CHAPTER V.
THE JOURNEY OVERLAND.
I have seen servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon the earth.
— Ecclesiastes.
California, in 1848, stood on none of the world's highways. It was an isolated amphitheatre, a ^; alley on which the sun was ever setting, far away from civ- ilization and the homes of the gold-worshippers. On one side were seas of land, on the other seas of water. And the water and the land both were vast and bil- lowy, trackless, and often showing their hostility to man each after its fashion. One or the other of thdse seas of desolation, or their equivalent in obstacles, must be crossed before the dragon-guarded treasure could be touched.
Now the journey to the mines, occupying as it did weeks or months, and being made by companies or aggregations of men, women, and children, called forth new phases of human conduct, no less than did life at the diggings. Two days out, whether on plain or ocean, and the pilgrim began to feel himself a new being, the chrysalis from which he had emerged being his late environs. The metal of which he was made was as yet scarcely recognizable, but the fire was a-kindling which should quickly determine it. Therefore it is proper to delineate and preserve characteristic sketches of overland and ocean travel to California durino- the flush times.
And first as to travel overland. The prairie seas were not wholly unknown ; even the prairie schooner
