Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1880-03-18

TTELLIGENCER, THURSDA
THE NORTHWEST. |
Now Country That Has seen "Old
Special Correspondence of the IsTz1LIaExcEl |
FORT CoLvILLE, No. ~
February 18th, 1880.
"Oh, that was in the good old times {; |
then the mines panned out badly, and the
rush stopped quick as 'cayote with his
foot in a badger hole; lots Of us got
'bucked' too. Why this towns nothing
now! We had court house and a Jail !;
every one of these shanties was a store and
saloon when the gold dust was Gathering
in the scale-pans on the counter. Long
strings of 'burros' were packing in the
bacon and -four, and the Pend d. Orville
had two steamboats, on it to take the
trains up the lake there was another boat,
too, away up above all the Columbia
rapids. Cost? l should say so! Why,
this machinery was almost worth its
weight in "yellow' when it got here but
there was money in it when men could
take pan and shake twelve to twenty
dollars a day out of the sand and when,
if you took naturally to managing, a
plant of few wooden boxes and couple
of hundred yards of wooden trough would
start thydraulic,' which Gas soon as the
sand, at night, turned in less than you
paid your hands) could be left to rot,
without sinking capital, like the expen-.
pensive drills, crushers, mills and
blind leads of quartz mining. I"
eyes, those were the times for you
-.'' SHOWS the snow on the Okina-
kane trail? Well have to break it to Wild
Goose Bills. Well good day." and away
spins the cutter ; its pony hitchsd to one
side of fixed double-tree, a necessary ar
| rangement here, when the general use OF
| double teams cuts the roads into two deep
gullies, the dividing ridge scraping the
low axles of the wagons and compelling
frequent changes of the track.
"Come-mica-clatawa, good old Noses,
Comemicaclatawa, good old Moses.
COme-mioa-clatawa.g good old Moses,
Li!-a!-Ille-hee:'
comes floating back on the crisp air.
"Where are you going good old Moses p
Way over in the promised land" (Showing
that either early education cannot be oblit-
Grated or that the Jesuits have been adapt.
ing the popular literature to local use. }
And then cheerily follows:
"Close reefed one day
On the BiScay bay,
An q sQuall abaft the BEAM
For, strange enough, the virus of the salt
sea crops out frequently under buckskin
suit, and the ranchman might astonish you
with his familiarity with the navigation OF
an ocean steamer. Queer we're the com
plications that arose when some years
ago the territorial government pro.
claimed ageneral honeymoon and married,
by one sweeping edict, all the white mer
in the territory with the Indians among
whom they were living-without SO much
as giving them the privilege of refusal,
which even leap year customs accord.
Some decamped, while others philosophi
cally accepted the situation, and the
future "first families of Washington" viii
have less trouble with their Indian descent
than our #. F. VS. of the present day
experience in eking out their slender Poca
hontas strain.
But to resume. This country has seer
an earlier civilization than that by which
it is now being invaded but one who's.
benefits are as unstable as its object
gold-is treacherous for the best of the
diggings soon got panned off (none but
Cinnamon can work them now, and then
some struck north through the Saskatch
evan country, where the sun hardly melts
the ground enough to work a month or two
in summer, and where the remainder of tn
time you are showed in; while the rest of tn
diggings off to the Leadville region, takin!
teams, hackers, and even the best part O
the boat machinery, and leaving only tn
shanties with their high white imposing
two-story fronts, with cornices, balconie
and mock windows, behind which misera
f bic low novels are masquerading. Sec
r from distance these pompous construc
tions look like ,, gigantic andirons, wit
their pretentious faces backed up b.
insignificant, black, battered supports
two opposing lines of rampant fire-dogs
, preparing to battle for possession of tn
| deserted camp.
Not much longer, however, will they b
left masters of the field, for food-tide i
sweeping into the abandoned fel
with another and more endurin
, purpose. This population has com
to stay it is not afraid of work, and mucl
of it is from other new lands farther south
whence it brings experience if nothing else
l The terminus of the steamboat and rail
way, at Walla Walla, throbs with the chat
ing of this current, for the first tim
,, checked by the want of transportation
, gathering its forces here, the flood break
forth from time to time, and strings q
"prairie schooners'' radiate through TIL
north and east their white, sail-lik
wagon covers dotting the rolling buncl
grass prairie to the horizon.
Still there is room, and the CROWN,
), towns demand another class of set
tiers, mechanics of all kinds
= Skilled labor is called for on all sides 70
here is a civilization that will not be salts
fed with a log hut or dug-out. Th
school house, the printing press, cour
| - II. IL