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Falling head foremost on harrows and rakes would be fun to a fall here, where all the instruments capable of human destruction, from razors, saws, and meat-axes down to spike-nails and punches, were duly represented. In the course of our journey we frequently overtook pack-trains laden with dried fish from the sea-shore.
To pierce these mighty mountains with tunnels, and whisper across them with the human voice, were of course miracles as yet unguessed. But Astor closed his eyes and saw great pack-trains, mules laden with skins, winding across these mountains, and down to tidewater at Astoria. There his ships would be lying at the docks, ready to sail for the Far East. James J. Hill was yet to come.
Doubling on the pursuers, hiding, the bandit whirls from Shasta to Tehama, from Oroville to Sacramento, from Marysville to Placerville. Stockton, San Andreas, Sonora, and Mariposa are terrorized. Plundered pack-trains, murdered men, and robbed wayfarers prove that Joaquin Murieta is ever at work. His swoop is unerring.
Major Rucker fulfilled this duty perfectly, sending out pack-trains loaded with food by the many routes by which the immigrants were known to be approaching, went out himself with one of these trains, and remained in the mountains until the last immigrant had got in. No doubt this expedition saved many a life which has since been most useful to the country.
During the gold excitement it was at times a matter of considerable pecuniary importance to force a way through the cañon with pack-trains early in the spring while it was yet heavily blocked with snow; and then the mules with their loads had sometimes to be let down over the steepest drifts and avalanche beds by means of ropes.
In nearly all the expeditions on the great plains and in the mountains he has been the master-spirit of the pack-trains. General Sheridan, who knew Gilson long before the war, in Oregon and Washington, regarded the celebrated packer with more than ordinary friendship.
They are old and poor to-day, and the memory of their fortune is as a dream. Have they not lived at Hope and Yale and Lytton for fifty years and seen their trail crumble into the canyon, with not a dozen pack-trains a year passing to the Upper country? John Rose, who was one of the men to find Cariboo, set out in the spring of '63 to prospect the Bear River country.
A million rations were required at the goal of the Maumee Rapids, and yet after two months of heartbreaking endeavor not a pound of provisions had been carried within fifty miles of this place. Wagons and pack-trains floundered in the mud and were abandoned. The rivers froze and thwarted the use of flotillas of scows.
Spread the blankets and quilts as evenly as possible. Cover all with the canvas tarpaulin suitably folded. Everything is now ready for the pack-rope. The first thing anybody asks you when it is discovered that you know a little something of pack-trains is, "Do you throw the Diamond Hitch?" Now the Diamond is a pretty hitch and a firm one, but it is by no means the fetish some people make of it.
Me an' Jesse Smith an' Handy Oliver hit a new road over here fifty miles as a crow flies a hundred by trail. We was plumb surprised. An' when we met pack-trains an' riders an' prairie-schooners an' a stage-coach we knew there was doin's over in the Bear Mountain range.
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