Perhaps the most fascinating pages of American history are those which recount the annals of the discoveries of gold and silver. No one can appreciate the magnitude of those various movements by a simple perusal of statistics of the mineral wealth which they disclosed. He must pass through the mining belts and note how almost every rod of ground, over vast tracts of country, is filled with prospect holes that attest the miner's former presence. If the trapper carried the tools of his trade to haunts remote and inaccessible, the miner, with his pick and shovel, certainly outdid him. One can readily understand that, as soon as such a movement should be directed toward the region of the Upper Yellowstone, the wonders of that region would speedily be revealed. The presence of gold in the mountains of Montana was first noticed as far back as 1852. Later, in 1858, the Stuart brothers, James and Granville, founders of Montana, discovered gold in the Deer Lodge Valley; but they were destitute of equipments, and so constantly exposed to the hostility of the Blackfeet, that they went to Fort Bridger in the south-west corner of Wyoming, and did not return until late in 1860. It was in 1860 and 1861 that the rich mines on the Salmon and Boisé rivers were discovered. In 1862 the tide of discovery swept across the mountains into Montana. The rich mines on Pioneer Creek, the Big Prickly Pear, the Big Hole River, North Boulder Creek, and at Bannock and other points, became known. Although there were scarcely a thousand people in Montana in the winter of 1862-3, the news of the great discoveries marshaled a host of immigrants ready to enter the territory in the following spring. These were largely re-enforced by adventurers from both the northern and southern states, who, with little credit to their courage or patriotism, sought in these remote regions exemption from the tributes and levies of war. The immigrants were welcomed in the spring of 1863 by the news of the discovery of Alder Gulch, the richest of all gold placers. The work of prospecting, already being pushed with vigor, was stimulated to an extraordinary degree by this magnificent discovery. Prospecting parties scoured the country in all directions, often with loss of life through the Indians, but rarely, after the first two or three years, with any substantial success. Some of these expeditions have a particular connection with our narrative because they passed across portions of what is now the Yellowstone Park.