whether it was gold, copper, or brass. This was in 1845 before the discovery of gold in California. One of the gold nuggets was given to a member of the party, who hammered it flat with a hammer on his wagon tire. He threw it into his tool chest and paid no more attention to it. The immigrants were more interested in finding the lost trail to the Willamette valley and securing water for their thirsty children than in discovering gold, so no attention was paid to the stream on which the nuggets had been found. The stream ran in a southwesterly direction, but whether it was a branch of the Malheur river or not the immigrants did not know.
A few years later, when gold was discovered in California, the finding of these nuggets was recalled. When my brothers went to the Oro Fino mines in Idaho, my father said he believed he could guide them to where the gold had been found, in what was called the Blue Bucket mines. One of the immigrants, when asked about finding the gold there, said he could have picked up his blue bucket full of nuggets if he had known it was gold. Several parties were later organized to find the Blue Bucket mines, but they were unable to locate the place.
5
First Passage Over the Barlow Trail
By William Henry Rector
William Henry Rector was always unlucky in his business ventures. In 1845 he sold his flour mill at Independence, Missouri, and left with a party of emigrants for Oregon—to improve his lot. Of the party he says, "It was my thoughts at the start that we would all be like one great and good family of brothers and sisters relying on each other for assistance in times of need and as a common defence against the Indians should we be atacted by them, but in all this I was sorely disappointed, when we overtook the main company they were quarleing holding mettings. makeing new laws and regulations, which ware not respected for one day, many of them would transgress just to show their independance or perverse cusedness. It was a school in which I learned something of the nature of many that I
