Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/261

 REMINISCENCES OF SEVENTY YEARS 253 touch a match to and in five minutes you would have nothing but an irredeemable and irrecoverable heap of ashes. But if you could put all the gold and silver together and melt it down it would be worth just as much as it ever was, less the mintage. Besides, it would give employment to millions of people, that would give us a better market for our produce than all Europe ever has given us. Whenever a man tells me that there is not just as sound metal and just as good metal in silver as there is in gold to make an honest dollar, I will tell you he is either a knave or a fool, and should be either in the penitentiary or the asylum, according to his intellect, for he is a dangerous man in either case. But you must excuse me for getting off the subject every once in a while, but I have to cross the streams whenever I come to them, and every stream develops something new. So when I wish, if anything looms up before me, I will have to disagree and investigate the new subject. But now we are at Independence again, five thousand strong or five thousand weak, if women and children could be con- sidered weak. At least, two-thirds of our company were women and children, and we had a thousand wagons at least. The first thing to do was to organize. We called a repre- sentative meeting, elected a big captain over all, and one little captain over every forty or fifty wagons, each company elected it's own captain and he appointed his lieutenants, etc. But it soon all became etc. and etc. The guard was kept up for some time, and we stopped and started when the captain ordered. He always went on to look out a camping ground, taking into consideration wood, water and grass. My father was captain of a company all the way. He very seldom had anybody with him, though he would sometimes be miles and miles ahead of his company. Sometimes he would meet or overtake big bands of Indians and would always stop and talk with them, and give them more or less tobacco. He must have, given away several hundred pounds of tobacco, which he had laid in for that purpose before he started. The Indians got to know him all along the route.