with settlers' cabins or the white-sheeted wagons of emigrants, were traversed in all directions by files of marching men, and troops of gallant cavalry. Yet this only served to make the whole country more familiar to the people of western Oregon and Washington, and to increase the desire to settle there as soon as the Indian troubles should be over.
Gold hunting east of the Cascades. By this time (1859) there was an additional motive for emigration to the Inland Empire. Even before the Indian war there had been more or less prospecting for gold in the eastern country, and in 1855 discoveries were made at Colville, though at that time little could be done with them. In the years 1857-1858 occurred a rush to Eraser River in British Columbia. For a time it was supposed this region would prove very rich; but soon disappointments crowded upon the Americans who had gone there, and a great outpouring took place. The men who left these mines spread over and prospected large sections of the eastern country, with results only less wonderful than those obtained in California ten years earlier. Rich gold districts were opened near Colville; on the Clearwater, Salmon River, Boise River, John Day's River, Burnt River, Powder River; the Owyhee, Kootenai, Deer Lodge, Beaverhead; the Prickly Pear, and other places. Calif ornians streamed northward as Oregonians had gone south in '48 and '49. Mining camps grew in a few months to towns of several thousand people, and sometimes disappeared quite as rapidly, when richer diggings were opened else
