The Covered Wagon

NOT so many years ago the Mississippi River was the far edge of the United States. Beyond the Mississippi it was wild, wilder, wilder-ness. Few people had ever been all the way across our country to the Pacific Ocean. There were wild Indians, wild animals, and high, high mountains in the way.

Why did people want to go across the country anyway, and what sort of people were they? They were hunters who wanted to hunt wild animals, they were missionaries who wanted to make the Indians Christians, and they were people who were just inquisitive and who wanted to see what the wilderness was like.

Then one day a man told another, that another man had told him, that another man had told him, that still another man had told him that he had found gold in California, a land way off on the edge of the Pacific Ocean—plenty of gold; all you had to do was to dip it up in pans out of the rivers and pick it out of the sand and water.

Gold! Gold! It was almost as if some one had cried Fire! Fire! Thousands of people dropped their tools, stopped their farming, shut up their shops, loaded their beds and cooking things on wagons, put a cover over the wagon so that they could live under it as under a tent, took along a gun, and rushed for the Far West to hunt for gold. There were no roads, there were no bridges, there were no sign-boards to tell which was the right way—it was just wild, wilder, wilder-ness. For months and months they traveled. Many of them died of sickness, many were killed by the Indians, many were drowned in crossing rivers, many lost their way and died of starvation or of thirst—but many also, at last, reached California, found gold just where they heard it was to be found, and made their fortunes. This was in the year 1849, so these people who went West were called “Forty-niners.”