ic,--that Oregon which they had chosen as their future home, mainly
because it was, of all possible Eldorados, the farthest and the least
accessible. Trappers, hunters, and Indian traders, few in numbers, and
generally men of desperate fortunes, who realized that

'The world was not their friend, nor the world's law,'

had, for several decades, penetrated every glen of the Rocky Mountains,
and traced every affluent of the great river in quest of their
respective prey; but the wild, desolate region watered by the Colorado,
the Humboldt, or the streams that are lost in the Great Salt Lake, or
some smaller absorbent of the scanty waters of the Great Basin, had
never proved attractive to our borderers, and for excellent reasons. It
is, as a whole, so arid, so sterile (though its valleys do not lack
fertility wherever their latent capacities can be developed by
irrigation), and its game is so scanty and worthless, that old Bridger
(pioneer of settlers at the military post in northern Utah, now known as
Fort Bridger) was probably the only American who had made his home in
the Great Basin when Fremont's exploring party first pitched their tents
by the border of Great Salt Lake, in September, 1843.

The discovery of gold in California, in the summer of 1847, closely
following the military occupation and conquest of that country by the
United States, wrought a great and sudden revolution. Of the few
Americans in that region prior to 1846, probably nine tenths had rounded
Cape Horn to reach it, while the residue had made their way across
Mexico or the Isthmus of Darien. It was 'a far coy' at best, and very
tedious as well as difficult of attainment. We have in mind an American
of decided energy, who, starting from Illinois in May or June, 1840,
with a party of adventurers, mainly mounted, reached the mouth of the
Columbia, overland, in December, and California, by water, in the course
of the winter; and who, starting again for California, via Panama, in
the summer of 1847, was nine months in reaching his destination. But the
tidings that the shining dross was being and to be picked up by the
handful on the tributaries of the Sacramento wrought like magic. Early
in 1849, steam-ships were dispatched from New York for Chagres, at the
mouth of the river of like name on the Isthmus of Darien, whence crowds
of eager gold-seekers made their way across, as they best might, to
Panama, being taken in small, worthless boats up the river,