Norfolk High School - Milestone Yearbook (Norfolk, NE)

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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

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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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28 THE MILESTONE. rushed into these regions, lured on by tales of untold wealth. The mining camps of Lead, Deadwood, and Custer Cities sprang into existence. In 1877, over a million and a half dollars were taken from these new mines. Scarcely had the Black Hills excitement died out when gold was discovered in South Africa by a trader named Tom McLaughlin who was traveling across the plains of the De Kapp river in Transvaal. These plains are covered with boulders in fantastic shapes and their weird appearance caused the natives to name them the Devil’s Counter. McLaughlin picked up in these regions some bright crystals which proved to be gold quartz. This was the beginning of the boom in South Africa. Its whole history has been a series of surprises to scientists as well as to prospectors. In the heart of South Africa, formerly regarded as uninhabitable, sprang up in 1886 the city of Johannesburg, the industrial centre of South Africa. When in 1867 Alaska was purchased from Russia by the efforts of Secretary of State Seward, the general cry was that the purchase was a waste of money and that the territory would never be anything but a barren, frozen land. This land that was commonly known as Seward’s Folly, is now proving to be one of the richest possessions of the United States. The most pathetic part in the history of gold discover-eries relates to the fate of the men who first discovered the gold. Seldom have any become rich, and most ot them died in abject poverty. Joseph Ladue is an exception to the rule. He is now one of the wealthiest men of the Klondike. Yet many of the original prospectors of the Klondike gold-fields have returned home with scarcely enough money to pay their expenses, and others have returned with gold, but wrecked physically because of hardships endured in a country where the winter lasts ten months of the year. “Quid non mortalia peetora cogis, Anri sacra fames.