h, 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. Oro Fino, in Idaho, was old in 1861. The next great strikes were
to be made around Florence. Here the indomitable packer from the West,
conquering unheard-of difficulties, brought in whiskey, women, pianos,
food, mining tools. Naturally all these commanded fabulous prices.
The price for each and all lay underfoot. Man, grown superman, could
overleap time itself by a stroke of the pick! What wonder delirium
reigned!

These events became known in the Mississippi Valley and farther
eastward. And now there came hurrying out from the older regions
many more hundreds and thousands eager to reach a land not so far
as California, but reputed to be quite as rich. It was then, as the
bull-trains came in from the East, from the head of navigation on the
Missouri River, that the western outfitting points of Walla Walla and
Lewiston lost their importance.

Southward of the Idaho camps the same sort of story was repeating
itself. Nevada had drawn to herself a portion of the wild men of the
stampedes. Carson for its day (1859-60) was a capital not unlike the
others. Some of its men had come down from the upper fields, some had
arrived from the East over the old Santa Fe Trail, and yet others had
drifted in from California.

All the camps were very much alike. A straggling row of log cabins or
huts of motley construction; a few stores so-called, sometimes of logs,
or, if a saw-mill was at hand, of rude sawn boards; a number of saloons,
each of which customarily also supported a dance-hall; a series of
cabins or h