Along the Rocky Range
OVER THE DIVIDE
THE hope of finding El Dorado, that animated the adventurous Spaniards who made the earlier recorded voyages to America, lived in the souls of Western mountaineers as late as the first half of this century. Ample discoveries of gold in California and Colorado gave color to the belief in this land of riches, and hunger, illness, privation, the persecutions of savages, and death itself were braved in the effort to reach and unlock the treasure caves of earth. Until mining became a systematic business, prospectors were dissatisfied with the smaller deposits of precious metal and dreamed of golden hills farther away. The unknown regions beyond the Rocky Mountains were filled by imagination with magnificent possibilities, and it was the hope of the miner to penetrate the wilderness, "strike it rich," and "make his pile."
Thus, the region indicated as "over the divide"—meaning the continental water-shed—or "over the range" came to signify not a delectable land alone, but a sum of delectable conditions, and, ultimately,
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