Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/316

258 farmer. Among the throng that passed madly into the mountains for gold, and among the throng that drove the wide-horned cattle over the bunch-grass hills, there were a few keen-eyed observers who asked themselves if wheat and corn and potatoes and barley and fruit-trees might not grow on those broad prairies, and especially along the numerous watercourses descending from the Blue Mountains.

A farm here and there at some favourable point beside some favouring stream, followed in two or three years by a flour-mill, then a few apples whose bright red cheeks and fragrant smell showed that the upper Columbia lands could match those of the Willamette, then an experimental wheat-field or barley-field on the high bunch-grass prairies,—and, almost before people realised it, the farmer was standing up beside the miner and the stockman, as tall and broad and important as either. The plough and the hoe and the mowing-machine took their places beside the pick and gold-pan and quirt and schapps and spurs as symbols of Columbia River nobility.

The "boomer" was the logical result of the development of mine and range and farm and garden and orchard. If people were going to eat and travel and raise wheat and cattle, they must inevitably buy and sell. And if they were going to buy and sell, they must needs "boom." The decade of the eighties was the great age of the boom in real estate along the Columbia and its tributaries. Then, as also upon Puget Sound, cities were founded with most extravagant size and expectations—on paper. Farm lands changed hands rapidly. If a man could raise nothing else on his land, he could at least raise the price.