The Mexican war went on, the American interests being advanced at every step, and finally the treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo established peace between the two republics, and gave the United States government possession of that vast territory which she coveted with a prescient wisdom, and which it assuredly was the will of God that she should people with her industrious and enterprising sons.
This treaty, which put the Americans in possession of California, was signed in February, 1848, and by a coincidence so extraordinary, that had it been imagined by a writer of fiction, it would have been considered improbable, if not impossible, the discovery of the gold was made within one month from that time. The first gold was found in the lands of that Captain Sutter whom we have already mentioned, on the American Fork of the Sacremento, and almost immediately afterwards in various other localities. The possession of the vast extent of what was so lately Mexican territory, with its framework of society so different to that of the United States, had caused considerable anxiety in the minds of many thoughtful men as to the result. It was feared that many years must pass before a sufficient number of American citizens had settled in these new lands to fuse the old elements into a congruous mass, and that before this should take place bloodshed and disruption might have made the acquired territory a dear purchase. But Providence, who overrules human events for the wisest and best purposes, signally set at rest all these doubts, by permitting the discovery of the gold, which would act as the most tempting lure to call away, not only from the older states, but from the very ends of the earth, a population which would at once sweep away the old influences and begin all anew. Gold, which in so many instances had been a dire curse, was here converted into a blessing.
The tide of emigration set in. In the following year, 1849, 30,000 souls from the United States alone emigrated to California. No outpouring of people in the Middle Ages ever equalled this. We will give a little sketch of this great movement from the graphic and elegant pen of Bayard Taylor, who saw with his own eyes what he describes:—
“Sacremento city was the goal of the emigration by the northern routes. From the beginning of August to the last of December, scarcely a day passed without the arrival of some man or company of men and families, from the mountains, to pitch their tents for a few days on the banks of the river, and rest from their months of hardship. The vicissitudes through which these people had passed, the perils which they had encountered, and the toils they had endured, seem to me without precedent in history. The story of 30,000 souls accomplishing a journey of more than 2,000 miles through a savage and but partially explored wilderness, crossing on their way two mountains equal to the Alps in height and asperity, besides broad tracts of burning desert and plains of nearly equal desolation, where a few patches of stunted shrubs and springs of brackish water was their only stay, has in it so much heroism, daring and sublime endurance, that we may vainly question the records of any age for its equal. Standing as I was at the closing stage of that grand pilgrimage, the sight of those adventurers, as they came in day by day, and the hearing of their stories, had a more fascinating, because more real interest, than the tales of the old travellers which so impress us in childhood.
“It would be impossible to give, in a general description of the emigration, viewed as one great movement, a complete idea of its wonderful phases. The experience of any single man, which a few years ago would have made him a hero for life, becomes mere common-place when it is but one of thousands; yet the spectacle of a great continent, through a region of 1,000 miles from north to south, being overrun with these adventurous bands, cannot be pictured without the relation of many episodes of individual bravery and suffering. Without giving an account of the emigration generally, I will content myself with a sketch of what was encountered by those who took the northern route, the great overland highway of the continent, that very route which we have described Captain Fremont as having opened.
“The great starting-point for this route was Independence, where thousands were encamped through the month of April, waiting until the grass should be sufficiently high for their cattle, before they ventured on the broad ocean of the plains. From the 1st of May to the 1st of June, company after company took its departure from the frontier of civilisation, till the emigrant trail from Fort Leavensworth on the Missouri, to Fort Laramie at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, was one long line of mule-trains and wagons. The rich meadows of the Nebraske, or Platte, were settled for the time, and a single traveller could have journeyed for the space of 1,000 miles, as certain of his lodgings and regular meals as if he were riding through the agricultural districts of the middle states. The wandering tribes of Indians on the plains, the Pawnees, Sioux, and Arapahoes, were alarmed and bewildered by this strange apparition. They believed that they were about to be swept away for ever from their hunting-grounds and graves. As the season advanced, and the great body of the emigrants got under way, they gradually withdrew from the vicinity of the trail, and betook themselves to grounds which the former did not reach. All conflicts with them were thus avoided.
“Another and more terrible scourge, however, was doomed to fall upon them. The cholera, ascending the Mississippi from New Orleans, reached St. Louis about the time of their departure from Independence, and overtook them before they were fairly embarked on the wilderness. The frequent rains of the early spring, added to the hardships and exposure of their travel, prepared the way for its ravages, and the first 300 or 400 miles of the trail were marked by graves. It is estimated that about 4,000 persons perished from this cause.
“By the time the companies reached Fort Laramie the epidemic had expended its violence, and in the pure air of the elevated region they were safe from further attack. But then the real hardships of their journey began. Up and down the mountains that arise in the Sweet Water Valley; over the spurs of the Wind River chain; through the Devil’s Gate, and past the stupendous mass of Rock Independence, they toiled slowly up to the South Pass, descended to the tributaries of the Colorado, and plunged into the rugged defiles of the Tampanozu Mountains. Here the pasturage became scarce, and the companies were obliged to take separate trails in order to find sufficient grass for their teams. Great numbers also suffered immensely for want of food, and were compelled to kill their horses and mules to keep themselves from starvation. Nor was it unusual for a mess, by way of variety to the tough mule-steaks, to kill a quantity of rattlesnakes, with which the mountains abounded, and have a dish of them fried for supper.”
We have already spoken of the assistance rendered to these vast trains of adventurers by the Mormons, then lately settled at their new city on the Great Salt Lake. “Remarkable,” says Bayard Taylor, “must have been the scene which was presented during the summer. There a community of religious enthusiasts, having established themselves beside an inland sea, in a grand valley shut in by snow-capped mountains, 1,000 miles from any other civilised spot, and dreaming only of rebuilding the Temple and creating a new Jerusalem, were aroused by the advance of these vast pilgrim-bands. And indeed, without this resting-place in mid-journey, the sufferings of the emigrants must have been much aggravated. The Mormons, however, whose rich grain lands in the valley of the Utah River had produced them abundance of supplies, were able to spare sufficient for those whose supplies were exhausted. Two or three thousand who arrived late in the season remained in the valley all winter.
“Those who set out for California had the worst yet in store for them. Crossing the alternate sandy wastes and rugged mountain chains of the Great Basin to the Valley of Humboldt’s River, they were obliged to trust entirely to their worn and weary animals for reaching the Sierra Nevada before the winter snows. The grass was scarce and now fast drying up in the scorching heat of midsummer. The progress of the emigrants along the valley of Humboldt’s River was slow and toilsome in the extreme. This river, which lies entirely within the Great Basin, and has no connexion with the sea, shrinks away towards the end of summer and finally loses itself in the sand at a place called the Sink. Here the single trail across the desert divided into three branches, many companies stopping at this place to recruit their exhausted animals, though exposed to the danger of being detained there the whole winter by the snows of the Sierra Nevada. Another large body took the upper route through Lawson’s Pass, which leads to the head of the Sacremento Valley; while the greater number fortunately chose the old and travelled trails leading to Bear Creek and the Yuba, by way of Truckee River, and to the head waters of the Rio Americano.