Uncle Kit said, "Why don't you throw the stuff on the ground? If you don't want it yourselves, do not waste it by throwing it in the creek. Someone else may want it."
One of them said, "I had not thought of that," and they threw the flour and bacon and coffee and other small packages of food on the ground.
There must have been as much as twelve hundred pounds of provisions laying on the ground when they got through, and I saw the contents of two other wagons share the same fate that same day. How long that stuff lay there I do not know. We left there the next morning, and I noticed that it had not been touched.
I never saw so many discouraged-looking people at one time as I saw in those wagons that were camped around Clear creek. I visited a number of camps where six or eight men would be sitting around a little fire talking about their disappointment in not finding gold to take home to their families, and some of them were crying like children as they said the expense of fitting out their teams and themselves had ruined them financially.
This spot on Clear creek seemed to be the turntable for the gold-seekers. They either went up the mountain to the mines or became discouraged and turned around and went home, and I do not believe that one out of ten ever left the creek to go up the mountain.
The way from Clear creek to the mines at Russel's gulch was through the mountains, with nothing but a trail to travel on and the roughest country to try to take wagons over I ever saw.
I do not know how many miles it was, but I do remember that we had a hard day's ride from Clear creek to Russel's gulch, and we did not ride a half a mile without seeing more or less wagons that had been left beside the trail, and in many of the broken wagons the outfit that the owner had started with was in the wagon.
[Illustration: I bent over him and spoke to him, but he did not answer.]
CHAPTER XII.
The night we struck the mines, we camped near the head of Russel's gulch. The next morning, after we had eaten our breakfast, we started out to take a look around, and Bridger said, "Where in the name of common sense do these people come from?" For look in any direction we would, there was a bunch of men with pick and shovel slung over their backs, and every little while we came on a bunch of men digging a hold in the ground.