CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
Half a century or less ago, the people then active in the world were unable to move from place to place more rapidly than in the days before the Christian era. The fickle winds drove ships out of their course and baffled their efforts to hold on their way to their destination. On land the rapidity of progress from place to place was measured by the fleetness of a horse. The steam-engine was in its infancy; the telegraph and other electrical devices were only known through the fable of the singing tree and the talking fountain in the tales of the Arabian Nights; glittering gold still lay unheeded and unseen in the beds of California streams.
The great peaks of the Rockies towered into the clouds, their grandeur and beauty unknown to a world which had not then heard the sound of the waters thundering down the cliffs of the Yosemite, a rival of Niagara. Amid the beauties of the Garden of the Gods reigned a stillness as profound as that which pervaded the Garden of Eden before the creation of man.
But already the fearless and restless white man was on discovery bent, and, with his face turned always toward the setting sun, one by one the glories of the continent were seen and heralded.
Brev.-Capt. John C. Fremont of the United States Topographical Engineers, with the famous Kit Carson as his guide, was exploring and opening up the great trail which was to connect the two oceans.
The fur traders were settling in the Northwest, and Astoria was coming into notice, while the echoes of Bonneville’s adventures were heard in the Eastern world.
Among the men who found the East growing crowded was Isaac Cody, who was then living in Iowa. He was a fine type of the Western frontiersman, well educated, enterprising, and fearless. Leaving his home, with his family he started across the plains. His journey continued until he reached a point in Kansas near Fort Leavenworth, and here he made camp and proceeded to build a new home.
“Little Billy” was then a boy, living the life and learning the lessons of the plains, while Humboldt was wondering what secrets were hidden in the center of the continent, and the geographical societies of the world were speculating upon the mysteries that lay far beyond the banks of the “Father of Waters.”
At that time this region was as little known and as dark a continent as Africa before the courage of Stanley laid bare its conformation and geography. The Indians had not then been confined to reservations, but were fiercely resisting the encroachments of the white men upon their territory. They disputed, step by step, the advancement to the westward of the borders of civilization with a fiercer, because more ignorant, determination to resist subjugation than is known in the history of the world.
In this atmosphere, and amid such surroundings, this boy grew up, and his rapid development was a natural result of such conditions. Physical exercise in the open air developed his frame, and provided the steady hand and quick eye.