The new scenes and
associations, the escape from the influence of home and friends, of wife
and children, led some off the dim track, and their restlessness could
not well be put down. Reasonable men could not expect all persons under
these circumstances to be models of virtue. Then the Missouri River
seemed to be the western boundary of all civilization, and as these gold
hunters launched out on the almost trackless prairies that lay westward
of that mighty stream, many considered themselves as entering a country
of peculiar freedom, and it was often said that "Law and morality never
crossed the Missouri River." Passing this great stream was like the
crossing of the Rubicon in earlier history, a step that could not be
retraced, a launching to victory or death. Under this state of feeling
many showed the cloven foot, and tried to make trouble, but in any
emergency good and honest men seemed always in the majority, and those
who had thoughts or desires of evil were compelled to submit to
honorable and just conclusions.
There were some strange developments of character among these travelers.
Some who had in long attendance at school and church, listened all their
lives to teachings of morality and justice, and at home seemed to be
fairly wedded to ideas of even rights between man and man, seemed to
experience a change of character as they neared the Pacific Coast.
Amiable dispositions became soured, moral ideas sadly blunted, and their
whole make-up seemed changed, while others who at home seemed to be of
rougher mould, developed principles of justice and humanity, affection
almost unbounded, and were true men in every trial and in all places.
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