HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY                              203

eight miles long, and at one point the fluming was thirty-seven rods in
length, among rocks and boulders. For this work he received a half
ounce of gold per day, which he sold for $26 an ounce, Wagner earning.
meanwhile, $8 per day. At the close of the season, the two, with three
strangers, bought a small boat, about 14 feet long, 5 feet wide, and 10
inches deep, which they launched at the head of navigation on the
Missouri river and came down the stream to Omaha, a distance of about
two thousand miles, On this trip, at times, from five to eight days would
pass without their seeing a white face save their own. But Indians were
numerous. From Omaha his trip was continued eastward by railroad
back to Clay county, Indiana, where he spent the winter, In the spring
of 1867 he returned to Helena, Montana, accompanied by a party of
nineteen of “the boys” from about Bowling Green and neighboring places.
In this party were Loyd A. Harris, W. B. Folsom,, Howard Zenor, Will-
iam 0. Gordon, Martin Smith, John A. Matson, Jr., Joseph Reel, and a
number of others, whose names are not now recalled. At an early date
the succeeding fall Mr. Major built a boat at Helena, which he named
in honor of his little daughter “Belle F. Major,” which the party hauled
to a point on the Missouri river thirteen miles north of Helena, accompa-
nied by a number of friends, ladies and gentlemen, to witness the launch-
ing and to bid them godspeed. The start down the river from this point,
175 miles above the falls, was made about the middle of September. On
their arrival at the falls, where there is now a flourishing city, not a soul
was to be seen there. The boat was anchored and a number of the party
left to guard it, while several others walked across the prairie a distance
of fifteen miles to a place called “Antelope Springs,” a station on the
stage line from Helena to Fort Benton, where they hired a man with a
team to accompany them and haul their boat around the falls, for which
service Mr. Major paid him $30 in gold dust, the legal tender of that day
out on the frontier. The next day the party arrived at Fort Benton,
where they spent several days overhauling their boat and laying in sup-
plies for a month’s trip, arriving at St. Joseph, Missouri, some days after
the middle of October. Having sold the boat here for $25, Major
boarded the train for Clay county. The next three years he spent in
Indiana and Illinois, In the spring of 1869 he assumed the charge and
superintendency of the building and operation of a saw-mill on Eel river,
at the old town of New Brunswick, which was of modern make and
capacity, for the cutting of walnut timber, as a specialty. About three
years later, in the spring of 1872, he went back to Montana, where, for
some time, he followed surveying, in the Bitter Root valley, then engaged
in mining for about a year, with his friend John Murphy, in McClellan
Gulch. Late in the fall of 1873, he built another boat, which he christened
“The Sadie Smith,” and again left Helena, as before, but on proceeding
down the river about a thousand miles found it so much frozen that he
sold the boat at Berthold, and hired a squaw-man to take the party of
three to Bismarck, North Dakota, where they took the train for St. Louis,
thence back to Clay county. Again, he returned to Helena, in the spring
of 1875.
    In 1876 he visited the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia, where
he remained thirty-nine days, returning to Montana by way of the Black
Hills and the Big Horn, working at carpentry at Helena until the year
1882, when he was appointed Marshal of the city, and the following year
was elected street commissioner. In 1884 he superintended the construc