[Illustration: THE RETREAT ON THE COLORADO OF MAJOR JOHN D. LEE, THE MORMON.] Now, commencing with the forties, there was nothing of great moment happened until the great freshet of '44, which was the largest flood that has been known in the Missouri, about the mouth of the Caw, in the last seventy-five years, and I think that there never has been in the history of the country as great a flood in the Missouri at that point. In '46 the Mexican War came up, and produced quite a stir among the business men upon the west border of the Missouri, as at that time there was no Kansas and Nebraska, the whole country being called "the Indian Territory" west of the State of Missouri. The Santa Fé trade, by this time, had become a regular annual business, and men had learned how to outfit wagons and teams so as to carry large amounts of merchandise and Government stores from the Missouri River to Santa Fé, N. M. and when General Donathan organized his regiment of troops, by the authority of the Governor of the State of Missouri, to march to Santa Fé, N. M., he found no trouble, neither did the Government, in securing all the transportation necessary to meet any emergency that might arise, with a plain and well-beaten road the entire route that they had to travel, this road having been opened by the merchant-trains in previous years. In '47 the Mormon leader, Brigham Young, with a company of his elders and members of the church, left the Missouri River in the early spring and traveled 1,000 miles into the interior of the country, and formed a colony in that year in Salt Lake Valley, and named the city that they found Salt City, which proved to be a half-way house, as we might call it, between the Missouri River and the Pacific Coast, which proved of great advantage to the emigrants who left the Missouri in the spring of '49 to reach the gold-fields of California; for it was in '49, or rather the winter of '48, when the placer gold in California was discovered, and it was on this account that '49 became one of the most eventful years of the forties, the Mexican War having closed, and peace negotiations established in '48, which gave the United States the entire domain of the Pacific Coast lying north of the line now dividing Old Mexico from the United States. There were vast numbers of brave and daring citizens from almost every State in the Mississippi Valley who attempted to reach California by the overland route, and at no time, not even during the Mexican War, up to '49, had there ever been any overland travel to compare with that of '49. Tens of thousands of emigrants or gold-hunters left the west border at that time, outfitting themselves, some with ox-teams and some with mules and the best wagons that could be found in the market, loaded to the guards with supplies of food and clothing to make the trip and return, for at that time none of them expected to remain or make their homes in California; if so, it must