In the meantime, John White and a small party of prospectors had discovered the gold placer in the cañon of Grasshopper Creek which afterwards became Bannack. When the companies of McLean and Russell arrived there, their stock of provisions was nearly exhausted. They went to Deer Lodge, hoping to find a more promising field, and some of them visited the placers on Gold Creek, Pioneer, and at Pike’s Peak Gulch, none of which were equal in richness and extent to the one they had left behind them. They returned to Grasshopper. No provisions having arrived in the country, most of them decided to attempt a return to Salt Lake City. The chance of making a journey of four hundred miles to the nearest Mormon settlements was preferable to starvation in this desolate region. They could but die in the effort, and might succeed. After they had started on this Utopian journey, Russell mounted his horse, followed them, and persuaded them to return. They then set to work in good earnest and found gold in abundance; but, with the fortune of Midas, as their scanty supply of food lessened daily, they feared soon to share his fate also, and have nothing but gold to eat. Just at this crisis, however, their Pactolus appeared in the shape of a large train of provisions belonging to Mr. Woodmansee, and all fear of starvation vanished. The step between the extremes of misery and happiness was, in this case, very short. The camp was hilarious with joy and mirth. Upon the opening of Spring, Russell left Grasshopper on his return to Colorado, where he arrived in safety after encountering dangers enough to fill a moderate volume. For two days, while passing through Marsh Valley, he was pursued by Indians, barely escaping being shot and scalped. His courage was often put to the strongest tests. At Wood River, twenty miles from Fort Lemhi, the Bannack Indians offered him money in large amounts for fire-arms and ammunition. They stole a pistol from him. Accompanied by one Gibson, he went to their camp and recovered it. Some of them were dressed in the apparel of women whom they had murdered, and whose bodies they had concealed in the fissures of the lava beds on Snake River. More than two hundred emigrants had been killed by these wretches the preceding Summer. Russell exhibited specimens of the gold taken from the “Grasshopper diggings,” to his friends in Colorado. The excitement it occasioned was intense, and when the Spring of 1863 opened, large numbers left for the new and promising El Dorado. In the Fall of 1862 there stood, on the bank at the confluence of Rattlesnake Creek and the Beaverhead River, a sign-post with a rough-hewn board nailed across the top, with the following intelligence daubed with wagon-tar thereon: Tu grass Hop Per digins 30 myle ☞ kepe the Trale nex the bluffe On the other side of the board was the following: