On the river, twelve miles above its mouth, at a point accessible from the Columbia by small steamboats, stands the little village of Lewiston, which, at the time of which I write, was the capital of all the vast Territory that had been just organized under the euphonic name of Idaho. This Territory then included Montana and Wyoming, which had not been organized. Lewiston, being the nearest accessible point by water to the recently discovered gold placers of Elk City, Oro Fino, Florence, and Warner Creek, grew with the rapidity known only to mining towns into an emporium. In less than three months from the time the first immigrants commenced to establish a settlement there, several streets of more than a mile in length were laid out, thickly covered on either side with dwellings, stores, hotels, and saloons, chiefly constructed of common factory cotton. A tenement of this kind could be extemporized in a few hours. The frame was of light scantling or poles, and the cloth in most cases fastened to it with tacks. Seen from a distance, the town had the appearance of being built of white marble, but truly
“’T is distance lends enchantment to the view,”
for upon entering it the fragility of the material soon disabused the vision and the admiration of the beholder. At night, when lights were burning in these frail tenements, a stranger would think the town illuminated. The number of drinking and gambling saloons was greatly in excess of stores and private dwellings, and to nearly all of these was attached that most important attraction of a mining town, the hurdy-gurdy. The sound of the violin which struck the ear on entering the street, was never lost while passing through it, and at many of the saloons the evidence of the bacchanal orgies which were in progress inside was often apparent in the eagerness exhibited by the crowd which surrounded the building without. The voices of auctioneers on the street corners, the shouts of frequent horsemen as they rode up and down the streets, the rattle of vehicles arriving and departing for the miners’ camps, troops of miners, Indians, gamblers, the unmeaning babble of numerous drunken men, the tawdrily apparelled dancing women of the hurdy-gurdys, altogether presented a scene of life in an entirely new aspect to the person who for the first time entered a mining town. It is a feature of modern civilization which cannot elsewhere be found, search the whole world over. The thirst for gold is shared by all classes. Those who are unwilling to labor, in their efforts to obtain it by less honorable means, flock to the mines to ply their guilty vocations. Hence there is no vice unrepresented in a mining camp, and no type or shade of character in civilized society that is not there publicly developed. The misfortune is, as a general thing, that the worst elements, being most popular, generally preponderate.