When the Yukon proper was reached, the current was less swift, but the shoals were numerous. More than once we were "hung up" on the bar, each time uncertain how we should get off. No mishap resulted, except once when a hole was jammed into the scow, and we thought we were "goners" for sure; but we effected a landing so quickly that we unloaded our cargo dry.
While I now blame myself for taking such risks, I must admit that I enjoyed it. I was sustained, no doubt, by high hopes of coming out with my "pile." But fate or something else was against me, for mining ventures swept all my gains away "slick as a mitten," as the old phrase goes. I came out over the rotten ice of the Yukon in April of 1901 to stay, and to vow I never wanted to see another mine or visit another mining country.
In two weeks after my arrival home my wife and I celebrated our golden wedding. There was nothing but a golden welcome home, even if I had not returned with my pockets filled with gold.
Since I was then past my allotted three score years and ten, it naturally seemed that my ventures were at an end. But for many of these years I had been cherishing a dream that I felt must come true to round out my days most satisfactorily. I longed to go back over the old Oregon Trail and mark it for all time for the children of the pioneers who blazed it, and for the world. How that dream was made to come true is the story to be told in the succeeding part of this book of pioneer stories.