Alexander Majors

“ If these conditions will not make California the greatest fruit-producing country on earth, then human ingenuity is at fault, and not climate.
Many a tourist in coming to San Francisco, and it might be said it is the exception when it is not so, has wondered if California fruits can make no better showing than the sour, half-ripened fruit he partakes of; last, but not least, the prices he pays for this fruit are so incredulously high that he wonders if it can be possible he can be eating imported fruit, and not the production of the California soil. ”

“ A winter's residence in Colorado will banish forever the false impression that this is a boreal region, given over to inclemency and snow-drifts. There is more sunshine in Colorado than in Florida; there is less snow than in any State east of the Missouri River. A single trip over the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad from Denver to Ogden, in midwinter, will disabuse the mind of the tourist or transcontinental traveler of the erroneous notion that mountain railroads suffer from delays by snow to any greater extent than do the trains upon the less attractive, and by far more bleak, plains. ”

“ Those were days of death, hell, and the grave. But what will not men undergo and dare for gold? They have braved anything for it in the past, and will in the future. Friendships and home ties are broken, and in the wild, mad rush for fortune, thousands of gold hunters have lost their lives, and fill nameless and unknown graves in the far West. There is something of romance in the death of a humble prospector searching for wealth on the mountain side. ”

“ Animals as well as men are deceived by these freaks of the atmosphere. Many instances are recorded where whole bands of cattle have rushed from the grazing grounds across the hot parched plains in pursuit of the constantly retreating water phantom, until they perish from exhaustion, still in sight of running brooks and surging springs. Prior to the advent of the railroad through this region, when overland passengers passed by on the old Yuma road to San Diego, scores of adventurous spirits perished in chasing this illusive phantom. ”

“ This was the nucleus of the great city—the second in rank of the many wonderful cities of the United States. Fifty years ago the pioneers of the Badger and Prairie States were doing what the old-timers and pioneers of Montana are doing to-day, building towns and founding cities. In the Eastern pioneer States where a few straggling hamlets were first fashioned by the efforts of the early emigrants, there are thousands of towns and cities, where the unpretentious log cabins and town sites were no more inviting than those of the early settlers of Montana. ”

“ In 1858 the Pike's Peak gold excitement caused a rush from the East to Colorado, and a camp was pitched at the junction of Cherry Creek and the Platte. From this small beginning sprang Denver, the "Queen City of the Plains." Beautiful in situation, with the great range of the Rocky Mountains towering in the west, and the illimitable plains stretching 600 miles to the Missouri River on the east, Denver is worthy of the attention and admiration of all who behold it. ”

“ The older the country has become, as a rule, the more obnoxious has been the vegetation that the soil has produced of its own accord. But there has been in my recollection, which goes back more than seventy years, a great many changes in the crops of vegetation on those lands, showing to my satisfaction that there is an inherent potency in nature, in rich soil that will cover itself every year with a growth of some kind. If it is not cultivated and made to produce fruit, vegetables, and cereals, it will nevertheless produce a crop of some kind. ”

“ Majors certainly need hardly be written, unless it be to refer to the author in a way that his extreme modesty will not permit him to speak of himself, for he is not given to sounding his own praise, being a man of action rather than words, and yet whose life has its recollections of seventy years upon the frontier, dating to a period that tried men's souls to the fullest extent, and when daring deeds and thrilling adventures were of every-day occurrence. Remembrance of seventy years of life in the Far West and amid the Rocky Mountains! ”

“ These are the famous cemeteries of the far West. There are no granite shafts or beautiful emblems carved in marble. Heroic men and women! They died unknown to fame and honor, but they gave their lives that a new civilization and a new empire might be born in the far West. The brave men, North and South, who fell in battle, have their graves marked "unknown" when they could not be identified, but no one knows where sleep the thousands who died on these trails. ”

“ It was the beginning of making graves on the plains and in the mountains, but time, wind, rain, and sand made them unknown.
Many thousands perished on the old-time trails to Santa Fé, the Rocky Mountains, and the Pacific Coast. Exposure, sickness, thirst, starvation, and massacre were the dangers the immigrants had to face. Many of their graves were marked with slabs, but the inscription was soon effaced. These graves are as unknown in the great ocean of plain, prairie, and mountain as though the pioneer dead had been buried at sea. ”

“ In settling the Mississippi Valley, when bear's meat was such a factor in the way of food, each of the frontiersmen kept a pack of dogs—all the way from three to half-a-dozen—partly for bear hunting, which was a very exciting sport, in fact the most of any other game hunting. I have been long and well acquainted with the courage shown by dogs in hunting and fighting game, and there is nothing I ever saw a dog undertake that arouses his courage so much as a contest with a bear. The dog seems to think a fight with a bear the climax of his existence. ”

“ State, young as she is to-day, has more towns and cities than such old and well developed States as Wisconsin, Illinois, or Minnesota had at a period in their history at which they might easily have expected to be far better developed, as regards population, than Montana could reasonably expect.
A half-century marks the time when the great Chicago of to-day was Fort Dearborn, planted, as it were, on a boundless prairie to watch a few blanketed Indians and traders at the mouth of the Chicago River. ”

“ When we look at these facts, that are matters of history and can not be gainsaid, is it not plain to every man of common sense, that the policy of the Government for the last quarter of a century has been in the interest of capitalists and speculators, and against the interest of the producing classes, who, either directly or indirectly, must pay the interest annually on this vast accumulation of wealth that is in the hands of the favored few? ”

“ Many of the babies lived that were born on the California and Oregon trails, but the saddest of all was when the pioneer mother and babe were added to the thousands of nameless graves. The death-couch was a pile of straw and a few blankets in an old freight wagon. If the angels ever hover over the dying, there never would have been a more appropriate place for their ministrations. ”

“ At these buttes just before sunrise the famous cantilever bridge which spans the Colorado River near the Needles, seventy miles distant, is plainly visible, together with the moving trains and crew. The train has the appearance of being perhaps an eighth of a mile distant, and every motion on board, the smoke, the escaping steam, are as natural and vivid as though not a hundred yards away. ”

“ The doctor has been a most extensive traveler, in this country and abroad, and yet each year, for a couple of weeks, entertains as his guests the tribe of Winnebago Indians, of whom he is still the medicine chief, and who make a pilgrimage to see him, consult him as to the affairs of their people, and show him devoted respect during the time they are encamped upon his grounds, where he has a place set apart for them.
A handsome man, of splendid physique, one who has known a strange life of adventure, he is yet as gentle as a woman, and ever generous to those with whom he comes in contact ”

“ Forty or fifty years ago the plains were swarming with buffalo. I have often seen droves so large that no eye could compass them. Their numbers were countless. The Indian hunter riding bare-backed would guide his horse headlong into the midst of the herd, singling out the fattest and in an instant sending the deadly arrow clean through his victim. In a single day's hunt they sometimes killed 3,000 to 4,000 buffalo. The dead bodies would lie scattered over the prairie for miles. It required the greatest diligence to save the skins and dry the meat for use in winter. ”

“ With the inborn gift of a perfect borderman, Buffalo Bill led armies across trackless mountains and plains, through deserts of death, and to the farthest retreats of the cruel redskins who were making war upon the settlers.
Buffalo Bill has never sought the reputation of being a "man killer." ”

“ He was the first president of the first national bank in the city, and was ever ready to aid, by his means, and counsel, and enterprise, the furthering of Omaha's interests. He commanded the confidence of all the people, his sterling integrity and unwavering fidelity combining with his generous and charitable nature to make him a very lovable man. No man has an unkind word to say of Edward Creighton, and his memory is revered to this day as an upright, just, and kind man, who, out of his own sterling qualities, had wrought a successful and honorable career. ”

“ Some, in a too-pronounced enthusiasm, have declared it to be a wonder in architecture—a triumph in its way—as something grand, almost marvelous in its conception. It is not. There is little that is exceptionally remarkable about it. True, there is much to impress one, but it is rather its bigness and general appearance of solemnity than anything else. Then there is something in its historical associations, the great difficulties overcome, and the great zeal displayed in its construction that inspires admiration. ”

“ Exposed to snow, sleet, and rain, with no shelter but a buffalo robe, and at times with starvation staring him in the face, the chances seemed slight indeed of ever coming [120] out alive. During his experience in the West he met Fremont in his expedition through the mountains, saw Brigham Young on the Platte River as he was on his way to found a Mormon empire, passed through the stormy period of the Mexican War, the California gold excitement, the Civil War, and witnessed the opening of the Pacific Railroad, and the mighty influx of population on the plains of the great West. ”

“ Although I have seen a great many bears of the Rocky Mountains, and have had some little experience with the cinnamon, the brown, and the silver-gray bear, I am not as familiar with their modes of life as I am with those of the black bear that were found in such numbers in the Mississippi Valley when the white people first emigrated to that country. Bears of the Rocky Mountains, and especially grizzly bears, are very much larger than black bears, and, as far as I have been able to learn from those who have hunted them, their meat, as food, does not compare with that of the black bear. ”

“ Men in those days who came to Missouri and looked at the land often declined to select a home in the State on account of their having no market for their products, as above stated, everybody producing all that was needed for home consumption and often a surplus, but were so far away from any of the large cities of the country, without transportation of either steamboats or railroads, for it was before the time of steamboats, much less railroads—for neither of them in my early recollections were in existence—to make them channels of business and trade. ”

“ Whether rich or poor the old gold hunter often sees wealth ahead in his last hours. And, perchance, through the fading light on the mountain peaks, may he not see a trail leading to a city where the streets are golden? Who knows?
In 1849 and 1850, all along the trail of the overland freighters' route, were scattered unknown graves, clear into California, my dear father being one of the pioneers who died and filled an unknown grave. In the fall of 1850, on the east bank of the San Joaquin River, he died of cholera, and was buried, and his grave is unknown. ”

“ As a rule those faithful friends and protectors of our race have not been appreciated, more especially, as above stated, in the settlement of the frontier, for without them it would have been impossible for the pioneers to have saved their stock and poultry from the ravages of the wild beasts. I could write a volume upon the sagacity, faithfulness, and intelligence of these remarkable animals, as during my life in the Wild West I learned to fully appreciate them. ”

“ I have always been a great admirer of a good dog, but my knowledge of them is a general one, such as you and a great many other Western men have. I have never made him a scientific study, but I think he is the only domestic animal, and I don't know but the only animal that takes a joint ownership in all of his master's property so far as he can comprehend it, whether it be personal, portable, or realistic; in other words, the man owns the dog and his other property, and the dog seems to claim or own the man and all of his other effects, so far as he can comprehend them. ”

“ After a deep snow had fallen, I had provided myself with some bread, a piece of fat bear meat, and a little salt, and some corn for my horse, and unaccompanied, except by my horse and four dogs, I [210] started out to try and kill a bear. On reaching that part of the mountains where I expected to find them, I came across a number of trails, and soon found one which I knew must have been by a very fat bear. Hunters know by the trail whether the bear is fat, for if fat he makes two rows of tracks about a foot apart, while a lean bear makes only one row of tracks, similar to that of a dog. ”

“ The emigrants and gold-seekers were population in transit. Their burial-places were as fleeting. With the building of new towns and cities were established cemeteries, but there still continued to be the thousands of unknown graves. A father, brother, husband, or son dies away from home. His name may not have been known, or if it was, the pencil-marks on the pine board soon lost their tracing in the weather-beaten changes that time brings. How often in my own experience in the mining camps I have seen men die far away from the tender and loving care of mother, wife, and sister. ”

“ A white man's graveyard is a new thing for the West. There are many thousands among the 17,000,000 people west of the Mississippi River who can tell of the days when Kansas City, Omaha, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Denver, Salt Lake, Galveston, Dallas, Helena, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle hardly had a cemetery. Even St. Louis and New Orleans have been American cities less than a century.
But during all this time many millions have been added to the silent cities of the dead in the East, and the older the cemetery the more there is to it that is new to a Western tourist. ”

“ The beaver, considered as an engineer, is a remarkable animal. He can run a tunnel as direct as the best engineer could do with his instruments to guide him. I have seen where they have built a dam across a stream, and not having a sufficient head of water to keep their pond full, they would cross to a stream higher up the side of the mountain, and cut a ditch from the upper stream and connect it with the pond of the lower, and do it as neatly as an engineer with his tools could possibly do it. ”

“ Instead of returning, as the most of the gold-seekers intended to do on leaving their homes, they found California a delightful climate, with rich and fertile valleys, and many, very many of them concluded, after having a year's experience in the country, to become citizens, and a little later in the fifties, there were a great many people in the Western States who sold their homes and started with their families for the golden shores of the Pacific—in other words, for California—in view of adopting that State for their future homes. ”

“ The fact that so much has been accomplished without the experience and skill so essential to success in every country is the strongest possible evidence that the natural elements are here in the right combination and ready to do their part, and more, to win for the Centennial State a greater distinction as a fruit producer than has for years been hers as the silver queen. ”

“ In the wild excitement of a new mining camp boom, people rush in by the hundreds and thousands. Many have only enough money to get there, and are compelled to sleep on the sawdust floor of the saloons. Thus they caught cold, which turning into pneumonia often proved fatal. And the cowboys—how often on the long Texas-Montana drives they have dug a hasty grave and with the lassos lowered their dead pard into it. ”

“ Who, in cultivating roses, has not spiritually felt the better for it? The subtlety of its fragrance, the grace of its form, the perfect harmony of its tones appeal to the imagination like music to the soul. In the whole range of nature's variety and completeness nothing so satisfies the idea of perfection as the rose. ”