There was Rackensack Jim, who could out-roar
A Buffalo Bull, you bet!
He would roar all night, he would roar all day,
And I b'lieve he's a-roaring yet!
One night he fell in a prospect-hole—
'Twas a roaring bad design—
For in that hole he roared out his soul
In the Days of 'Forty-Nine.
Refrain—Oh, my heart is filled, etc.
There was Poor Lame Ches, a hard old case
Who never did repent.
Ches never missed a single meal,
Nor he never paid a cent.
But Poor Lame Ches, like all the rest,
Did to death at last resign,
For all in his bloom he went up the Flume
In the Days of 'Forty-Nine.
Refrain—Oh, my heart is filled, etc.
And now my comrades all are gone,
Not one remains to toast;
They have left me here in my misery,
Like some poor wandering ghost.
And as I go from place to place,
Folks call me a "Travelling Sign,"
Saying "There goes Tom Moore, a Bummer, sure,
From the Days of 'Forty-Nine."
Refrain—But my heart is filled, etc.
Most of the emigrants crossed the plains, encountering dangers and hardships innumerable. The trails were soon marked by the skeletons of horses and oxen, and by the graves of those who had perished from hardship or been butchered by the Indians.
THE OLD SANTA FÉ TRAIL
It wound through strange scarred hills, down cañons lone
Where wild things screamed, with winds for company;
Its mile-stones were the bones of pioneers.
Bronzed, haggard men, often with thirst a-moan,
Lashed on their beasts of burden toward the sea:
An epic quest it was of elder years,
For fabled gardens or for good, red gold,
The trail men strove in iron days of old.
To-day the steam-god thunders through the vast,
While dominant Saxons from the hurtling trains
Smile at the aliens, Mexic, Indian,
Who offer wares, keen-colored, like their past;
Dread dramas of immitigable plains
Rebuke the softness of the modern man;
No menace, now, the desert's mood of sand;
Still westward lies a green and golden land.
For, at the magic touch of water, blooms
The wilderness, and where of yore the yoke
Tortured the toilers into dateless tombs,
Lo! brightsome fruits to feed a mighty folk.
Richard Burton.