APPENDIX. 481 
They are all west ot the Cascade Mountains, and their pros- 
perity has been and will be dependent upon commerce, agri- 
culture, and manufactures; while in the east part of the Terri- 
tory anumber of mining towns, some of them scarcely a year 
old, have sprung up and already surpassed their more aged 
rivals. Walla Walla, three hundred miles from the mouth of 
the Columbia River, and thirty miles southeast from the junc- 
tion of the Snake and Columbia, is the chief trading point 
of the new gold-mines discovered and opened in 1861 in the 
basins of the Salmon and Clearwater Rivers. Walla Walla 
has now a population of one thousand persons, nearly all men, 
and nearly all of them dwelling in rude huts, which would be 
deserted very soon if trade should prove unprofitable. In the 
vicinity of the town is a military post, called New Fort Walla 
Walla, to distinguish it from Old Fort Walla Walla, which 
stood on the bank of the Columbia at the mouth of Snake 
river. Lewiston, seventy-five miles northeast from Walla 
Walla, on the east bank of Snake River near the mouth of 
the Clearwater, is a new town, forty miles from the Clear- 
water or Nez Percés mines. At a distance of eighty-seven 
miles from Lewiston, on the bank of Oro Fino creek, is Oro 
Fino City, the chief mising camp and central point of the 
Nez Percés gold-mines; the dwellings are rude cabins, huts, 
and tents; the population is about three hundred. Elk City, 
fifty miles southeast from Oro Fino City, on the bank of the 
south fork of the Clearwater River, is the second mining town 
in size in the Nez-Percés mines; population one hundred and 
fifty. Florence City, one hundred and fifty miles east-south- 
east from Lewiston, is the chief town of the Salmon River 
placers, and has about two hundred inhabitants. A multitude 
of other little mining camps have lately arisen in the Nez-Percés 
and Salmon River placers—Among the rivers of Washington, 
the Columbia has the first place. It is a large stream where 
it enters the Territory from British America, and after running 
about four hundred miles in a southward direction, but making 
great bends, it turns westward, and from Waila Walla, three 
21 
