Somewhat more difficult were other articles, such as cook-stoves and the like, shipped not “knocked down.” A piano was one of the odd articles that went into the earliest of the Cœur d’Alene mining camps more than a score of years ago. It was packed on four mules, the piano resting on a sling of poles, which virtually bound the mules together as well as gave support to their burden, two mules going in front and two behind. When the animals became too tired to climb farther, the weight was temporarily lightened by resting the piano on forked sticks thrust up beneath the load. The strange package was taken through in safety, though at a cost of about a thousand dollars. All sorts of articles were shipped in the same fashion, and packages of glassware, cases of eggs, and many such goods customarily made the long and rough journeys in safety.
The charges were made on the weight of the package, including the case or cover in which it was shipped, and it was poor policy on the part of the shipper to pack his goods too flimsily, for the grip of the “diamond hitch” was never a sparer of things beneath it. The hardest article to pack in the mountains was quicksilver. This commodity was shipped in iron flasks, and the first thing the packer did was to unscrew the tops of these flasks and fill the remaining interior space completely with water, in order to prevent the heavy blow of the shifting liquid contents, which was distressing to the pack-horse. A flask of quicksilver weighed about ninety pounds, and it was customary to pack two flasks on each side of a horse or mule, each pair of flasks being fastened in a board frame, which gave facility for lashing all fast, and prevented the wear of the condensed weight against the back of the animal.
Wood, hay, boxes, trunks, indeed almost anything that could be imagined, were common articles of transport in the mountains, and it was at times a bit odd to see a little burro almost hidden under a couple of Saratoga trunks so big that he could neither lie down nor roll over under them. The pack-train might comprise a score or a hundred horses, and the conduct of such a train was no small matter of skill and generalship.
Oxen were often used as pack-animals, the burden frequently being lashed to the horns. An ox could carry a fifty-pound sack of flour on top of its head, though special saddles were sometimes used for ox-packing. On the overland trail to California, cows were sometimes employed as pack-animals, and were often used in harness as draft-animals. Every one knows the story of the carts and hand-barrows of the great Mormon emigration. Under the old Western conditions of transportation, is it any wonder that horse-stealing was regarded as the worst crime of the calendar?
The transportation of paddle and portage, of sawbuck saddle and panniers, however, could not forever serve except in the roughest of the mountain chains. The demand for wheeled vehicles was urgent, and the supply for that demand was forthcoming in so far as human ingenuity and resourcefulness could meet it. There arose masters in transportation, common carriers of world-wide fame.
The pony express was a wonderful thing in its way, and some of the old-time stage-lines that first began to run out into the West were hardly less wonderful. For instance, there was an overland stage-line that ran from Atchison, on the Missouri River, across the plains, and up into Montana by way of Denver and Salt Lake City. It made the trip from Atchison to Helena, nearly two thousand miles, in twenty-two days.[[24]] Down the old waterways from the placers of Alder Gulch to the same town of Atchison was a distance of about three thousand miles. The stage-line began to shorten distances and lay out straight lines, so that now the West was visited by vast numbers of sight-seers, tourists, investigators, and the like, in addition to the actual population of the land, the men that called the West their home.
We should find it difficult now to return to stage-coach travel, yet in its time it was thought luxurious. One of the United States bank examiners of that time, whose duties took him into the Western regions, in the course of fourteen years traveled over seventy-four thousand miles by stage-coach alone. It is the strange part of this vivid history of the West that many men who were prominent and active in its wildest and crudest days are living to-day, fully adapted to the present conditions, and apparently almost forgetful that there ever was a different time. Thus one of the more prominent early wagon-train freighters of Montana, now a prosperous banker of his state, gives a brief description of the old-time industry, which is interesting because at first hand. The freighter-banker goes on to say:
“The wagons were large prairie schooners, usually three or four trailed together, pulled by sixteen to twenty head of the largest oxen you ever saw. It cost one cent a pound per one hundred miles to transport freight. Sometimes, of course, we would get five times this. The danger was from Indians (Sioux and Blackfeet) attacking the trains and the drivers. The herders and wagon boss went armed. The earliest freighting point was from Fort Benton, Montana, to the mines in the Rockies.[[25]] When boats failed to reach Benton, owing to low water, then the teams went below, three to four hundred miles, to haul the freight up. In later times (after the junction of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railways) we transported freight from Corinne, Utah. There were probably one million dollars invested by individuals and companies in Montana. The largest companies were the ‘Diamond R’ Transportation Company, established by Colonel Charles A. Broadwater and three others, and I. G. Baker & Company. The latter company was owned and managed by the writer, and in the summer of 1879 transported over twenty million pounds of freight on wagons for the United States government, Canadian government, and the merchants of Montana.”
A study of the market reports of the old “Montana Post,” published 1864 to 1868, affords much insight into the life and conditions of that time. Commenting upon these facts, our early western resident, Mr. N. P. Langford, remarks:
“The high prices of merchandise in Montana were the natural outcome of great cost of transportation, combined with large profits, owing to the great risks incurred in taking goods through a hostile Indian country. As population increased, the necessity of procuring from the states a sure supply of the necessities of life was uppermost in the minds of the people. With the fortune of Midas, they feared soon to share his fate, and have nothing but gold to eat. But there was no lack of adventurous traders in the states, who were ready to incur the risks incident to a long overland journey, whose successful termination was certain greatly to enrich them.[[26]]