I suppose the stories told about the wonderful quantity of gold which had suddenly been found in California caused our people to think particularly of that far-off land. When the excitement of getting rich by digging in the earth a few weeks or a few months had in a measure died away, there came tales regarding the fertile soil and the beauty of the country, until nearly every one in Pike County, as well as in the county of the same name just across the Mississippi River in the state of Illinois, much the same as had a fever for moving.
Perhaps that is why the people we met while journeying called all the emigrants "Pikers." You see there were so many from both the Pike counties who went into California in the year 1851, that it appeared to strangers as if every person on the trail had come from Pike County.
"JOE BOWERS"
Then, too, fully half of all these emigrants were singing or whistling that song of "Joe Bowers," which was supposed to have been written by a Piker, and to represent a man from Missouri or Illinois.
Surely every one remembers it. The first verse, and if I have heard it once I certainly have a thousand times, goes like this:—
"My name it is Joe Bowers
And I've got a brother Ike.
I came from old Missouri,
Yes, all the way from Pike."