In 1885, the city, numbering two thousand people, was an alert and distributing centre. Grain was pouring in from the fertile acres of the Palouse to be ground into flour, and the time was at hand when a remarkable discovery in the neighboring mountains of Idaho was to turn the tide of travel toward Spokane, and in less than a decade develop it into the greatest railroad centre west of Chicago. It was in that year that three men and an ass, in the Coeur d'Alenes, a few miles from Spokane, camped toward night in a desolate cañon. Their provisions were nearly exhausted. They held forlorn council, and decided to abandon their search for mines in those gloomy and precipitous solitudes. Toward sundown the animal strayed from its tether. They found it gazing across the ravine at a reflected gleam of the setting sun. A marvellous series of ore seams had mirrored the light. The dumb beast had discovered the greatest deposits of galena on the globe. The whole mountain was a mine. Within an hour after the arrival of the sensational news at Spokane, that city's unparalleled boom began. Prospectors, engineers, and capitalists from the four corners of the Republic hurried to the new city. A railway magnate rode out on horseback to view the mountain, and within four months from the day of his visit ore was being shipped by rail to Spokane. North and south, for three hundred miles, mines were found on every mountainside, and every additional discovery hastened Spokane's growth and quickened the fever of its speculation. As a local historian said, "Men went to sleep at night on straw mattresses, and woke to find themselves on velvet couches stuffed with greenbacks." Wealth waited for men at every corner. The delirium of speculation whirled the sanest minds. Of the many clergymen, for example, who arrived to advocate the perfecting of titles to homes not made with hands, eleven abdicated the pulpit and, indifferent to the menace of moth and rust, laid up substantial treasure. Five years from the discovery of the mines in the Coeur d'Alenes the city numbered twenty thousand inhabitants. Fire swept over it and laid twenty-two solid squares in ashes. Before the ruins cooled, the city was being rebuilt, this time in steel and brick and stone. The _Spokesman-Review_, which began its editorial career in a small, discarded chapel, soon moved into a ten-story structure, and that evolution was, in epitome, the story of the city. Architects of some renown designed palaces and châteaux for the wealthy. Every citizen hoped to outdazzle his neighbor in the beauty of his home, and this has resulted in giving Spokane unique distinction in architectural impressiveness. [Illustration THE "SPOKESMAN-REVIEW" BUILDING.]