FREMONT IN THE PARKS.

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The temperature of the water ranged through the day in one spring from 58° to 60.5°, and in the other from 61 to 69o. Next year Fremont returned from California via the Great Salt Lake, Bear River, the North, Middle, and South Parks. He found the Middle Park alive with buffalo and other game, and made the hight of the Ute Pass, between Breckenridge and Montgomery, 11,200 feet. "Here," says Fremont, "the river (Blue) spreads itself into small branches and springs, heading nearly in the summit of the ridge which is very narrow.* Immediately below us was a valley through which ran a stream (Platte,) and a short distance opposite rose snowy mountains (Lincoln,) whose summits were formed into peaks of naked rock." The South Park was at that moment the scene of a hard-fought battle between hostile bands of Utes and Arapahoes, and Fremont was obliged to fortify all his camps. On again arriving at Pike's Peak he measured it and made it 14,300 feet above sealevel, which agrees very well with the measurement of Dr. Parry made in 1862.

It was about this time or a little earlier that one Rufus B. Sage passed over the same route in the dead of December with a small party of trappers. He says the snow averaged a depth of twelve or

*The Blue and Platte both rise five or six miles west of the Pass, flowing east, parallel, about 1000 feet lower than its summit, and at the Pass, where the Blue sharply bends north and the Platte southsoutheast, only from 7000 to 8000 feet apart. This has been eliminated by careful surveys of the vicinity, which, since Fremont's passage through or over it, has become an important mining center.

fourteen inches, but that the valleys and sunny hillsides were generally bare. He seems to have been content to let the eternal mountains point skyward in solemn grandeur while his party humbly clung to the willow-lined streams that threaded the fertile valleys, and so in a few days they were led out of the woods and found themselves at the inevitable springs like all the rest; where, says our friend Sage, "the ground was free from snow and afforded occasional spots of green grass." Sage also remarked the existence of a settlement of whites and half-breeds, numbering fifteen or twenty families, about thirty miles above the mouth of the Fountain on the Arkansas, evidently the present site of Canon City. There was also a trading post called the Pueblo on the site of the present town of that name, occupied at that time by ten or twelve Americans living with or married to Mexican women, and carrying on a thriving trade with the Indians. The latter were somewhat troublesome, were indeed the only drawbacks to settlement in the vicinity.

The existence of gold and other minerals in the Sierra Madre mountains, now comprising Colorado, was already suspected. There was a story among the mountaineers and traders, that a few years previous an old French hunter named Duchet had picked up in one of the principal forks of Horse Creek, a piece of rock containing native gold; that he carried it in his hunting pouch until he got tired of it, and suspecting not its value but only regarding it as an hour's novelty, threw it away. Subsequently, at Santa Fe, the emptyings of his pouch,

being in part particles of gold, attracted attention. But the old hunter could not again find the place.

Sage camped on the present site of Golden City during the winters of 1843 and 1844 successively, whence on some of his hunting excursions he penetrated the mountains to a considerable distance; but he records nothing in his published account of particular interest, more than his confirmed belief that it was a mineral region. For instance, crossing from Cherry Creek to the Fountain, he remarks: "The country hereabout for an extent of upwards of one thousand square miles, is much subject to storms of rain, hail, snow, and wind. I can account for it in no way but by supposing it to have some connection with the vast quantities of minerals lying embedded in its hills and valleys." Somewhat of a Sage by nature as well as in name. But the country in which he had long been traveling abounds in sage.

But we can scarcely pretend to give what was known of Colorado prior to the discovery of paying gold mines within her present limits, because our space will not permit. We have therefore only glanced at that period while hastening to the vastly more interesting time when the discovery and pursuit of gold invested her stupendous mountains with a more absorbing interest than even that with which science inspires her votaries.

It was the commercial collapse of 1857 that set many adventurous spirits in the then West peering into the obscurity beyond them for a new field of enterprise. A party of Cherokee Indians, traveling

overland to California in 1852, via the Arkansas River and along the eastern base of the Sierra Madre to the North Platte at Fort Laramie, by some means found gold in the banks of Ralston Creek, a small affluent of the Vasquez Fork of the South Platte, emptying into it near its mouth; and each year thereafter parties of Cherokees had gone out and prospected the streams in the vicinity of what is now Denver City. At last they were successful; they obtained a few dollars' worth of the glittering dust, which they carried home late in 1857, exhibiting it freely as they passed through Nebraska and Kansas.

The report of a new land of gold in the West spread like an epidemic through the country drained by the Missouri River, and soon traveled far beyond. These Indians appear to have gone home and told their story on the confines of the Gulf of Mexico, for Georgians were among the first to seek the new gold country.

On the 9th of February, 1858, W. G. Russell, with a party of nine men, left the state of Georgia with a view of prospecting the eastern slope of the Sierra Madre along the heads of the South Platte, from Pike's Peak to the Black Hills. They arrived on the head of Cherry Creek about the 1st of June. They prospected Cherry Creek, the Platte and its affluents as far north as Cache-a-la-Poudre, without finding anything satisfactory. They returned to the Platte, and about five miles up a small dry creek which puts into the Platte seven miles south of the mouth of Cherry Creek, a fine "prospect" one

GOLD STRUCK ON DRY CREEK.

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evening rewarded their labors and enlivened their hopes. They dug large holes in the wet sand, put their "rockers" down in them, and dipping in water with cups washed out in a few days several hundred ' dollars' worth of gold. As soon as they got to work, some of the party returned to Kansas with the news. Pike's Peak was the nearest notable natural object, and so the new gold field-the Dorado of many feverish dreams-took its name from that.

In the last days of that Summer several small parties were organized, and left Lawrence, Plattsmouth, Omaha, Florence, Bellevue, Council Bluffs, and other of the Missouri River towns for Pike's Peak.* One party from Plattsmouth, numbering forty-five men, with fifteen wagons, was threateningly approached near what is now Fort McPherson (Cottonwood,) by about four hundred Cheyennes and Sioux. The train mounted an advanced guard of five, and having a guard of equal number on each flank, and one in the rear, ten footmen in single file on the Indian side of the train, and the fif teen teamsters all having arms in the fore ends of their wagons, they moved firmly along. The Indians came up on the flank one hundred strong in fine style, and halted. The chief and four of his braves made a circuit, and came down square in

*A Dutchman in Council Bluffs was observed gathering up a large lot of meal-bags. He was asked what he was going to do with them. "Fill them with gold at Pike's Peak," he replied. O! he could never do that, they said. "Yes I will," returned he, “if I have to stay there till Fall " It is matter of congratulation that people have become well cured of such charming infatuation.