Gambling becomes a favorite occupation, and whiskey a common beverage. The society of abandoned women lures him on, until every moral, social, and virtuous resolution is broken down, and the experience of a few months of such a life wholly unfits him for a return to his earlier pursuits. This is the experience of three-fourths of the young men who seek for fortune among the gold mines. Most of this class who had been occupied in placer digging during the summer and fall, at the first approach of cold forsook their mines, and crowded into Lewiston to spend the winter, bringing with them the hard earnings of their toil. Following in their wake came the professional gamblers and sports, and, mingling with the common mass, were the wretches who had reached the lowest depths of human depravity. A letter from one of the early settlers of Lewiston, written at the time, says: “Late in 1862 a large number congregated here to pass the winter. About seventy-five per cent of these were cut-throats, robbers, gamblers, and escaped convicts. Honest men were in a fearful minority, and dared not lisp of the arrest and punishment of criminals; the villains had their own way in everything.” I record the following as an incident which will better illustrate the condition of society than anything I can write. A gambler named Kirby borrowed of another a revolver. Secretly withdrawing the charges from it, an hour later he returned it, and requested the owner to lend him a few ounces of gold dust, which request was declined. Knowing that he had the money, Kirby, enraged at the refusal, put the muzzle of a loaded revolver to the temple of the other, and blew out his brains. No arrest was attempted. The cold-blooded, mid-day murderer walked the streets of the town during the entire winter, mingled in the sports, and escaped unwhipped of justice. Three years afterward he was arrested in Oregon, and turned over to the Idaho authorities, upon the requisition of Governor Lyon, but no witnesses appearing against him he was suffered to go at large.