"Many of them outfitted here and were followed by pack trains laden with supplies. Many of you will remember the tinkle of the mule bell which the pack mules followed in blind obedience.
"All day long these pack trains filed in constant procession through the streets of the busy little city, bound on long journeys through the mountains to the various mining camps.
"Indians, gaudy with paint and feathers, rode their spotted, picturesque cayuse in gay cavalcades along the trails leading to town to trade for fire water and other less important articles of barter.
"Covered ox wagons laden with dust begrimed children and household goods 'all the way from old Missouri,' ranchmen, and cowboys in all their pristine swagger and splendor helped to make up the motley throng that filled the streets. The cow-girl who rides a horse astride had not then materialized.
"The packers and many of the miners came here to 'winter' as they expressed it in those days. They spent their money prodigally and unstintingly in the saloons, in the gambling and hurdy-gurdy houses, and in the spring would return to the source for fresh supplies of gold.
"Some of the more successful would return to the States and all expected to when they had 'made their pile.' None of us had any idea of making this a permanent place of residence or of being found here fifty years later. As youngsters we sang with lusty voices:
'We'll all go home in the spring, boys,
We'll all go home in the spring.'
Later as the years went by and we did not go, there was added by the unsentimental, this refrain:
'Yes, in a horn;
Yes, in a horn.'
"This describes conditions existing in old Walla Walla fifty years ago, or in the decade between 1860 and 1870, and are some of the moving pictures painted on the film of my brain when in the fall of 1863 I wandered, a forlorn and homesick lad, into this beautiful valley. Friends and acquaintances I had none, except the two young men who came with me from Montana.