picked over; and this fact, together with the commercial advantages of Puget Sound, caused some of the emigrants of these years to go northward in search of homes. The lumber mills gave employment, while the explorations in search of coal, and for other purposes, were bringing to light new farming lands in the rich valleys back from the Sound, where the settlers now began to take claims. But for several years little progress was made in agriculture, flour and seed grain actually being imported from San Francisco at great expense in exchange for a portion of the lumber sent down. The census of 1850 gives mi as the total population north of the Columbia. Three years later a special enumeration showed 3965. In that year, for the first time, Puget Sound drew a considerable part of the emigration to the Northwest, thirty-five wagons crossing the Cascades by a new road which the northern settlers had opened from the Yakima River to Olympia.
Agitation for a territorial government. The people about Puget Sound found themselves completely separated from those on the Willamette, and living as it were in a world of their own. This was due largely to the difficulty of communication between the Columbia River and the Sound. The feeling was strengthened by the fact that all the regular trade of this section was with San Francisco. Since their situation rendered them independent of the Columbia River commercially, they came to believe that their country should also have a separate government. Agitation
