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Updated: June 4, 2025
One may make the trip on horseback, or in a carriage, even; for a good level road may be found all the way round, by Shasta Valley, Sheep Rock, Elk Flat, Huckleberry Valley, Squaw Valley, following for a considerable portion of the way the old Emigrant Road, which lies along the east disk of the mountain, and is deeply worn by the wagons of the early gold-seekers, many of whom chose this northern route as perhaps being safer and easier, the pass here being only about six thousand feet above sea level.
The main portion of the Mono Pass is formed by Bloody Cañon, which begins at the summit of the range, and runs in a general east-northeasterly direction to the edge of the Mono Plain. The first white men who forced a way through its somber depths were, as we have seen, eager gold-seekers.
This whole Northern country must have been populous a quarter of a century ago; General Bidwell and other old Californians have told me of the surprisingly rapid disappearance of the Indians, after the white gold-seekers came in. It was, I do not doubt, a pleasant land for the red men.
Indeed, it seemed to be impossible for even the sanest of men to mingle long with a crowd of hurrying gold-seekers and think of what they were hurrying for, and not catch the fever of unreasoning haste.
Here we went, oxen, cows, mules, horses; coaches, carriages, blue jeans, corduroys, rags, tatters, silks, satins, caps, tall hats, poverty, riches; speculators, missionaries, land-hunters, merchants; criminals escaping from justice; couples fleeing from the law; families seeking homes; the wrecks of homes seeking secrecy; gold-seekers bearing southwest to the Overland Trail; politicians looking for places in which to win fame and fortune; editors hunting opportunities for founding newspapers; adventurers on their way to everywhere; lawyers with a few books; Abolitionists going to the Border War; innocent-looking outfits carrying fugitive slaves; officers hunting escaped negroes; and most numerous of all, homeseekers "hunting country" a nation on wheels, an empire in the commotion and pangs of birth.
Every craft that set sail for the Isthmus by the Nicaragua or Panama route, or by the weary route around Cape Horn, was packed full of gold-seekers. It was the Golden Age of the Argonauts; and, if my memory serves me well, there were no reserved seats worth the price thereof.
"They were a gallant and cruel and heroic and stupid lot, the Spanish gold-seekers," she said. "They thought nothing of danger and hunger, but they could not find their way without a guide any further than their eyes could see, and they behaved very badly toward the poor Indians." "We saw them all," said the Flamingo, "Cortez and Balboa and Pizarro.
I visited a number of camps where six or eight men would be sitting around a little fire talking about their disappointment in not finding gold to take home to their families, and some of them were crying like children as they said the expense of fitting out their teams and themselves had ruined them financially. This spot on Clear creek seemed to be the turntable for the gold-seekers.
In a few years improved routes, railway-tracks, and houses for food and lodging will rob the Klondike region of its terrors, but until then death must exact a heavy toll from the gold-seekers crowding northward, without regard to season or the simplest laws of prudence. Roswell was standing on the upper deck, near a corner, when he exclaimed excitedly: "Oh, look there! Isn't it dreadful?"
were the first we saw of that vast throng of gold-seekers, who flocked to our shores within a twelvemonth, and who have since become idealized in song and story as the "Argonauts," "the Boys of '49." They were unlike either our pioneer or our soldier friends in style of dress and manner. Nor had they come to build homes or develop the country. They wanted gold to carry back to other lands.
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