Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 1.djvu/126

100 my mind, most promising turn of luck. There was no strong evidence that another California had actually been discovered, but I had heard and read much of the quick fortunes made in the gold-mines on the Pacific Coast, and hence my imagination readily got the better of my judgment, and, while reason protested, I indulged in the contemplation of all sorts of fascinating possibilities for myself. I had visions not only of successful gold-hunting, but of fame and fortune as one of the founders of new towns and States. They were not to be realized in the immediate future, but I think I can truly say that to my apprenticeship as a pioneer in the Rocky Mountains I owed the insight into practical life and the enterprise and energy to which my successes later in my career were largely due. In one respect certainly my anticipations rested on reality, and that was in looking forward to extraordinary personal adventures in the pursuit of my mission.

At the time in question, a string of towns had sprung up on the Missouri River, mainly in consequence of the large Free-Soil immigration into the Territory of Kansas as a result of the political events in 1854-5 within its borders. There was a fringe of settlements, too, for from thirty to fifty miles on each side of the river. But the western parts of Missouri and Iowa were still very thinly populated. Excepting these towns and settlements west of the Missouri, the great rising plains between that river and the Rocky Mountains now forming the States of Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and Wyoming were, but for a few trading-posts, absolutely uninhabited. There was but one railroad then extending from the Mississippi to the Missouri, from Hannibal to St. Joseph, Missouri. St. Louis was connected with this line by the North Missouri road. Railroad building in Iowa had not yet reached the western part of the State. There was another road extending westward from St. Louis, but it was completed for only about a hundred miles, to Jefferson City, the capital of the