Norfolk High School - Milestone Yearbook (Norfolk, NE)

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We believed that our path would be pleasant and smooth, Our heads we held dauntless and high bove the cloud— It is useless to try the real fact to deny— As engaging young Freshmen we felt rather proud. Great Gold Discoveries. LELIA WINIFRED THOMAS. What kind of history is more romantic, full of adventure aud achievement than the history of the search for, and discovery of gold? Its pages have but little comedy written upon them, for they are narratives of disappointed human strivings and wrecks of human hopes. The heroine in the story is a bewitching will-o-the-wisp and wherever she tarries in her flight, a flock of adventurers is ever ready to follow, regardless of dangers to be encountered. The followers are stalwart, brawny men whose only luggage is a pick over the shoulder and a pan strapped to the back. Russia held the foremost place as a producer of gold in the first part of the present century. But little was known of these Russian mines at that time, for they were owned by the government and worked by convicts and political exiles, their products being used to support the royal household at St. Petersburg. In the Western World, gold was first discovered in California in the last of the forties, just at a time when the world was ready for a progressive movement in the way of colonization; for the means of transportation were greatly

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THE MILESTONE. 25 already discovered. Every addition to knowledge is an addition to human power. And while the philosophers are discovering new truths millions may be propogated among the people. Diffusion then, rather than discovery, is the duty of our nation. Each one of us with a fitting education is capable of adding something to the sum of human happiness or of subtracting something from the sum of human misery. Many great souls among them there are who may become instruments of turning the coarse of nations as rivers of waters are turned. The whole land must be watered by streams of knowledge. It is not enough to have here and there a beautiful fountain playing in palace gardens, but let it come like the abundant moisture of the clouds upon the thirsty earth. The man who does not obtain, or who does not help others to obtain an education is false to the first duties of American citizenship. In this country education is a duty. Liberty rests on the intelligence of the people. Qualification of voters should be as great as the qualification of governors, and come first in the natural order. How can we expect the fabric of our government to stand if vicious materials are daily wrought into its frame work? Education and knowledge, the power to think and enjoy the thoughts of others, have long since transformed a cottage into a palace. In the earliest history of man this impulse began to make noble all who bowed to it. It has ornamented whatever it has touched, and what it has always done it will always do. It displaces nothing of life’s good, but many of its evils. It destroys idleness. It plucks the charm from vice. It quenches the thirst for riches. It brings us nearer to all times and nations and binds us by tender ties to a noble living and a noble death.

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THE MILESTONE. 27 improved by the advent of the locomotive and steamboat. The discovery in California was purely accidental, and is accredited to a Yankee who was engaged in constructing a mill-race. As soon as the discovery was reported, the news rapidly spread and thousands from all quarters of the globe flocked thither. Rivers lined with gold! Mountains of gold! Gold to be had for the picking up! This migration of fortune-seekers soon peopled the wilderness and banished the quiet days which Mexican ranchers look back to with regret. Among the late arrivals to these gold fields was a young Englishman named Hargraves from Australia. He met with only moderate success in accumulating this precious metal but observed the resemblance of the land to some that he had traversed in Australia. Becoming convinced that there was gold also there, he returned to prove his theory. He related it to some of his friends but was laughed at and told that the gold craze had affected his mental equilibrium. In 1851, however, in New South Wales, he mined the first of the millions of dollars worth of gold that was to be taken from the future mines of Australia. This almost unknown land in the Pacific now shared the golden glories that had before belonged to California In 1874, gold was discovered in the Black Hills, and a greater gold fever was experienced than formerly, by the discoveries in either California or Australia. The greater part of these gold-fields were in the Sioux Indian reservations, and the incursion of prospectors caused the Indians to take to the war-path. The Indians met the government troops in a memorable struggle at Little-Big Horn and here Custer and so many of his Command were massacred. As soon as the United States government could arrange for the opening of this territory, thousands of adventurers