TWO GOLD REGIONS by Editor

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 23, 1859

TWO GOLD REGIONS.

By Editor

"THE PIKE'S PEAK DRAMA."

"THE scenes enacted on the plains of Kansas, in consequence of the explosion of the Pike's Peak humbug, are of the most tragic, as well as touching character. The Postmaster at Denver City, says a correspondent of the N. Y. Evening Post, was accused, tried and convicted of tampering with the mails, of opening letters, distributing false reports, purporting to be from the miners to their Eastern friends. A father was astonished by the arrival of his son, to whom he had written a true statement of the poverty of the mines, and his own intention of returning at the earliest opportunity. Upon inquiring the cause of his starting, the son showed him a letter purporting to be from himself, and instructing him to make arrangements to leave immediately for Denver City. The disguised handwriting was proved to be the Postmaster's, and the father charging him with the deed, he confessed its truth, and was shot dead on the spot. A well known contractor living at St. Joseph, is also reported to have been shot by some infuriated victims of his falsehoods. A party going out had determined to return, on account of the discouraging reports brought by the reflex tide of emigration, when they met a man who had the hardihood to assert that he had four hundred dollars' worth of gold dust in his possession. He was offered a hundred dollars an ounce for all he would produce, and failing to exhibit it upon this inducement, they told him if he did not disgorge they would shoot him, upon which he confessed that he had none, never saw so much as a thimble full, and only made the statement to induce the emigrants to continue their journey. It is said that large meetings have been held by the miners, at which resolutions were passed, calling for the entire destruction of all the frontier towns which had been instrumental in raising the excitement, from St. Joseph to Kansas City! All editors are to be exterminated.

"The returning emigrants are compelled to resort to all manner of expedients to raise money to pay their passage down the Missouri, or even to keep themselves from starving. Many are working on the farms along the route for their board; some trying to get positions as drivers in the Salt Lake mail train, and others waiting for starvation. Cattle are sold at a merely nominal price, wagons burned for firewood, or left by the wayside, and pistols, rifles and arms of every description given for a meal of corn bread and bacon, and a drink of whisky."

What a comment is this on the cupidity of mankind, and the slight inducement on which they will embark their all in the prospect of a trifle of earthly gain. To justly estimate this Pike's Peak movement which, like a wave has rolled over the whole land, it is necessary to take into consideration a fact or two. 1. The reports from that locality have ever been contradictory. There has not been a time when there has not been an outstanding contradiction of all the favorable representations that have come from that quarter; hence, 2. Faith in the success of the enterprise on the part of those who embarked in it, could not be implicit. They must have had some misgivings as contradictory statements, of the truth of which they had no power of judging, were reported to them. And, 3. Even if the favorable reports were all correct, and the adverse ones all false, and it were certain that all who went there would succeed in obtaining a quantity, greater or less, of sordid gold, what then? They would only obtain a perishing bauble of this world, a little earthly gain, subject to all the casualties of this mortal life. And yet, under all this uncertainty, and for this meager prospect, the fact that favorable reports outnumbered or overbalanced the unfavorable, was sufficient to induce men to embark their all in the enterprise, part with houses and lands, endure the privations, the toils and hardships of a perilous journey and a miner's life.

The Pike's Peak humbug has exploded. We have abundant occasion to notice the sacrifices men will incur in a scheme liable to such an issue. But our heading promises to speak of another region in contrast with this. We gladly turn to it. It is a region from which no contradictory reports have ever come. There is but one testimony respecting it, and that is from the lips of inspiration itself. It is a region that the chilly hand of death never visits, and the treasures we secure there are not subject to the casualties of this mortal life. There is the gold that never fades. And the representations we have of it are not the forgeries of fraudulent post-masters, and interested villains banded to deceive us. And yet how few are in earnest search after these durable riches? How few are looking forward to the recompense of reward—the harp and crown of gold, as motives of present action. How few are willing to comply with the conditions on which they hang, or endure the sacrifices necessary to obtain them. Yea, and even those professing to esteem the interests of the Redeemer's kingdom paramount to everything else, will make a greater effort, and show more zeal, in making their way to Pike's Peak, or some such region, than they will to bear the burdens and crosses that lie in the line of their journey to eternal life.

What can we infer from these facts? Simply this: that people have more real, living, implicit faith in the contradictory reports from Pike's Peak, than they have in the promises of God. For as a man believes, so will he act. And thus we have tangible evidence that love for gold triumphs over love for Christ.