ii8 Reminiscences of 



on my neck and face, which confined me to my room 

 for between two and three weeks. Before I fairly recov- 

 ered my usual good health I returned to Boston and, 

 gathering in my fishing rods and guns, started for the 

 distant West in the month of May, 1865. No railroad 

 was then built reaching to the Missouri River from 

 Chicago, excepting the Hannibal and St. Joseph, which 

 was then badly broken up and periodically raided by 

 the holding-out rebels in the State of Missouri. I 

 therefore took the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad 

 from Chicago, which was not then extended nearer 

 than seventy miles to the river, staging the balance of 

 the way to Atchison, and from there by the Ben HoUi- 

 day line of stages to Denver across the unsettled great 

 plains. These stages left daily, consuming from six to 

 seven days en route, travelling day and night over a 

 region where then existed a condition of warfare with 

 the numerous tribes of Indians, banded together in 

 united hostilities against the whites. At this time 

 some ten thousand soldiers were required to keep the 

 route open. The troops employed were largely com- 

 posed of Confederate soldiers taken prisoners during 

 the war, and were designated as Galvanized Yankees, 

 and were so employed in the scarcity of government 

 soldiers, who were required at the front in the great 

 struggle for the preservation of the Union. 



It was necessary to have each stage across the 

 plains accompanied by an escort of mounted soldiers, 

 and even though so protected stages were often at- 

 tacked and driven into the stations existing from fif- 

 teen to twenty miles apart over the way. All the 

 male passengers by the stages carried guns for defence, 

 and constituted in themselves a strong force. In case 



