tortion” of the Express Company. The agitation culminated in indignation meetings and the passage of resolutions denouncing the Company and threatening the use of force to compel a more reasonable charge. For several days crowds gathered in front of and inside the Express Office on the arrival of stages, demanding their letters without offering to pay anything. I stood by my friend, the Express Agent, behind the counter, and it looked twice as though he would have occasion to defend himself against violence. Fortunately, a compromise was reached, in pursuance of which the charge was reduced to ten cents. It was done away with altogether when, before the end of the summer, the Government entered into a contract with the Company for the transportation of the mails.
Late in the summer, the arrivals from the East almost ceased and a return tide set in—that is, a homeward migration which steadily gained in numbers, so that, in the early fall, it looked as though the country would rapidly lose most of its population. This was not surprising, for four out of every five of the immigrants had come without means, and in the expectation that, by the simple use of their hands and ordinary implements, they could quickly gather fortunes from placer diggings. But the truth was, that the alluvial auriferous deposits were very limited and quickly exhausted, and that the precious metals in the Rocky Mountains were buried in veins of quartz and galena, the successful working of which required capital and costly mechanical appliances that had to be brought from the East. Only a few small quartz-mills had been hauled across the Plains and set up in the mountains. Unavoidably, under the circumstances, the bulk of the gold-seekers were doomed to disappointment, and sought their way back to the States as best they could. It turned out that the entire yield in gold and silver in 1859 from the Pike's Peak region did not exceed three-quarters of a million, while many millions had been sunk in outfits and wasted labor to secure this meagre result.
