The Tide of Emigration

The reason for my ignorance sounds more like a fairy tale than sober truth, and yet there is nothing in it which may not be proved by any man who lived either in Denver or in Auraria during the year 1859.

I have quoted already the words of another regarding the human tide which rolled toward the mines and then back again, therefore it is but repetition when I say that no less than sixty thousand men came back from their gold seeking disappointed, and very many hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, had loaded their wagons with goods of various kinds, counting on selling them in the mines, where it was supposed gold would be so plentiful.

Having become discouraged, however, all this vast army, grown homesick, turned their faces toward the Missouri River, or whatever portion of the country they came from, and rather than haul back the goods with which their carts were laden, actually threw the merchandise away on the road. The cattle, neglected to the verge of starvation while the owners were off gold digging, were in no fit condition to haul heavy loads the distance of five or six hundred miles which lay between them and the more thickly settled country.

These people, and there were thousands of them, had become so disheartened and longed so ardently for home, that their minds had only the desire to get out of the country into which they claimed they had been lured by falsehood, and to accomplish this they were ready to sacrifice everything.

I am telling no more than the plain truth when I say that the trail from the diggings down to Denver was lined with goods of every description which had been abandoned by the owners.