Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 3, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 June 1859 — EXPLODED HUMBUG. [ARTICLE]

EXPLODED HUMBUG.

The Commissioners’ Court meets next Monday. We are obliged to Mrs. Asa Porter for some early garden vegetables. They were an acceptable present. A letter from Brigadier General Clark, dated Los Angeles May 2, says that Lieutenant Colonel Huffman’s expedition against the Mohave Indians was a complete success. Erastus Hammond requests us to say that his brick yard is in full blast, and that he is prepared to deliver brick in any quantity. His yard is two or three miles southeast of town. The Premium List of the Jasper County Agricultural Society is in type, but believing that there is a material mistake in it, we have laid it over for next week, until we can see the Secretary. A meeting was held at Arizonia City on the Bth ult., expressing strong disapprobation of the course of Congress toward Arazonia, and urgently requesting the co-op-eration of thq citizens throughout the Territory to establish and maintain an independent government. 1 oO”The Messrs. Laßues advertise in an- * other column that they can furnish the Lunar oil and lamps. It makes a good light’ I and is said to be twice as cheap as candles. They offer to talle the lamps back and refund the money to any one finding this not to be so. A fair proposition. CO" A citizen of this place—by the way, a particular frientUef ours—last Saturday topk a worthless dog of his into the country I to poison; but thej dog “played sharp, ’’ came back to town to ‘‘kick the bucket,” and our friend had to procure a wagon to haul the dog out of the corporation limits. His neighbors had many a laugh at the expense of the patent dog-killer. The President and Secretary Thompson left Washington last Monday afternoon for North Carolina. They were accompanied from the White House to the railroad depot by the members of the Cabinet. Buchanan chooses rather a warm season to travel southward. Perhaps he anticipates a cool reception, and will thus be enabled to keep up an euqjuilibrium. The telegraphic reports from Virginia indicate.the election of Letcher (Democrat) as Governor by some 2,000 or 3,000 majority. Governjer Wise was elected by 10,000. As the Slate Journal aptly remarks, “slavery understands too well who are its friends to abandon the true and tried Democracy for the uncertain love of the Opposition. Slavery and Democracy, now and forever, one and inseparable.”

We pretend no power of prophecy, being neither prophets nor the son of a prophet. But somethings can be foreseen and foretold by a mere exercise of the ordinary faculties which constitute the quality known and denominated as Common Sense. We unhesitatingly placed the stamp of humbug upon the foolish Pike’s Peak gold reports, from the very beginning, and our prediction has been verified with remarkable exactness. The very tenor, appearance and style of those reports, bearing upon their face the marks of exaggeration and falsehood. convinced us at once of their fictitious character and speculating design. But credulity holds a large place in the popular mind, and hence the majority of people accepted this apocryphal gold story as fact, and thousands were induced to pursue the ignis fatuus, which has led them to wretchedness, and some to destruction. Like the “South Sea Bauble,” which ruined its thousands, the delusive welcome that came from the plains of the West, to the seekers of gold, has changed into a most heart-rending wail of woe. Thousands of the poor deluded are on their return, and scores are starving on the road. The reports that continue to reach us of the sufferings of the emigrants, and of the straights to which they are driven to keep from starvation, are in the highest degree pitiable and horrible. The cruel and heatless swindlers of St. Louis, and the border towns of Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska, are endeavoring to keep up the fraud, pretending that those who are returning and who give the discourageing account., did not reach the “mines,” but turned back disheartened before they had accomplished half the journey. This is all nonsense, and is only designed to prop up still longer an exploded, cruel and terrible swindle. We publish in another column a graphic, and, we believe, a truthful description of the sufferings of the good-seekers, and the impositions practiced upon them by unscrupu-

ious men. Their hardships are so intense that the government ought to take the matter in hand, and send out provisions to the starving thousands between the Missouri river and Pike’s Peak. -----