100 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



will pay the expenses of the trip, I will take you around, 

 let you see for yourself and invest if you wish, for you will 

 find the chances are plenty." 



We accepted his very reasonable proposition, and tramped 

 and climbed and rode for a week among mountains and 

 mines ; saw gold taken from the stamp mills in the form of 

 quicksilver amalgam, saw it washed from the " putty " banks 

 and caught on the sluice ripples, saw it cradled out of the 

 creek sands and pounded out of crumbling quartz in an iron 

 mortar ; interviewed mine superintendents and day work- 

 men, and were confirmed in the impression that our guide 

 and friend knew what he had previously told us, and that 

 practical mining in the mountains was quite unlike that 

 which is done in the stock markets of New York and San 

 Francisco. Those two young men are now in New England, 

 and successful, in important and responsible positions. 



But, you may ask, are there no contented, happy house- 

 holds, no towns and cities of solid growth ; nothing that is 

 bright and encouraging in a business line, in the West? Yes, 

 we answer, many and much every way ; l)ut that side of 

 the story has been told a thousand times in a thousand ways 

 by all the known methods of creating public opinion. Our 

 path has been behind the scenes, as it were, among the 

 producing classes, who alone create the necessity for towns 

 and cities, and who sustain them ; whose voice the great 

 public rarely hears, and wliose struggles and deprivations 

 are not known or appreciated. Land, as a gift on a wide 

 prairie in the West, costs more, when the comforts and con- 

 veniences of Eastern homes are placed upon and around it, 

 than the same does here. The rich may emigrate to such a 

 locality ; but the poor man or the one in moderate circum- 

 stances, with a family, never should. Within the last few 

 months a great crowd of emigrants have been making a 

 wild rush for Oklahoma, as if pursued by a devastating 

 prairie fire, or a horde of blood-thirsty, screeching savages. 

 That rush was not made because those people were in search 

 of land for homes, and there was none to be had except in 

 Oklahoma, for there were millions of unoccupied acres be- 

 hind as good as those before. Neither has this vast emigra- 

 tion from the East to the AYest been caused by pressure of 



