The captain’s purpose was to select a suitable site for a camp which would in all probability be more permanent than we had yet made. He was quite familiar with Deer Valley, as I have already stated, and had in mind a location which on other occasions he had marked as an excellent place in which to build a city. In a short time we arrived at this place and commenced an examination of the surroundings. We all readily agreed that the captain’s judgment was good and, after viewing the land from many points, unanimously decided to recommend it to our company as a proper place to establish our camp. We were about four miles from Snake river. The valley at this point was somewhat over five miles wide, walled in by table lands on either side. These table lands were high elevations with level summits covering many square miles of fertile but dry lands. They sloped from the summits through a succession of three shelves, each quite level, down toward the valley, and thence the valley inclined gently toward the river bed. The stream itself flowed at the bottom of a deep gully and its banks were prettily fringed with box elder trees. The table lands, their sloping sides, the shelves and the broad area of the valley down to the fringe of box elder trees, presented at this season of the year a beautiful sight. All was dressed in the verdure of the rich grasses which make the highlands and lowlands of Idaho famous as the grazing grounds of those great herds of cattle which abundantly assist in feeding the world. There were a few trees in places on the slopes of the highlands, and a hillock which was proposed as the location of our camp, contained quite a grove. But except for these, and the fringe of box elders along the river bank, the entire area was quite open. The stream at this time came tumbling down the valley at a furious rate, the incline being quite pronounced. Looking up the valley we saw the giant mountains on whose majestic tops the snow remained unmelted, and whose lower sides were black with the foliage of the forest of yellow pine. We found here a rancher who claimed to be the owner of some three hundred and twenty acres of land which he had attempted to reclaim by means of a rather crude irrigating ditch which conducted the water of the stream from a point above to a portion of his ground. He claimed also to have washed some gold from the sand taken from the bed of the creek. The man had lived in the valley for ten years, but was evidently neither a man of enterprise nor much intelligence. He had once possessed a considerable herd, but had lost it at the gaming table in some of the camps, and was poor and anxious to get away into the “diggings” up in the mountains. He was able to give some information of value to us, and offered to sell us the ranch and about a hundred acres of land which he held under the placer mining laws of the United States, for two dollars an acre.