The mad treasure-hunters of the California mines, restless,
insubordinate, incapable of restraint, possessed of the belief
that there might be gold elsewhere than in California, and having
heard reports of strikes to the north, went hurrying out into the
mountains of Oregon and Washington, in a wild stampede, all eager
again to engage in the glorious gamble where by one lucky stroke
of the pick a man might be set free of the old limitations of
human existence.
So the flood of gold-seekers--passing north into the Fraser River
country, south again into Oregon and Washington, and across the
great desert plains into Nevada and Idaho--made new centers of
lurid activity, such as Oro Fino, Florence, and Carson. Then it
was that Walla Walla and Lewiston, outfitting points on the
western side of the range, found place upon the maps of the land,
such as they were.
Before these adventurers, now eastbound and no longer facing
west, there arose the vast and formidable mountain ranges which
in their time had daunted even the calm minds of Meriwether Lewis
and William Clark. But the prospectors and the pack-trains alike
penetrated the Salmon River Range.
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