4 



THE USES OF THE CAMEL. 



his continent in the South ; the Malay and Polynesian from the 

 isles of the Pacific ; while the Chinaman came forth like an 

 anchorite from his cell, built a temple for his idols in San Fran- 

 cisco, and joined in a concourse of human tribes such as the 

 world never before beheld." The auri sacra fames was a fever 

 in men's blood — Cape Horn and Magellan were familiar as 

 household words. The narrow belt of the Isthmus of Panama 

 was thronged with an eager, straining multitude. Up against 

 the swift current of the often fatal Chagres river, under broiling 

 suns and drenching rains, they toiled. Along the Gorgona or 

 Cruces road, through mud, such as no army of the Potomac 

 ever dreamed of, they waded, and with unblanched cheeks they 

 faced the pestilence that stalketh at noonday. But that road, 

 which is to be the highway of nations, and which will be 

 worthy of its name — that path, where the traveller from the 

 farthest East, and the traveller from the farthest West, shall 

 meet and clasp hands ; across the American plains, over the 

 Pocky Mountains, along the great central platean, through the 

 gorges of the Sierra Nevada down into California — was un- 

 travelled, because unexplored — unknown. Here and there a 

 hunter or a trapper, — a few adventurous spirits, journeying, like 

 Abraham and Lot, w^estward with their flocks and herds, — these, 

 and the Indians whom we hunted to their inevitable doom, and 

 flying Mormons whom we hounded till they stood at bay, and 

 prospered in the wilderness and made the desert as the rose, 

 were all the sojourners in that magnificent land. 



Years rolled away — ten short, busy years — and in the sum- 

 mer of 1858, Greene Pussell and a party of adventurers, follow- 

 ing up the Arkansas Eiver, came to the country about Pike's 

 Peak, and there found gold. Here was another point of attrac- 

 tion, and the overland travel to Colorado began. Afterwards, 

 but at a long interval, came the silver discoveries of Arizona 

 and l^evada ; then the mineral discoveries of Idaho, Montana, 

 Utah, and JSTew Mexico, flashing suddenly and brightly from hill- 

 side to hill-side, like the fires which bore tidings of Grecian 

 victory in old Homer's song — rather like the breaking of a new 

 day on the mountain-tops, coming from the west, and reversing 

 the order of the sun, and shedding over hill and valley and 

 rolling plain, the light that never was on land or sea." 



The line of travel has set in along this route, and needs only 



