Читать книгу Vigilante Days and Ways. The pioneers of the Rockies; the makers and making of Montana and Idaho онлайн

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Thousands of people, lured by their discoveries, had nearly worked out the placers of Oro Fino during the Summer of 1861. The Pacific world, alive to the importance of a region which promised such great additions to its wealth, kept up a stream of emigration to the placers, which exhausted all the sources of supply more rapidly than they could be filled. The world was there in miniature. Meantime the indomitable prospector kept in the van. Crossing the Salmon River range, he soon unveiled the riches of those placers which afterwards became known as Florence and Elk City. They were immediately occupied by thousands,—and other thousands of the far East, thrilled with the story of their richness, were on their way to the new El Dorado. An hegira similar to that of 1849 again took place across the plains. Lewiston was no longer the base of operations. Among the earliest of those to abandon it for a point more favorable to the prosecution of their enterprise, were the banditti which had so long held its inhabitants in fear. Supplied with horses from the shebang on the Walla Walla road, they departed from Lewiston in small parties, intending to recommence operations at a place afterwards to be selected, in the mountains of the interior.