Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/193

Rh military post, and thence carried forward and distributed by army officers and soldiers. Among the arrivals were many children, made orphans en route, and it was in the interest of these and like helpless ones that Frederick Waymire petitioned congress to amend the land law, as mentioned in the previous chapter. Those who came this year were bent on speculation more than any who had come before them; the gold fever had unsettled ideas of plodding industry and slow accumulation. Some came for pleasure and observation.

Under the excitement of gold-seeking and the spirit of adventure awakened by it, all the great north-western seaboard was opened to settlement with marvellous rapidity. A rage for discovery and prospecting possessed the people, and produced in a short time marked results. From the Klamath River to Puget Sound, and from the upper Columbia to the sea, men were spying out mineral wealth or laying plans to profit by the operations of those who preferred the risks of the gold-fields to other and more settled pursuits. In the spring of 1850 an association of seventy persons was formed in San Francisco to discover the mouth of Klamath River, believed at the