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Niagara Falla on earth, and But one direct great railway to It But also to the Mackinac Island, the northern paradise; to the Thousand Islands and St. Lawrence river; to the Muskoka Lakes. Ottawa and Montreal; to the White Mountains. Saratoga, Lake George, the Hudson and the Catskills, and a thousand other lake, mountain and Beashore resorts, regarding which Mr. O. W. Buggies, the u. P. and T. A. at Chicago, will send you illustrated Information upon application.Over the Sierra*.BT THE REPUBLIC AND SCH HISTOBJ1*.CHAPTER YhR. J. Boylan and His Mules.- H. A. Cag-win. More of the Last JEnd of the Route.—Efforts to Relieve the Suffering. - An Imaginary Glance at the Great River.—Over the Sierras,—Did It Pay. —How Some Will County Boys Fared on the Other Side.- Letters from “Mack,—Boylan, Mott, Kercheval and Others.—M»ek Rocking tne Cradle.—A Great Mining Failure.—Mack Closes With a Gloomy Outlook.We know that our readers are anxious to hear from R. J Boylan and hts three companions. Ho got through July 24th, and wrltts his wife a long jetter, which wlt; find In the Joliet Signal. We make liber, al extracts therefrom:‘I left Missouri river the 13th of May. I arrived at Fort Laramie on the 4th of June, and found, on examining the records, that 5,000 teams were ahead. At North Platte ferry I found 2,00® passed Independence rock at the mouth of the Sweetwater on the 10th of June, at which time I Left McClure, Hunter, Gay, Iugoldaby brothers, Coopef A Go,, Higginbotham, Van Horne and others, all In good health and spirits. Their teams looked well. I saw Tanner, Paddock, and Jehn Chapman, at Fort Laramie; Samuel Bowen and son, James A Co., at the Pacific Springe. On the 10th of June I travelled three days with Gen. Fry's train, and Mr. Sanborn on Bear river. They were all well. I fell In wltn Back-rnan A Norris' train on (lie 1st of Juiy, at the head of St. Mary’s river. They had exchanged their horse te«ms for oxen at Salt Lake. I saw some of them nearly every day the entire distance through. They made som§,stall strides for the El Dorado. They are all safe, and got through the best of any train I saw on the road. I loft Nathan Hopkins and his son Seymour on Carson river, In company with the Bougbtons, Boylngton and otners. all well and In good spirits. I saw the Wilmington train on the North Platte all well. The emigrants from Northern Illinois are generally well sup-plied with provisions, It Is tree that many of the horse teams are broken up.I hope uever to hear of another horse team starting with the view of coming through. There were eleven horses started in one train and only one Mexican pony got through. I think that from the head of Mary a river to Carson valley at the foot of the Sierras that the road would average a dead horse per mile. The grand deeert of 40 miles had 43 dead horses In It, and beside the road, and those left by one-eighth or leas of the emigration, that being the proportion ahead oftrains. I have seen emigrants 600 miles out entirely destitute of money and provisions. I saw one noble looking fellow come up where they had been butcta-erln an oi and skin Its tall and carry It off, and ottiere begging for provisions. When arrived at Carson river we found a trading post with plenty of provisions, the merciful price of two dollars per pound (or Hour, pork and sugar. I saw a trader take a horse that cost $80 In Illinois, forII pounds of fit ur, and a’palr of mules for 30 pounds, and a man (bom our county gave a Mormon two horses to board hiru over tue mountains. For myself I should have had plenty, but many In our train were slok, and some oi them were my friends, and crackers and dried mutton ham wad found to be the best medicine, and I gave them freely. So I ran ashore In Carson valley. However, I got through safe, with my three mules, In tolerably good order.“Such destruction of property os there was on th9 road 1 never saw before. It was strewn with articles of every kind but provisions—blacksmith tools, trunks of clothlqg, guns, wagons, and horses. I cookod my meals, the last 600 miles, by burning wagons. It did not look right, but the owners most generally built the first fire, • * * I can make no estimate of the number on the plains this summer, but I Judge the procession as being thirty dayB long. Much suffering snd misery muk follow In the wake.H. A. Cogwlu writes from the de'lght-ful shades of Bang town, Aug. 12, 1850:*We have at last got through this long and perliousjjourney. Our luck has been very variable. From Fort Laramie to the Humbolt—that poisonous, Ul-fatea channel, filled with pollution, disaster and death—we averaged 25 to 30 miles a day. We leftour $80 wagon on the Humbolt, together with stove, guns, (mine excepted) tent, ammunition, clothing, oll-cioth and heavy coats, axes, picks, spades, etc. With our light wagon we went up the 0»7-eon river to 26 mile deeert, sold wagon and harness for two pack saddles, and from thence packed through. George Agard was Uken dangerously slok on Bear river, got him In with the Me Harry Co, train and he Is near this place and Is better. Win. Gougat, R. Kercheval and D. Har rtagton got through safe. Mr. Scott, of Napervthe, lost every horse bat -cried like a child at bis reverses. All of his company had to foot it throi gh. Hopkins and oompany I heard from yesterday. They were near the bead of the Humbolt, leAlthouses said they weuki not geba horse through alive, and would have foot It. MoOlure and Hunter were at Salt Lake, Mok. I heard that John Tanner A Co, loet al* their horses but one. The Desert and Humboldt are lined with was. oxen ami auk* A noisomedeath, rises i•udrodof road,for500 miles, Watook OwHt'all the cut-offs, and done well, throwing nothing ayay, until we came to the Ill-fated Humbolt, That put us ‘hore-du-combat,' or without any horses to combat the sandy desert with.So great was the suffering on the last stages of this pilgrimage that relief parties were sent out from California. From tha Alta Californian of Sept. 24th, 1850, we extract part of a letter written by Gapt Waldo, one of the relief committee, and with this we will close this dreary subject, lie says:“The relief committee have not a single |)ouud of flour east of the mouutalua, We entered the desert on the 7th, and met two men that had given up to die of starvation. Same day two had died oa the Carson desert. Those with gons have no food but their poor exhausted animals, and footmen existed upon the putrtfled flesh of the dead animals along the road, and disease and death were sweeping them down, cholera made lie appearance on the 8th, and eight out of the small train died In three hours. The Indians take every ad vantage to steal their animals, and thus many are left more than 600 miles beyond the settlements. Fighting between them and the emigrants occurs almost daily. Twenty thousand emigrants are yet yond the desert, of which 15,000 are now destitute of all kinds of provisions, yot the period of their greatest suffering has not come. It will be Impossible for 10,000 of them to reach the mountains before the beginning of winter. From the Truckee to the head of the Humbolt the cholera Is killing them off, and the sick surround the Truckee station unable to proceed. I am about to start to persuade such as are from four;hundred to six hundred miles back to return to Balt Lake.He then calls for 10,000 lbs. of flour for the station at Truckee and the same amount for the Summit. He says that those back several hundred miles will die of starvation unless relieved soon. He asks for contributions, and offers the City Uouncll his claim of $10,000 worth of prop erty If they will forward provis.oas and medicine. His report Is fearful.We would here record that George 8. Fake, from Joliet, with characteristic liberality, sent out, at his own expense, a wagou-load of provisions, to relieve the sufferers,From the preceding chapters the reader of thl8 day may gather a faint conception of tho groat hejlrah of 1850—of that eager, motly crowd of pilgrims to the shilne of Mammon, pressing on to the Mecca of thoir hopes, with eagei, selfish haste—the stoutest crowding aside the weaker—the swiftest rushing past the slower ones, that they may first reach good grazing or camping grounds, or be ahead at the ferries and fords. Think of this going day after day—week after week—month aftar month- hastening on despite fatigue and sickness, hunger and thirst,-scaring the wolf and the prairie dog from bis lair,—startling the antelope gazing in wonaer from the hills,—robbing the Indian of his game, and the buffalo of his herbage, and God of his worship and his Sabbaths, and profaning his sacred soil tudes with voices of strife and rivalry.reader Imagine himself upon some snow-capped peak of the Rockies, and gifted with an angel’s vision—looking down upon the rntghtv river of emigration as It leaves the frontier by divers currents, uniting upon the green meadows of the Platte—passing along northward and westward under the shadow of the Black Hills, crossing the sources of the mighty rivers that water twenty or more states and ter. Itorles, pouring through the narrow pass of the Rocky Mountains, bounded on either hand by heights of everlasting mows-then over Into the great basin, where rocky and pre-oipltous mountains dispute the area wltn sandy deserts arm alkali plains, and where tho mysterious Humbolt, atratches Its 300 mlle9 of death-dealing waters and quicksands, until, as If In remorse for its crimes,It commits felo-de-se by disappearing la ths sands of the “Sink“—and then, after croesslng deserts where no spear of herbage grows or drop of water slakes the thirst - at last pouring with broken and depleted waves, and feeble flow, and wan aspect over the Sierras, down Into the valley of the Sacramento, tbe long sought goal of their wanderings. No such procession had been neatli the sun since tbe days of the first crusade, when 't-eter the Hermit’ and Walter the Pennyless’led their deluded hosts through Germany and Hungary to the Bosphorus.And, remember, this vast stream of humanity was made up of Individuals, each one impelled by hie own desires and tlves, very diverse no douht, although all wars seeking the same object and pressing on to the same goal: each one, too, the subject of solicitude In the thousands of family circles they had left; each the fond nucleus of high hopes and earnest prayers,-each rushing on to his fate hopeful, and yet uncertain what it shall be,-bearing the hardships and tilal* of toe way buoyed up by the faith that when the mighty barriers of the Sierras are at last passed, their golden dreams shall have rich fulfillment.And then how diverse their experience after the goal was reached! A few realized, and more than realized, their brightest hopes; they gathered the yellow dust and returned to their homes, and paid debts, built houses and barns, bought farms, Ac. But many perished by the way, and were burled In the sands of the deeert, where no stone marks the spot. Many, after reaching tbe El Dxrado of their hopes, suooumbed to sickness brought on by exposure and pri vatlon, or were buried In land or snow slides, or perished In brawls or by the as-sasln’s pistol, and they were buried In unknown graves, wlihout shroud or prayer Many too remained permanently lu the Golaan state, and were lost to the com muniUes from which they had gone out.To ts]l as well as we may be able how In these respects It fared with the eml grants from Will county, and to give eon* graphic pictures of mining life aatWpH t* «»• «ime and since,18 tQ6 (lUtV thMt. VAf PAIWaina ’Is the duty that yet remains to us. (to be continued )“ftay, ma, where la economy found?’ w “La the OHy Council, my deer. In the Glty Coundi; but you must look long tojf Shift lt;r.STl
Newspaper Details
The Joliet Daily Republic and Sun
Joliet, Illinois, US
Wed, Aug 19, 1885
Page 4
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
MD, USA 10 Jul 2024
Other Publications Near Joliet, Illinois
Joliet Morning News
The Joliet Weekly News
Joliet Signal
Joliet Farmers Weekly Review
Joliet Circle
