“We then packed up and continued that long and terrible journey. We traveled nights and rested part of the day. In that way the Indians following our tracks would almost overtake us, but we would get ahead again during the night. We suffered hardships that can never be told. We took only eight days’ provisions along after the battle, and that was soon consumed. One night we had nothing to eat. Then Stuart killed an antelope. The next day we had nothing but a fawn two or three days old, which made us all sick. After that we had plenty of buffalo meat, and for eight or ten days we had nothing else, and only alkali water to drink. For a long distance we traveled through snow two or three feet deep and would sometimes sink down into pools of ice water. While crossing the Big Horn range we were wet nearly all the time. We hadn’t been able to buy boots or shoes at Bannock and had nothing on our feet except moccasins. Crossing the Big Horn mountains we were guided by the stars, changing our course a good deal.
“We struck the Wind river above the canyon and followed it up, going in a southerly direction. Bell complained of pain all the time, so we could only go at a walk. When we crossed the divide we saw emigrant wagons on the road twelve miles away. Hauser felt so overjoyed he tied his handkerchief to a stick and hurrahed. Then we traveled rapidly along towards the road, which we soon reached. The emigrants thought we were Indians; we were so black and dirty, and they came out to fight us. We soon convinced them that we were all right. They let us have flour, potatoes and everything we wanted. They didn’t want to charge us, but we had plenty of money and so paid them for what we obtained. We went on to Pacific Springs, on the California road, by the Snake river to Bannock, which we reached sometime in June. We left Bell at a soldiers’ station, where the bullet was extracted, and he remained until he had recovered.”
Mr. Vanderbilt has made his home for several years past in New York state, but recently he returned to this state, where he has met many of his old-time friends. He says that the changes made in the “Rockies” by “Then and Now” are great, but that the old mountains that he used to climb in search of gold are the same; and that the high peaks that reached to welcome him back to his old camping ground are the same “now” as they were “then,” otherwise he would have thought that he was still in the East.
Robert Vaughn.
Nov. 14, 1899.
FROM ALDER GULCH TO LAST CHANCE.
Having remained in Alder gulch all summer working in the mines for Boon and Vivian at ten dollars per day in gold dust, in December, 1864, four of us made a bargain with a man who had two small Mexican mules and an old spring wagon, to take us and our baggage to the new gold mines called Last Chance (now Helena). It was understood that we were to walk, and help the mules (or “Jerusalem ponies,” as one of the boys called them) up the hills. The little animals were not over thirteen hands high, and would weigh about 400 pounds each. We came down the Prickly Pear creek, where now the Montana Central railway is. “Then” there was no town of Clancy, nor a quartz mill nor a smelter on the creek; not a sound could be heard there, except that of the pick of the prospector on the mountains, hunting for gold. We kept on the trail until we got to the new Eldorado, where several hundred miners were at work; many were taking out gold in great quantities, others were prospecting their claims.
Before going any further we will stop a minute and listen to “Now” telling a short story in connection to the creek referred to. “A few days ago I was invited to go to the roundhouse at this place to see two new locomotives which had just arrived from the East. They were the largest in weight and dimensions ever built in any country up to that time, each weighing one hundred and fifty-four tons. Mr. Bruce, the master mechanic at the railway shops, informed me that they were to run on the Montana Central railway from Clancy, on Prickly Pear creek, and over the Rocky Mountain divide. Although this is one of the heaviest pulls in the country, the big engines each are to draw six hundred and seventy tons. Several hundred passengers are drawn over this divide every twenty-four hours, besides about seven thousand tons of freight, principally coal from Cascade county to Butte and Anaconda, and copper ore from the Butte mines to the copper smelters and refiners at the falls of the Missouri river, near Great Falls, and lead and silver ores to the East Helena smelter.