
Then thart Ia not not really so far
away and the Now of the marvellous
achievement stir ones admiration for
the Pioneer no less than ones appre-
aciation of the latter day comforts of
which that Pioneer dreamed nothing.
The "Forty-niner," starting out with
fearless determination on 1000 mile
''hike"-perhaps to fortune, certainly
to trayeil and possibly to death-faced
a six months struggle and his friends
ut home a year Of silence and appre-
hension. To say nothing of communi-
eating with civilization, all he could
know from day to day even of the ter
rors ahead must be cleaned from the
messages other emigrants had scrawl-
ed on the bleaching buffalo skulls
strewn along the trail.
Tho transcontinental path followed
by the Pioneer, Commerce now has
claimed for its own. Today the once
dusty trail Is paved, as it were, with
dustless granite gravel-tracked with
steel. Where the 'Forty-niner's" OK
cart crept creakingly along. its occu-
pants in comentary terror of wolf
or wolflike Indian, monster locomo-
tives draw long vestibuled trains
palace hotels on wheels-with an easy
glide that bellies their swiftness and
with automatic electric block safety
signals to protect every mile of the
Overland Trail against the only perils
of modern travel
And communications? Where the
Pioneer was marooned, isolated. for
for six months en- route the Overland
traveller Of 1913, in his sixty-four and
one-half hours. has everything. At
terminals a telephone at his elbow for
local or long distance conversation.
and on his way cross continent daily
telegraphic market reports, a stem
ographer to take his dictation, type
his letters and kilograms and dis
patch them by mail or wire when the
train stops.
Even more striking becomes the
contrast between Then and Now when
one considers that this very year,
when floods the country over interrupt
Cd telegraphic service. forthwith came
urgent agitation for extention of wire
less communications to mitigate the
rigors of such disasters in future. In
the days Of the Forty miners" there
was current story-yes, and occa-
sionally 1t found guillible credence-of
Californian who lived $50 years and
then. willing to test the attractions of
. celestial paradise, went abroad that
he might die. Returned for burial,
such was the power OF California's life
giving climate that he was restored to
mortal immortality, with strength suf-
ficient to burst from coffin and grave
But who of the "Forty-niners" would
have believed wireless telegraphy pos
sible? Who of them could have
giimpsed a future when an airship
should have swept over with supplies