[4] JAMES H. LANE of Indiana had served with credit in the Mexican War. He came to Kansas a pro-slavery man, but soon joined the free-State party, in which he obtained much influence—perhaps more than any man in it. Lane was a born leader of men. This explains his advancement in the face of the other fact that he never had the confidence of other eminent free-State leaders. With the agricultural settlers he was strong. Lane's great popularity elected him to the United States Senate from Kansas. In the Rebellion he commanded a brigade. His public and private integrity have been equally called in question. Though once the popular hero of his day, Lane was the product of abnormal conditions and died with them. [5] OSAWATOMIE is a jumbling together of Osage and Pottawatomie. TWO FREE STATES ADMITTED. Minnesota came into the Union in 1858, and Oregon in 1859, thus strengthening it by the addition of two young and sturdy commonwealths, both of which were primeval wildernesses within the memory of men now living. III. THE CROWN OF THE CONTINENT. GOLD IN COLORADO, AND THE RUSH THERE. It had long been predicted by those most familiar with the general characteristics of the Rocky Mountains, that eventually they would be found rich in mineral wealth. One of the earliest and most sanguine advocates of this idea was Colonel William Gilpin of Missouri, whose predictions, when viewed in the light of later knowledge, seem like the gift of prophecy. Reports were indeed more or less current at Salt Lake of the finding of gold among the mountain streams of the Great Basin, as far back as 1848, but all search for it was discouraged by the Mormon leaders as tending to bring upon them a swarm of adventurers whose presence would inevitably work the ruin of their isolated republic, and so render all previous toil and hardship of no avail. We have seen that such reports had reached the Mormons in California, who were preparing to go to Salt Lake in consequence of them. Then, the existence of rich silver-mines among the mountains of New Mexico, which the Spaniards had been working for an unknown period of time, in the rudest possible way, was a thing of common knowledge from the time of La Salle, though the secrecy observed in regard to them effectually shut out inquiry as to whether the business were profitable or not. But California was so long the goal of all seekers after gold, that it was not until her gold-fields began to give out, and people began to ask "What next?" that the great backbone of the continent, over which the emigration had rushed so long and heedlessly, suddenly stopped them with the question, as one might say, "Why not search me?" [Illustration: GATE, GARDEN OF THE GODS.]