CHAPTER IV
THE OVERLANDERS

WHEN the Cariboo fever reached the East,
the public there had heard neither of the
Indian massacres in Oregon nor that the
Sioux were on the war-path in Dakota.
Promoters who had never set foot west of
Buffalo launched wild-cat mining companies
and parcel express devices and stages by
routes that went up sheer walls and crossed
unbridged rivers. To such frauds there could
be no certain check; for it took six months
to get word in and out of Cariboo. Eastern
papers were full of advertisements of easy
routes to the gold-diggings. Far-off fields
look green. Far-off gold glittered the brighter
for the distance. Cariboo became in popular
imagination a land where nuggets grew on
the side of the road and could be picked
by the bushel-basket. Besides, times were
so hard in the East that the majority of the
youthful adventurers who were caught by the

fever had nothing to lose except their lives.
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