Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/500

482, clothing, and provisions were required in large quantities and sold at high prices. Lewiston had also sprung up at the junction of the Clearwater and Snake rivers, besides several mining towns in the gold-fields to the east. Nor were mining and cattle-raising the only industries to which eastern Oregon and Washington proved to be adapted. Contrary to the generally received notion of the nature of the soil of these grassy plains, the ground, wherever it was cultivated, raised abundant crops, and agriculture became at once a prominent and remunerative occupation of the settlers, who found in the mines a ready market. But down to the close of 1861, when the John Day and Powder River mines were discovered, the benefits of the great improvements which I have mentioned had accrued chiefly to Washington, although founded with the money of Oregonians, a state of things which did not fail to call forth invidious comment by the press of Oregon. But now it was anticipated that the state was to reap a golden harvest from her own soil, and preparations were made in every part of the Pacific coast for a grand movement in the spring toward the new land of promise.

Before the vivid anticipations of the gold-hunters could be realized a new form of calamity had come.