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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Two Years in Oregon, by Wallis Nash
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Two Years in Oregon
+
+
+Author: Wallis Nash
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 15, 2011  [eBook #35288]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWO YEARS IN OREGON***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Greg Bergquist and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by
+Internet Archive/American Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/americana)
+
+
+
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+
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+      Images of the original pages are available through
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+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Anchorage in Yaquina Bay.]
+
+
+
+TWO YEARS IN OREGON.
+
+by
+
+WALLIS NASH,
+
+Author of "Oregon, There and Back in 1877."
+
+
+
+    Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,
+    While the landscape round it measures,
+    Russet lawns, and fallows gray,
+    Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
+    Mountains on whose barren breast
+    The lab'ring clouds do often rest;
+    Meadows trim with daisies pied;
+    Shallow brooks, and rivers wide.
+
+    L'Allegro.
+
+    Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown;
+    With that wild wheel we go not up or down;
+      Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great;
+    Smile and we smile, the lords of many lands;
+    Frown and we smile, the lords of our own hands;
+      For man is man and master of his fate.
+
+    Tennyson.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York:
+D. Appleton and Company
+1, 3, and 5 Bond Street.
+1882.
+
+Copyright by
+D. Appleton and Company
+1881.
+
+
+
+
+I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
+
+TO
+
+MY FATHER,
+
+WHO, THOUGH SEVERED FROM US BY LAND AND OCEAN,
+YET LIVES WITH US IN SPIRIT.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
+
+
+It is my grateful task to recognize the marked kindness with which my
+modest volume has been received by the public and the press. It is rare
+that a second edition of a work of the kind should be called for within
+three months of the first issue, and still more rare that, out of a
+vast number of reviews by the leading journals all over the country,
+but one newspaper, and that the one I deemed it my duty to the State of
+Oregon to denounce (on page 216), has found aught but words of
+commendation.
+
+I desire also to tender my apologies to the esteemed Roman Catholic
+Archbishop, and to the Sisters of Charity of Portland, for the error on
+my part in ascribing to Bishop Morris, of the Episcopal Church, the
+credit of St. Vincent's Hospital.
+
+I ought not to have forgotten to notice the Good Samaritan Hospital and
+Orphanage founded by Bishop Morris.
+
+A single remark should be added about the price or value given, on page
+70, for seed-wheat as an element of the cost of the crop raised from
+it.
+
+The wheat reserved by the farmer for this purpose, being exempt from
+the charges and waste incident to hauling, storage, insurance, and
+sacking, necessary in marketing, is fairly estimated at seventy cents,
+though the marketed portion of the crop averages eighty-five to ninety
+cents; the difference being composed, in part, of profit.
+
+W. N.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+I send forth this book, as sequel to the sketch published three years
+ago, with many misgivings--rather as if one who, as a lover, had
+written poems in praise of his mistress, should, as a two years'
+husband, give to the world his experience of the fireside charms and
+household excellences of his wife. Perhaps the latter might more
+faithfully picture her than when she was seen through the glamour of a
+first love.
+
+Be that as it may, it is true that the questions put from many lands,
+as to how we fare in this Western country, demand fuller answers than
+mere letter-writing can convey. I trust that those correspondents who
+are yet unanswered personally will find herein the knowledge they are
+seeking, and will accept the assurance that they are themselves to
+blame for some of the more solid and tedious chapters; as, if I had not
+known that such information were needed, I would not have ventured to
+put in print again that which previous and better authors have given to
+the world.
+
+While I have striven to write what is really a guide-book to Oregon
+for the intending emigrant, others may be interested in the picture of
+a young community shaping the details of their common life, and
+claiming and taking possession of a heritage in the wilderness.
+
+No one can go farther West than we have done: it is fair, then, to
+suppose that the purposes of the Western movement will be seen here in
+their fullest operation.
+
+Since 1877 a vast change has taken place in this, that Oregon now
+shares with older States the benefits of becoming the theatre for large
+railroad operations.
+
+No apology to American readers is needed for the endeavor to show
+things in a fairer light and different color from those chosen by
+persons interested in causing all men to see with their eyes.
+Transatlantic readers may not have the same concern; but even from them
+I bespeak a hearing in matters which may indirectly, if not directly,
+touch their interests.
+
+But I do not wish to suggest that I write as having only a general
+feeling that certain things would be the better for a more open
+discussion than they have hitherto received. My own affairs, and those
+of many friends, both in Oregon and elsewhere, and, indeed, the
+successful development of this great Willamette Valley, largely depend
+on our convincing an unprejudiced public that Nature is on our side in
+the effort we are making to secure a direct and near outlet to the
+great world.
+
+I only claim in these particulars to be an advocate, but I add to this
+a full and honest conviction of the justice of the views for which I
+contend.
+
+To turn again to more general matters, I have the pleasant duty of
+thanking several friends who have contributed to the information here
+collected.
+
+To our shame be it said that there was not, among our English
+immigrants, one naturalist who could rightly name the birds, beasts,
+fishes, and insects in our Western home. But I was fortunate in finding
+an American friend, Mr. O. B. Johnson, of Salem, whose complete and
+accurate knowledge of these subjects only rendered more easy his kindly
+endeavors to give me the benefit of all his stores.
+
+I wish to acknowledge also the care with which, ever since our visit in
+1877, the professors at the Corvallis Agricultural College have kept
+the records of climate and rainfall, the results of which are now
+published.
+
+I trust that, if any sketches in these pages are recognized as
+portraits, not one grain of offense will be taken by those who have
+unwittingly served as models in the life-studio.
+
+Or that, if any effect is produced, it may be as good and lasting as
+that which followed on a fancy picture in the former book, in which
+many stray touches were collected. Whether the cap fitted, or was
+pressed on his head by too officious neighbors, I know not; but this I
+know, that cleared fields, neat fences, new barn, clean house, and
+fitting furniture, rendered it impossible for me to recognize a
+tumbledown place which then served to point a warning. These
+improvements, I am told, the owner lays at my unconscious door.
+
+WALLIS NASH.
+
+CORVALLIS, OREGON, _April_ 14, 1881.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                                 PAGE
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Personal reasons for coming to Oregon--Plans of colonizing--Who
+came--Who have returned--Who remain--Bowie-knives and revolvers--A
+sheriff in danger--No tragedy--Our landing at Corvallis--Frail
+houses--Pleasant welcome--The barber's shop--Its customers--Given
+names--New acquaintances--Bright dresses--Religious denominations. 17
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Where we live--Snow-peaks and distant prospects--Forest-fires--The
+Coast Mountains and Mary's Peak--Sunset in Oregon--Farmhouses: the
+log-cabin, the box-house, the frame-house--Dinner at the farm--Slay
+and eat--A rash chicken--Bread-making by amateurs--Thrift and
+unthrift--Butter and cheese--Products of the "range," farm, and
+garden--Wheat-growing.                                             26
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+The land-office; its object and functionaries--How to find your
+land--Section 33--The great conflagration--The survivors of the
+fire--The burnt timber and the brush--The clearing-party--Chopping
+by beginners--Cooking, amateur and professional--The wild-cat--Deer
+and hunting--Piling brush--Dear and cheap clearing--The skillful
+axeman--Clearing by Chinamen--Dragging out stumps--What profits the
+farmer may expect on a valley farm--On a foot-hills farm.          36
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A spring ride in Oregon--The start--The equipment--Horses and
+saddlery--Packs--The roadside--Bird fellow-travelers--Snakes--The
+nearest farm--Bees--The great pasture--The poisonous larkspur--
+Market-gardening--The Cardwell Hill--The hill-top--The water-shed
+--Mary River--Crain's--The Yaquina Valley--Brush, grass, and fern
+--The young Englishmen's new home--A rustic bridge--"Chuck-holes"--
+The road supervisor--Trapp's--The mill-dam--Salmon-pass law--Minnows
+and crawfish--The Pacific at rest--Yaquina--Newport.               48
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Hay-harvest--Timothy-grass--Permanent pasture--Hay-making by
+express--The mower and reaper--Hay-stacks as novelties--
+Wheat-harvest--Thrashing--The "thrashing crowd"--"Headers"
+and "self-binders"--Twine-binders and home-grown flax--Green food
+for cows--Indian corn, vetches--Wild-oats in wheat--Tar-weed the
+new enemy--Cost of harvesting--By hired machines--By purchased
+machines--Cost of wheat-growing in the Willamette Valley.          62
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The farmer's sports and pastimes--Deer-hunting tales--A roadside
+yarn--Still-hunting--Hunting with hounds--An early morning's
+sport--Elk--The pursuit--The kill--Camp on Beaver Creek--
+Flounder-spearing by torchlight--Flounder-fishing by day--In the
+bay--Rock oysters--The evening view--The general store--Skins--
+Sea-otters--Their habits--The sea-otter hunters--Common otter--The
+mink and his prey.                                                 72
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Birds in Oregon--Lark--Quail--Grouse--Ruffed grouse--Wild-geese--
+Manoeuvres in the air--Wild-ducks--Mallard--Teal--Pintail--
+Wheat-duck--Black-duck--Wood-duck--Snipe--Flight-shooting--
+Stewart's Slough--Bitterns--Eagles--Hawks--Horned owls--Woodpeckers
+--Blue-jays--Canaries--The canary that had seen the world--Blue-birds
+--Bullfinches--Snow-bunting--Humming-birds at home.                91
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Up to the Cascades--Farming by happy-go-lucky--The foot-hills--Sweet
+Home Valley--Its name, and how deserved and proved--The road by the
+Santiam--Eastward and upward--Timber--Lower Soda Springs--Different
+vegetation--Upper Soda Springs--Mr. Keith--Our reception--His home and
+surroundings--Emigrants on the road--The emigrant's dog--Off to the
+Spokane--Whence they came--Where they were bound--Still eastward--
+Fish Lake--Clear Lake--Fly-fishing in still water--The down slope
+east--Lava-beds--Bunch-grass--The valleys in Eastern Oregon--Their
+products--Wheat-growing there--Cattle-ranchers--Their home--Their
+life--In the saddle and away--Branding-time--Hay for the winter--The
+Malheur reservation--The Indians' outbreak--The building of the
+road--When, how, and by whom built--The opening of the pass--The
+history of the road--Squatters--The special agent from Washington--A
+sham survey.                                                      100
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Indian fair at Brownsville--Ponies--The lasso--Breaking-in--The
+purchase--"Bucking" extraordinary--Sheep-farming in Eastern Oregon--
+Merinos--The sheep-herder--Muttons for company--A good offer
+refused--Exports of wool from Oregon-Price and value of Oregon
+wool--Grading wool--Price of sheep--Their food--Coyotes--The
+wolf-hunt--Shearing--Increase of flocks--"Corraling" the sheep--
+Sheep as brush-clearers.                                          118
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+The trail to the Siletz Reserve--Rock Creek--Isolation--Getting a
+road--The surveying-party--Entrance at last--Road-making--Hut-building
+in the wilds--What will he do with it?--Choice of homestead--Fencing
+wild land--Its method and cost--Splitting cedar boards and shingles--
+House-building--The China boy and the mules--Picnicking in
+earnest--Log-burning--Berrying-parties--Salting cattle--An active
+cow--A year's work--Mesquit-grass on the hills.                   127
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+The Indians at home--The reservation--The Upper Farm--Log-cabins--
+Women must work while men will play--The agency--The boarding-house
+--Sunday on the reservation--Indian Sun day-school--Galeese Creek
+Jem--The store-Indian farmers--As to the settlement of the Indians
+--Suggestions--A crime--Its origin--Its history--The criminals--
+What became of them--Indian teamsters--Numbers on the reservation
+--The powers and duties of the agent--Special application.        136
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The Legislative Assembly--The Governor--His duties--Payment of the
+members--Aspect of the city; the Legislature in session--The
+lobbyist--How bills pass--How bills do not pass--Questions of the
+day--Common carriers--Woman's suffrage--Some of the acts of
+1878--Judicial system of the State--Taxes--Assessments--County
+officers--The justice of the peace--Quick work.                   145
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Land laws--Homesteads and preemption--How to choose and obtain
+Government land--University land--School land--Swamp land--Railroad
+and wagon-road grants--Lieu lands--Acreages owned by the various
+companies.                                                        157
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+The "Web-foot State"--Average rainfall in various parts--The rainy
+days in 1879 and 1880--Temperature--Seasons--Accounts and figures
+from three points--Afternoon sea-breezes--A "cold snap"--Winter--
+Floods--Damage to the river-side country--Rare thunder--Rarer
+wind-storms--The storm of January, 1880.                          164
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+The State Fair of 1880--Salem--The ladies' pavilion--Knock-em-downs
+_a l'Americaine_--Self-binders--Thrashing-machines--Rates of
+speed--Cost--Workmanship--Prize sheep--Fleeces--Pure _versus_
+graded sheep--California short-horns--Horses--American breed or
+Percheron--Comparative measurements--The races--Runners--Trotters--
+Cricket in public--Unruly spectators.                             174
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+History of Oregon--First discoverers--Changes of government--
+Recognition as a Territory--Entrance as a State--Individual
+histories--"Jottings"--"Sitting around"--A pioneer in Benton
+County--How to serve Indian thieves--The white squaw and the
+chief--Immigration in company--Rafting on the Columbia--The first
+winter--Early settlement--Indian friends--Indian houses and
+customs--The Presbyterian colony--The start--Across the plains--
+Arrival in Oregon--The "whaler" settler--A rough journey--"Ho for
+the Umpqua!"--A backwoodsman--Compliments--School-teacher provided
+for--Uncle Lazarus--Rogue River Canyon--Valley of Death--Pleasant
+homes--Changed circumstances.                                   183
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+State and county elections--The Chinese question--Chinese
+house-servants--Washermen--Laborers--A large camp--Supper--Chinese
+trading--The scissors--Cost of Chinese labor--Its results--Chinese
+treaties--Household servants--Chee and his mistress--"Heap debble-y
+in there"--The photo album--Temptation--A sin and its reward--Good
+advice on whipping--Chung and the crockery--Chinese New Year--Gifts--
+"Hoodlums"--Town police--Opium.                                   201
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+Life in the town--Sociables--Religious sects--Sabbath-schools--
+Christmas festivities--Education, how far compulsory--Colleges--
+Student-life and education--Common schools--Teachers' institutes--
+Newspapers--Patent outsides-"The Oregonian"--Other journals--Charities
+--Paupers--Secret societies.                                      209
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+Industries other than farming--Iron-ores--Coal--Coos Bay mines--
+Seattle mines--Other deposits--Lead and copper--Limestone--Marbles--
+Gold, where found and worked--Silver, where found and worked--Gold
+in sea-sand--Timber--Its area and distribution--Spars--Lumber--Size
+of trees--Hard woods--Cost of production and sale of lumber--Tanneries
+--Woolen-mills--Flax-works--Invitation to Irish--Salmon--Statistics
+of the trade--Methods--Varieties of salmon--When and where caught--
+Salmon-poisoning of dogs--Indians fishing--Traps--Salmon-smoking. 219
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+Eastern Oregon--Going "east of the mountains"--Its attractions--
+Encroaching sheep--First experiments in agriculture and planting--
+General description of Eastern Oregon--Boundaries--Alkaline plains--
+Their productions--The valleys--Powder River Valley--Description--
+The Snake River and its tributaries--The Malheur Valley--Harney Lake
+Valley--Its size--Productions--Wild grasses--Hay-making--The winters
+in Eastern Oregon--Wagon-roads--Prineville--Silver Creek--Grindstone
+Creek Valley--Crooked River--Settlers' descriptions and experiences--
+Ascent of the Cascades going west--Eastern Oregon towns--Baker
+City--Prineville--Warnings to settlers--Growing wheat for the
+railroads to carry.                                               231
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+Southern Oregon--Its boundaries--The western counties--Population--
+Ports--Rogue River--Coos Bay--Coal--Lumber--Practicable railroad
+routes--The harbor--Shifting and blowing sands--A quoted description
+--Cost of transportation--Harbor improvements--Their progress and
+results--The Umpqua--Douglas County--Jackson County--The lake-country
+--Linkville--Water-powers--Indian reservations--The great mountains--
+Southeastern Oregon--General description--Industries.             243
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+The towns--Approach to Oregon--The steamers--The Columbia entrance--
+Astoria--Its situation, industries, development--Salmon--Shipping--
+Loading and discharging cargo--Up the Columbia and Willamette to
+Portland--Portland, West and East--Population--Public buildings--
+United States District Court--The judge--Public Library--The Bishop
+schools--Hospital--Churches--Stores--Chinese quarter--Banks--Industries
+--The city's prosperity--Its causes--Its probable future--The Oregon
+Railway and Navigation Company--Shipping abuses and exactions--
+Railroad termini--Up the Columbia--The Dalles--Up the Willamette--
+Oregon City, its history--The falls--Salem--Its position and
+development--Capitol buildings--Flour-mills--Oil-mills--Buena Vista
+potteries--Albany--Its water-power--Flour-mills--Values of land--
+Corvallis--The line of the Oregon Pacific Railroad--Eugene, its
+university and professors--Roseburg--The West-side Railroad to
+Portland--Development of the country--Prosperity--Counties of Oregon
+--Their population--Taxable property--Average possessions--In the
+Willamette Valley--In Eastern Oregon--In Eastern Oregon tributary
+to Columbia and Snake Rivers.                                     252
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+The transportation question--Its importance--Present legal position
+--Oregon Railway and Navigation Committee's general report--That
+company--Its ocean-going steamers--Their traffic and earnings--Its
+river-boats--Their traffic and earnings--Its railroads in existence
+--Their traffic and earnings--Its new railroads in construction
+and in prospect--Their probable influence--The Northern Pacific--
+Terminus on Puget Sound--Its prospects--The East and West Side
+Railroads--"Bearing" traffic and earnings--How to get "control"--
+Lands owned by the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company--Monopoly
+--How threatened--The narrow-gauge railroads--Their terminus and
+working--Efforts to consolidate monopoly--The "blind pool"--Resistance
+--The Oregon Pacific--Its causes, possessions, and prospects--Land
+grant and its enemies--The traffic of the valley--Yaquina Bay--Its
+improvement--The farmers take it in hand--Contrast and comparisons
+--The two presidents--Probable effects of competition--Tactics in
+opposition--The Yaquina improvements--Description of works--The
+prospects for competition and the farmers' gains.                 271
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+Emigration to Oregon--Who should not come--Free advice and no
+fees--English emigrants--Farmers--Haste to be rich--Quoted
+experiences--Cost and ways of coming--Sea-routes--Railroads--
+Baggage--What not to bring--What not to forget--Heavy property--
+The Custom-house--San Francisco hotels--Conclusion.               293
+
+Appendix.                                                         305
+
+
+
+
+TWO YEARS IN OREGON.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Personal reasons for coming to Oregon--Plans of colonizing--Who
+came--Who have returned--Who remain--Bowie-knives and revolvers--A
+sheriff in danger--No tragedy--Our landing at Corvallis--Frail
+houses--Pleasant welcome--The barber's shop--Its customers--Given
+names--New acquaintances--Bright dresses--Religious denominations.
+
+
+After visiting Oregon in the year 1877, and traveling with three or
+four companions through its length and breadth, I ventured to publish
+in England on my return a short account of our seeings and doings.
+
+While the reception of this book by the reviews generally was only too
+kind and flattering, one paper, the "Athenaeum," distinguished me by a
+long notice, the whole point of which lay in the observation that it
+would be interesting to know if I, who had been recommending Oregon to
+others, were prepared to take my own prescription, and emigrate there
+myself.
+
+Now, although it would not perhaps be fair to make all physicians
+swallow their own medicines, regardless whether or not they were sick,
+and although I certainly was not in any position rendering emigration
+necessary, or in the opinion of any of my friends and acquaintances
+even desirable, yet I did not like it to be possible to be accused
+rightly of recommending a course so serious as a change of
+dwelling-place and even of nationality, without being willing to prove
+by my own acts the genuineness of the advice I had given.
+
+And this, among other motives and inducements, had a strong influence
+in overcoming the crowd of hesitations and difficulties which spring up
+when so great a change begins to be contemplated as possible.
+
+And it is no more than natural that now, having had two years'
+experience in Oregon, I should desire to have it known if it be
+necessary to recall the general advice given in the former book,
+advocating, as undoubtedly I then did advocate, Oregon as a desirable
+residence.
+
+But, as this involves my putting into some kind of literary shape our
+experiences for the past two years in this far Western land, it is
+better to begin by some general relation of our plans.
+
+When I undertook to come out with my wife and children and see to the
+settlement and disposal of the tract of land we had purchased, as one
+result of my visit in 1877, I was applied to by a good many fathers to
+take some superintendence of their sons, who desired to emigrate to
+Oregon. Next, one or two married couples expressed a wish to join us.
+Then several acquaintances, who were practical mechanics, had heard a
+good report of Oregon, and desired to accompany us. And I was busy in
+answering letters about the place and people to the very moment of
+sailing.
+
+I was not at all willing to have the company indefinitely numerous, not
+having graduated in Mr. Cook's school for tourists, and knowing
+something of the embarrassments likely to attend a crowd of travelers.
+We found our party of twenty-six fully large enough for comfort. We
+were kindly and liberally treated by the Allan Steamship Company, the
+Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, and the Chicago and Northwestern
+Railway; but our lines did not fall to us in pleasant places when we
+experienced the tender mercies of the Union and Central Pacific. Our
+party was broken up into different cars, and our strongest portmanteaus
+were shattered by the most atrocious handling.
+
+[Sidenote: _PLANS OF COLONIZING._]
+
+It was a serious question if we should try to found an English colony
+here, in the usual sense of the word. That would have involved a
+separate life from the American residents; it would have fostered
+jealousy here, and we should have committed numberless mistakes and
+absurdities. We should have had to buy all our experience, amid the
+covert ridicule of our neighbors. And I was confident that many members
+of our party would have played at emigrating, and treated the whole
+business as picnicking on a large scale. Moreover, I was not sure that,
+even if we succeeded in transplanting English manners, customs, and
+institutions, they would take hold in this new soil. The fact was
+always before my eyes that the country was only thirty years old, in a
+civilized sense, and I doubted the wisdom of trying to transport
+thither a little piece of the old country.
+
+I believed the wiser course to be to plant ourselves quietly among the
+Oregonians with as little parade and fuss as possible, and to let our
+own experience dictate to others whether to join us or not.
+
+It has been our practice throughout to answer freely, and as fully as
+possible, the many letters of inquiry as to place and people that we
+have had, but to offer no advice; leaving those who were thinking of
+coming out to take the responsibility on themselves of deciding to come
+or to stay away.
+
+Under this system our numbers have grown to upward of a hundred, and
+now rarely a month passes without additions. Of course, a process of
+natural selection goes on all the time. Not every one who comes
+remains; but we have every reason to be satisfied with the
+representatives of the mother-country who are making Oregon their
+permanent home, and the same feeling is shared, as I am confident, by
+the original residents.
+
+Shall I try to describe what sort of people we live among here, a
+hundred miles from Portland, the chief city in the State?
+
+[Illustration: Corvallis, 1880.]
+
+What the notions of some of our party were you will understand when I
+mention that all I could say could not prevent the young men of the
+party from arming themselves, as for a campaign in the hostile Indian
+country, so that each man stepped ashore from the boat that brought us
+up the Willamette with a revolver in each pocket, and the hugest and
+most uncompromising knives that either London, New York, or San
+Francisco could furnish.
+
+[Sidenote: _OUR LANDING AT CORVALLIS._]
+
+As ill luck would have it, just as we arrived, the sheriff had returned
+to town with an escaped prisoner, and had been set upon by the brother,
+and a pistol had been actually presented at him. I should say in a
+whisper that the sheriff, worthy man, had proposed to return the
+assault in kind, but had failed to get his six-shooter out in time from
+the depths of a capacious pocket, where the deadly weapon lay in
+harmless neighborhood, with a long piece of string, a handful or so of
+seed-wheat, a large chunk of tobacco, a leather strap and buckle, and a
+big red pocket-handkerchief. So I fancy he had not much idea of
+shooting when he started out.
+
+But the incident was enough to give a blood-color to all our first
+letters home, and I dare say caused a good many shiverings and shudders
+at the thought of the wild men of the woods we had come to neighbor
+with.
+
+The worst of it was, that it was the only approach to a tragedy, and
+that we have had no adventures worth speaking of. "Story, God bless
+you! I have none to tell, sir." Still we did know ourselves to be in a
+new world when we stepped ashore from the large, white-painted,
+three-storied structure on the water that they called a stern-wheel
+river-boat, and in which we had spent two days coming up the great
+river from Portland. It was the 17th of May, just a month from leaving
+Liverpool, that we landed. The white houses of the little city of
+Corvallis were nestled cozily in the bright spring green of the alders
+and willows and oaks that fringed the river, and the morning sun
+flashed on the metal cupola of the court-house, and lighted up the
+deep-blue clear-cut mountains that rose on the right of us but a few
+miles off.
+
+When we got into the main street the long, low, broken line of
+booth-like, wooden, one-storied stores and houses, all looking as if
+one strong man could push them down, and one strong team carry them
+off, grated a little, I could see, on the feelings of some of the
+party. The redeeming feature was the trees, lining the street at long
+intervals, darkening the houses a little, but clothing the town, and
+giving it an air of age and respectability that was lacking in many of
+the bare rows of shanties, dignified with the title of town, that we
+had passed in coming here across the continent.
+
+The New England Hotel invited us in. A pretty plane-tree in front
+overshadowed the door; and a bright, cheery hostess stood in the
+doorway to welcome us, shaking hands, and greeting our large party of
+twenty-six in a fashion of freedom to which we had not been used, but
+which sounded pleasantly in our travel-worn ears. The house was
+tumble-down and shabby, and needed the new coat of paint it received
+soon after--but in the corner of the sitting-room stood a good
+parlor-organ. The dining-room adjoining had red cloths on the tables,
+and gave a full view into the kitchen; but the "beefsteak, mutton-chop,
+pork-chop, and hash" were good and well cooked, and contrasted with,
+rather than reminded us of, the fare described by Charles Dickens as
+offered him in the Eastern States when he visited America thirty-nine
+years ago.
+
+The bedrooms, opening all on to the long passage upstairs, with meager
+furniture and patchwork quilts, the whole wooden house shaking as we
+trotted from room to room, were not so interesting, and tempted no long
+delay in bed after the early breakfast-gong had been sounded soon after
+six. Breakfast at half-past six, dinner at noon, and supper at
+half-past five, only set the clock of our lives a couple of hours
+faster than we had been used to; and bed at nine was soon no novelty to
+us.
+
+The street in front was a wide sea of slushy mud when we arrived, with
+an occasional planked crossing, needing a sober head and a good
+conscience to navigate safely after dark; for, when evening had closed
+in, the only street-lighting came from the open doors, and through the
+filled and dressed windows of the stores.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE BARBER'S SHOP._]
+
+Saloons were forbidden by solemn agreement to all of us, but the
+barber's shop was the very pleasant substitute. Two or three big
+easy-chairs in a row, with a stool in front of each. Generally filled
+they were by the grave and reverend seigniors of the city--each man
+reposing calmly, draped in white, while he enjoyed the luxury, under
+the skillful hands of the barber or his man, of a clean shave. At the
+far end of the shop stood the round iron stove, with a circle of wooden
+chairs and an old sofa. And here we enjoyed the parliament of free
+talk. The circle was a frequently changing one, but the types were
+constant.
+
+The door opened and in came a man from the country: such a hat on his
+head! a brim wide enough for an umbrella, the color a dirty white; a
+scarlet, collarless flannel shirt, the only bit of positive color about
+him; a coat and trousers of well-worn brown, canvas overall (or, as
+sometimes spelled, "overhaul"), the trousers tucked into knee-high
+boots, worn six months and never blacked. His hands were always in his
+pockets, except when used to feed his mouth with the constant
+"chaw."--"Hello, Tom," he says slowly, as he makes his way to the back,
+by the stove. "Hello, Jerry," is the instant response. "How's your
+health?" "Well; and how do you make it?" "So-so." "Any news out with
+you?" "Wall, no; things pretty quiet." And he finds a seat and sinks
+into it as if he intended growing there till next harvest.
+
+We all know each other by our "given" names. I asked one of our
+politicians how he prepared himself for a canvass in a county where I
+knew he was a stranger this last summer. "Well, I just learned up all
+the boys' given names, so I could call them when I met them," was the
+answer. "I guess knowing 'em was as good as a hundred votes to me in
+the end." It was a little startling at first to see a rough Oregonian
+ride up to our house, dismount, hitch his horse to the paling, and
+stroll casually in, with "Where's Herbert?" as his first and only
+greeting. But we soon got used to it.
+
+But the barber's shop was, and is, useful to us, as well as amusing.
+The values and productiveness of farms for sale, the worth and
+characters of horses, the prices of cattle, the best and most likely
+and accessible places for fishing, and deer-shooting, and
+duck-hunting--all such matters, and a hundred other things useful for
+us to know, we picked up here, or "sitting around" the stoves in one or
+other of the stores in the town.
+
+Another good gained was, that thus our new neighbors and we got
+acquainted: they found we were not all the "lords" they set us down for
+at first, with the exclusiveness and pride they attributed to that
+maligned race in advance; while we on our side found a vast amount of
+self-respect, of native and acquired shrewdness, of legitimate pride in
+country, State, and county, and a fund of kindly wishes to see us
+prosper, among our roughly dressed but really courteous neighbors.
+
+There was a good deal of feminine curiosity displayed on either side,
+by the natives and the new-comers. When we went to church the first
+Sunday after our arrival, there were a good many curious worshipers,
+more intent on the hats and bonnets of the strangers than on the
+service in which we united. We heard afterward how disappointed they
+were that the stranger ladies were so quietly and cheaply dressed. We
+could not say the same when callers came, which they speedily did after
+we were settled in our new home--such tight kid gloves, and bright
+bonnets, and silk mantles! It was a constant wonder to our women-folk
+how their friends managed to show as such gay butterflies, two thousand
+miles on the western side of everywhere.
+
+[Sidenote: _RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS._]
+
+We found here, in a little town of eleven hundred inhabitants, all
+kinds of religious denominations represented--Episcopalians,
+Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Methodists North, and Methodists South,
+Evangelicals, and Baptists--but very little rivalry and no rancor. I
+shall have something more to say about the religious life later on, but
+I think I will reserve the description of our home, and of those of
+some of our neighbors, for a fresh chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Where we live--Snow-peaks and distant prospects--Forest-fires--The
+Coast Mountains and Mary's Peak--Sunset in Oregon--Farmhouses: the
+log-cabin, the box-house, the frame-house--Dinner at the farm--Slay
+and eat--A rash chicken--Bread-making by amateurs--Thrift and
+unthrift--Butter and cheese--Products of the "range," farm, and
+garden--Wheat-growing.
+
+
+You might look the world over for a prettier spot than that on which
+this house stands. Just a mile from Corvallis, on a gently rounded
+knoll, we look eastward across the town, and the river, and the broad
+valley beyond, to the Cascade Mountains.
+
+Their lowest range is about thirty miles off, and the rich flat valley
+between is hidden by the thick line of timber, generally fir, that
+fringes the farther side of the Willamette. Against the dark line of
+timber the spires of the churches and the cupola of the court-house
+stand out clear, and the gray and red shingled roofs of the houses in
+the town catch early rays of the rising sun.
+
+The first to be lighted up are the great snow-peaks, ninety, seventy,
+and fifty miles off--a ghostly, pearly gray in the dim morning, while
+the lower ranges lie in shadow; but, as the sun rises in the heavens,
+these same lower ranges grow distinct in their broken outlines. The air
+is so clear that you see plainly the colors of the bare red rocks, and
+the heavy dark, fir-timber clothing their rugged sides. Ere the sun
+mounts high the valley often lies covered with a low-lying thin white
+mist, beyond and over which the mountains stand out clear.
+
+For some weeks in the late summer heavy smoke-clouds from the many
+forest and clearing fires obscure all distant view. This last summer
+fires burned for at least fifty miles in length at close intervals of
+distance, and the dark gray pall overlay the mountains throughout.
+Behind the house, and in easy view from the windows on either side, are
+the Coast Mountains, or rather hills.
+
+Mary's Peak rises over four thousand feet, and is snow-crowned for nine
+months in the year. The outlines of this range are far more gently
+rounded than the Cascades, and timber-covered to the top. Save for the
+solid line of the heavy timber, the outlines of the Coast Range
+constantly remind us of our own Dartmoor; and the illusion is
+strengthened by the dark-red soil where the plow has invaded the hills,
+yearly stealing nearer to their crowns. Mary's Peak itself is bare at
+the top for about a thousand acres, but the firs clothe its sides, and
+the air is so clear that, in spite of the seventeen miles' distance,
+their serrated shapes are plainly and individually visible as the sun
+sinks to rest behind the mountain.
+
+[Sidenote: _SUNSET IN OREGON._]
+
+Such sunsets as we have! Last night I was a mile or two on the other
+side of the river as night fell. Mount Hood was the first to blush, and
+then Mount Jefferson and the Three Sisters in turn grew rosy red. From
+the valley I could not see the lower Cascades, but these snowy pyramids
+towered high into the sky. One little fleecy cloud here and there
+overhead caught the tinge, but the whole air on the eastern side was
+luminously pink. Turning westward, the pale-blue sky faded through the
+rainbow-green into the rich orange surrounding the departing sun; and
+the westward mountains stood solidly and clearly blue in massive lines.
+
+One great peculiarity of the Oregon landscape, as distinguished from an
+English rather than a New England scene, is in the number of white
+farmhouses that catch the eye. We see many from our windows. I suppose
+it is that the roads are so bad in winter that the farmers must live on
+the farms, instead of in the English-village fashion. So it is that you
+may travel by railroad up and down this valley for two hundred miles
+between farmhouses every quarter or half mile all the way. Nearly every
+farmhouse has its orchard close by; but one big barn is all the
+out-buildings they boast, and farm-yard, in the English sense, one
+never sees.
+
+Our own house is not a fair specimen, because of our large family and
+its corresponding habitation; but the regular farmhouse is by no means
+an uncomfortable abode.
+
+There are three kinds: log-cabin, box-house, frame-house.
+
+[Sidenote: _FARMHOUSES._]
+
+The first, by far the most picturesque type, is fast becoming obsolete,
+and on most of the good farms, if not pulled down, is degraded into
+woodhouse or piggery. But to my eye there is something rarely
+comfortable in the low, solid, rugged walls of gray logs, with
+overhanging shingled roof; the open hearth, too, with its great
+smoldering back-log and wide chimney, invites you to sit down before it
+and rest. By the side of the fireplace, from two deers' horns fastened
+to the wall, hangs the owner's rifle--generally an old brown
+veteran--with bullet-pouch and powder-horn. Over the high mantel-shelf
+stands the ticking clock, suggesting "Sam Slick, the clock-maker."
+Curtained off from the main room, with its earthen or roughly-boarded
+floor, are the low bedsteads of the family, each covered with its
+patchwork quilt. A corner cupboard or two hold the family stock of cups
+and plates, and the smell of apples, from the adjoining apple-chamber,
+pervades the house.
+
+Round the house is the home-field, generally the orchard, sown with
+timothy-grass, where range four or five young calves, and a sow or two,
+with their hungry, rooting youngsters. The barn, log-built also, stands
+near by, with two or three colts, or yearling cattle, grouped around.
+The spring of cold, clear water runs freely through the orchard, but
+ten yards from the house-door, hastening to the "creek," whose murmur
+is never absent, save in the few driest weeks of summertime.
+
+Snake-fences, seven logs high, with top-rail and crossed binders to
+keep all steady, divide the farm from the road, and a litter of chips
+from the axe-hewed pile of firewood strew the ground between wood-pile
+and house. Here and there, even in the home-field, and nearly always in
+the more distant land, a big black stump disfigures the surface, and
+betrays the poverty or possibly the carelessness of the owner, who has
+carved his homestead from the brush.
+
+But as the farmer prospers, be it ever so little, he hastens to pull
+down his log-cabin and to build his "box" or more expensive "frame"
+house. In each case the material is "lumber." By this is signified, be
+it known to the uninitiated, fir boards, one foot wide, sixteen feet
+long, and one inch thick.
+
+The "box" house is built of boards set upright, and the cracks covered
+with strips of similar board, three inches wide.
+
+The "frame" house is double throughout, the boards run lengthwise, and
+there is a covering outside of an outer skin of planking.
+
+With the box or frame house comes the inevitable stove. The cooking and
+eating of the family go on in a lean-to room, and the living-room is
+furnished with some pretensions, always with a sewing-machine, and
+often with a parlor-organ or piano. Muslin curtains drape the windows;
+a bureau is generally present, and chromos, or very rough engravings,
+hang on the walls. The political tendencies of the owner betray
+themselves. General Grant, with tight-buttoned coat and close-cut
+beard, or President Lincoln and his family, show the Republican.
+Strangely enough, General Lee, with a genial smile on his attractive
+face, is affected by the Democrats. The followers of the greenback
+heresy delight in Brick Pomeroy, with clean-shaven, smug, and satisfied
+look.
+
+[Sidenote: _DINNER AT THE FARM._]
+
+It is not the fashion to carry provisions with you on journeys in
+Oregon. When meal-time draws near, and hotels are many miles away, you
+ride boldly up to the nearest farm, dismount, throw your horse's rein
+over the paling, and walk in. The lady of the house appears, from the
+cooking department at the rear, and you say: "Good-morning, madam; can
+I get dinner with you?" Unless there is grave reason to the contrary,
+she considers a moment, and then answers, "I guess so," with a
+hospitable smile. The next question is as to your horse, which one of
+the children leads into the barn, and then fills out a goodly measure
+of oats, and crams the rack with hay from the pile filling the middle
+of the barn. While your hostess adds a little to the family meal, you
+turn over the newspapers in the sitting-room, generally finding a
+"Detroit Free Press," or a "Toledo Blade," or a New York "World" or
+"Tribune," or a San Francisco "Bulletin" or "Chronicle," besides the
+local weekly. If you want books, you must take to the "Pacific Coast
+Reader," the last school-book, which you are sure to find on the shelf;
+unless you chance on a "Universal History," or the "History of the
+Civil War," or the "Life of General Jackson," or the "Life of General
+Custer," or a collection of poetry in an expensive binding, all of
+which signify that the book-peddler has been paying a recent visit.
+
+Then your hostess returns, saying, "Will you come and eat?" If you go
+into the back room--where, generally, the master of the house and you,
+the visitor, and perhaps a grown-up son, or a farming hand, sit down
+and dine, while the mistress and her daughter serve--you will not
+starve.
+
+In front of you is a smoking dish of meat, either pork or mutton,
+salted, cut into square bits and fried; rarely beef, more often
+venison, or deer-meat, as it is called here. By it is piled up a dish
+of mashed potatoes, and a tureen of white, thick sauce. A glass dish of
+stewed apples, or apple-sauce, and one of preserved pears or peaches,
+and a smaller dish of blackberry or plum jam, complete the meal, with
+the constant coffee, and generally a big jug of milk. The bread is
+brought you in sets of hot, square rolls, fresh from the stove. It is
+not always that you can get cold bread, and a look of surprise always
+follows the request for it.
+
+Generally, a good supply of white beans, boiled soft, and with a slice
+or two of bacon, is an important item. Apples, and the best of them,
+too, you can have for the asking--too common to be offered to you.
+
+This _regime_ applies to breakfast, dinner, and supper, with but
+slight variations. I forgot, though, the saucer of green, sharp,
+vinegary gherkins, which the Oregonians seem not to know how to do
+without, and also the honey, and trout, which are the frequent and
+welcome additions to the meal among the hills.
+
+My wife and I dropped in once to a dinner of this kind. We were
+sitting, cooling ourselves on the veranda, watching some pretty, black
+Spanish chickens scratching among the scanty rose-bushes in front. The
+farmer's wife came quickly out and addressed me: "Have you got your
+revolver?" I stared for a moment, thinking of tramps, and bears, and I
+know not what. "I never carry one on horseback," I answered. "Oh," said
+she, "I would have had you shoot the head off one of them chickens, for
+I've got no fresh meat." Inwardly I congratulated ourselves that our
+dinner did not altogether depend on my skill with that common, but, to
+my mind, very unsatisfactory weapon.
+
+One of my friends bought out an Oregonian farmer, and paid him for
+stock and lot, including some fine fowls. Dropping in to dinner two
+days afterward, he found a smoking chicken on the board. I suppose he
+eyed it askance, for the farmer observed: "That's one of your chickens
+I killed by accident. I saw some wild-geese feeding on the wheat, and
+fetched the rifle, and that there foolish rooster got right in the way
+of the bullet."
+
+[Sidenote: _BREAD-MAKING BY AMATEURS._]
+
+If any friends of yours think of coming out, send them to the school of
+cookery, I implore you. It is the greatest possible quandary to be in,
+to be set down with flour, water, and a tin of saleratus or
+baking-powder, and to have to make the bread or go without. Then, to
+convert chickens running about your house into food for man is not so
+easy as it looks; nor is cooking beans or potatoes a matter of pure
+instinct, I assure you. Shall I ever forget riding up at nearly three
+in the afternoon, to one of our Englishmen's farms, to find the
+proprietor standing, coat off and sleeves turned up, before a huge,
+round tin of white slush? When he saw me come in, he lifted out his
+hands and rubbed off the white dripping mess, saying: "I'll be hanged
+if I'll try any longer; since eleven o'clock have I been after this
+beastly bread! Can you make it? Is this stuff too thin or too thick, or
+what?" It is true that he makes fine bread now; but if you could but
+know the stages of slackness, heaviness, soddenness, flintiness, that
+he and his friends passed through, you would see that I was giving a
+useful hint, and one that applies to the feminine emigrant quite as
+much as to the masculine. Another thing strikes us out here, namely,
+the waste that pervades an average Oregon farmer's household. Does he
+kill a deer? He leaves the fore half of the creature, and all the
+internals, in the wood where he killed it, taking home only the
+hind-quarters and the hide. If he kills a hog, the head is thrown out,
+to be rolled round and gnawed at by the dogs; the same with a sheep or
+a calf.
+
+Half of them will not even take the trouble to have butter, letting the
+calves get all the milk, but just a little for the meals. You rarely
+see eggs on the table, though there may be scores of hens about.
+
+You will hardly believe that large quantities of butter and cheese are
+imported into this valley, both from California and from Washington
+Territory, and cheese even from the East, though there can not be a
+finer dairy country than this, if they would but look a little ahead
+and provide some green food for the cows for the interval between the
+hay-crop off the timothy-grass and the fresh growth of the same from
+the autumn rains.
+
+It is still more inexcusable among the hills, where the grass keeps
+green all the year round. The exclusive devotion to wheat is what will
+very shortly and most surely impoverish the country; and therefore it
+is that, in the interests of Oregon, I am so anxious that many farmers
+should come here who are familiar with mixed farming, and will apply it
+to our deep, rich, stoneless soil, and will thus avert the inevitable
+consequences of wheat, wheat, wheat, continuously for fifteen, twenty,
+ay, and thirty years.
+
+It is not that other crops and other pursuits do not answer here.
+Sheep, cattle, and horses thrive and multiply. Oregon valley wool ranks
+among the very best. The Angora goat takes to Western Oregon as if it
+were his native home, and produces yearly from three to four pounds of
+hair, worth from sixty to eighty cents a pound. Beans, peas, carrots,
+parsnips grow as I have never seen them elsewhere. Swedish turnips have
+succeeded well in this valley, and nearer the coast the white turnips I
+have seen nearly as big as your head, and good all through. I saw a
+large heap of potatoes the other day that averaged six inches long, and
+perfectly clean and free from all taint. Carrots we grew ourselves that
+weighed from one and a half to two pounds all round. Barley thrives
+splendidly, with a full, round, clear-skinned berry. Oats I need hardly
+mention, as the export of this cereal is very large, and the quality is
+undeniable.
+
+The common red clover grows in a half-acre patch in my neighbor's field
+waist-high, and he cut it three times last year. We have the humble-bee
+(or, at any rate, a big fellow just like the English humble-bee--for I
+never handled one to examine it closely) to fertilize the clover. The
+white Dutch clover spreads wherever it gets a chance.
+
+[Sidenote: _WHEAT-GROWING._]
+
+But the temptation to grow wheat is very strong. It is the staple
+product of the State, and hardly ever fails in quality. The farmers
+understand it; their system of life is organized with a view to it. A
+thousand bushels of wheat in the warehouse is as good as money in the
+bank, and is in reality a substitute for it. There is a clear
+understanding of what it costs to plant, harvest, and warehouse, and it
+involves the lowest amount of trouble and anxiety.
+
+Therefore, Oregon grows wheat, and will grow it; and men will grow
+nothing else until the consequences are brought home to them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+The land-office; its object and functionaries--How to find your
+land--Section 33--The great conflagration--The survivors of the
+fire--The burnt timber and the brush--The clearing-party--Chopping by
+beginners--Cooking, amateur and professional--The wild-cat--Deer
+and hunting--Piling brush--Dear and cheap clearing--The skillful
+axeman--Clearing by Chinamen--Dragging out stumps--What profits the
+farmer may expect on a valley farm--On a foot-hills farm.
+
+
+By the time we had been here about a month and had settled down a
+little, we set about clearing a tract of wild land called section 33,
+situated nearly twenty miles away. You will ask, What does section 33
+mean? Oregon is divided into several districts. For the Willamette
+Valley the land-office is at Oregon City, one of the most ancient towns
+in the State, having a history of forty years, dating from the rule of
+the Hudson's Bay Company. The chief officer is called the "register."
+He is supplied with maps of the surveys from the central office at
+Washington. Each map is of one township, consisting of a square block
+of thirty-six sections of a square mile or six hundred and forty acres
+each. Each township is numbered with reference to a baseline and a
+meridian, fixed by the original survey of the State, thus giving a
+position of latitude and longitude. From the land-office duplicates of
+the maps for each county are furnished to the county-seat and are
+deposited in the county clerk's office for general inspection. Each
+year a certain sum is set aside for new surveys, and contracts are
+given by the Surveyor-General of the State to local surveyors for the
+work.
+
+The corners of each square-mile section are denoted by posts or large
+stones, and the neighboring trees are blazed or marked so as to direct
+attention to the corner post or stone.
+
+Thus for years after the surveying-party have passed through wild land,
+there is but little difficulty in finding the corner-posts, and thence
+by compass ascertaining the boundary-lines of any section or fraction
+of a section in question. Surveys being officially made, boundary
+disputes are avoided, or easily solved and set at rest by reference to
+the county surveyor, who for a few dollars' fee comes out and "runs the
+lines" afresh of any particular plot.
+
+Section 33, then, is the section thus numbered in township 10, south of
+range 7, west of the Willamette meridian. It lay just on the edge of
+the burned woods country.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION._]
+
+Although forest-fires in Oregon are still of yearly occurrence, since
+settlement by the white men the range of the devastation has been by
+degrees narrowed and confined. Formerly the Indians started fires every
+year to burn the withered grass in the valleys and on the hillsides,
+and thence fire spread into the woods and ravaged many miles of timber.
+The "great fire" is said to have occurred about forty years ago, when
+many Indians perished in the flames, and others had to take refuge in
+the streams and rivers, till the destroying element had passed them in
+its resistless fury.
+
+Standing on the top of one of these Coast Mountains, the eye ranges for
+many miles over hill and dale, dotted everywhere with the huge black
+trunks, the relics of the great conflagration. Many standing yet, some
+towering high into the sky, testify of their former gracefulness by the
+symmetrical tapering of the tall trunk, and the regular positions of
+the broken limbs and branches. But Nature is busily at work repairing
+damages; each winter's rains penetrate more deeply into the fabric of
+the trunk; each winter's gales loosen yet more the roots in which the
+living sap was long ago destroyed; each spring the wind brings down
+additions to the graveyard of trees, rotting away into mold; while a
+few young successors to the former race of firs are showing themselves
+clothed in living green, and a dense growth of copse-wood, hazel,
+cherry, vine-maple, arrow-wood, and crab-apple is crowding the hollows
+of the canyons on the hill-sides.
+
+The brake-fern covers the hills, attaining a growth of five, six, or
+eight feet, and sheltering an undergrowth of wild-pea and native grass.
+Section 33 lies between the burned timber and the living forest, but
+its chief value is in the valley of some three hundred acres of
+alluvial land forming its center, through which winds here and there
+the Mary River, at this distance from its mouth scarcely more than a
+clear and rapid brook.
+
+Eight of us started on the clearing-party with two light wagons, and a
+good supply of food, blankets, and axes and saws. A squatter had
+settled on one corner and built himself a hut and a little barn, and
+had got four or five acres of land cleared and plowed. But he had
+abandoned his improvements and gone some ten miles off, to clear
+another homestead among the thick woods.
+
+The first night we camped out in a grassy corner by the wood-side,
+while the horses were tethered near.
+
+[Sidenote: _CHOPPING BY BEGINNERS._]
+
+The next day we began. Two or three of us had some little knowledge of
+the virtue of an axe, but the rest were new to the art. It was amusing
+to watch their eager efforts to hit straight and firm. One or two of
+our Oregonian neighbors came and looked on with rather scoffing faces,
+but advised us how to lay the brush we cut in windrows, with a view to
+the future burning.
+
+We cut young firs, up to a foot thick, cherry poles from fifteen to
+thirty feet high, vine-maple as thick as the cherry but only half as
+tall, and here and there a tough piece of crab-apple. The brush was so
+thick that what was cut could only fall one way, so that the patch each
+man had cut by dinner-time was ridiculously small. Of course, the whole
+valley was not brush-covered--very far from it; there were great open
+spaces of clear grass, with here and there a tuft of blue lupin and
+rose-bushes. The firs once cut off were done with, and the stump would
+rot out of the ground in a year or two. The cherry-brush was no bad
+enemy, either; the young shoots would sprout from the root next year,
+but sheep would bite them off and kill the cherry out in a couple of
+seasons. But by all accounts the vine-maple was as tough in life as in
+texture, and that it was tough in texture our poor arms testified when
+night came.
+
+For a few days we tried to be our own cooks, one of the party in turn
+being detailed for the purpose; but much good victuals was spoiled. So
+I sent into town for a Chinaman cook. That too much Chinaman is bad, I
+am prepared to support my neighbors in believing; but enough Chinaman
+to have one at call whenever you think fit to send for him is a comfort
+indeed. So Jem, as he called himself, came out to us. He wore a smile
+all day long on his broad face; and he was caught reading earnestly in
+a poetry-book he must have found left out of one of our bags; so I
+conclude he was a learned Chinaman. But he had strange fancies for his
+own eating. He cooked a wild-cat that was shot, and we laughed; but he
+proceeded next to skin and eat a skunk that had fallen a victim to its
+curiosity to see how white men lived, and had trespassed inside the
+hut; and that was too much. We tasted, or thought we tasted, skunk in
+the bread for a day or two, so we sent Jem back.
+
+Turn out at five, breakfast over by soon after six, work till noon;
+then from one till six; then supper, and camp-fire, and pipes and talk
+till nine, and then to bed. Such was our regular life, certainly a
+healthy and not an unpleasant one.
+
+[Sidenote: _DEER AND HUNTING._]
+
+We had an excitement one night. The hut stood at the corner of the
+clearing, with a couple of good-sized firs in front of the door. A
+wood-covered hill came close to it on the right and rear. We were going
+to bed, when there was a howl outside, followed by a chorus from our
+three hounds. Out rushed a couple of us into the starlight with rifles
+in hand. The dogs had sent whatever creature it was up into one of the
+fir-trees and bayed fiercely round. Nothing could be seen among the
+thick branches. One of the party, an enthusiast, though a novice in
+woodland sport, got right close to the tree-trunk and managed to make
+out a form against the sky some twenty feet above his head. At once he
+fired, and down came the creature almost on his head; fortunately for
+him, the hounds attacked it at once, and a royal fight and scrimmage
+went on in the dark. Presently the intruder fought its way through the
+dogs to the rail-fence, but mounting it showed for an instant against
+the sky, and a second rifle-shot brought it down. Dragged to the light,
+some called it a catamount, but others more correctly a wild-cat
+(_Lynx fasciatus_). A right handsome beast it was, with short tail, and
+tufted ears, and spotted skin. It was and remains the only one that has
+been seen. It was attracted, no doubt, by some mutton we had hung up in
+the fir to be out of the way of the dogs. Fortunate, indeed, was our
+friend to escape its claws and teeth, as it has the reputation of being
+the fiercest and hardest to kill of all the cats found in Oregon.
+
+The woods in front of the hut across the valley were a sure find for
+deer, and we could kill one almost any day by planting a gun or two at
+points in the valley which the deer would make for, and then turning
+the hounds into the woods above. It is a poor kind of hunting at the
+best, this hiding behind a bush and watching, it may be for hours, for
+the deer. You hear the cry of the hound far away, gradually growing
+nearer, and presently the deer breaks cover, and either swims or runs
+and wades down the river toward your stand; occupied solely with the
+trailing hound, and ignorant of the ambushed danger in front, the shot
+is generally a sure and easy one at a few paces' distance, often within
+buck-shot range from an ordinary gun.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE SKILLFUL AXEMAN._]
+
+Before the summer had passed, enough brush had been cut to clear some
+fifty acres of the valley, and we left the cut stuff piled in long rows
+to dry till next summer, that the burning might be a complete one when
+we did put fire to it. The fires would need tending for a day or two,
+and feeding with the butt-ends of the long poles, to finish the work;
+grass-seed sown on the ashes with the first autumn rains would speedily
+make excellent pasture in that deep and fertile soil. The fencing of
+the cleared acreage, and the plowing up and sowing with oats and wheat
+of some eight or ten acres of land from which the roots and stumps had
+been carefully grubbed out, would complete a "ranch," according to the
+Oregon fashion, and section 33 would lose that name and assume that of
+its first owner. The transformation from wild land to tame would be
+complete, and my work in connection with it would be done. So much for
+one way, and that the simplest, of making a home in Oregon. Longer
+experience taught us cheaper methods. For the large clearing-party with
+its attendant expense and need of oversight may be substituted clearing
+by contract; when some one or two of the poorer and more industrious
+homesteaders will contract to cut and clear at so much the acre or the
+piece, boarding themselves, and taking their own time and methods of
+doing the work. Some of the Indians are masters of the axe, and will
+both make a clearing bargain and stick to it, provided you are careful
+to keep always a good percentage of their pay in hand till the work is
+finished: fail to do this, and some rainy day you will find no ringing
+of the axe amid the trees, and their rough camp will be deserted, its
+inhabitants gone for good. I like to watch a skillful axeman. Set him
+to one of the big black trunks, six feet through. Watch how he strolls
+round it, axe on shoulder, determining which way it shall fall. He
+fetches or cuts out a plank, six or eight inches wide, and four feet
+long, and you wonder what he will do with it. A few quick blows of his
+keen weapon, and a deep notch is cut into the tree four feet from the
+ground; the plank is driven into it, and he climbs lightly on it.
+Standing there, another notch is cut four feet still higher from the
+ground, and a second plank inserted. Then watch him. Standing there on
+the elastic plank, which seems to give more life and vigor to his
+blows, it springs to the swing of the axe and the chips fly fast. As
+you look, he seems to be inspired with eager hurry, and the chips fly
+in a constant shower. Soon a deep, wedge-like cut is seen eating its
+way into the heart of the trunk. In an hour or so he has finished on
+that side, and leaves it. Taking the opposite side of the tree, he is
+at it again, and a big wound speedily appears. Long before the heart is
+reached, a loud cracking and rending is heard. The axeman redoubles his
+efforts. The tree shakes and quivers through all its mass, and then the
+top moves, slowly at first, then faster, and down it comes, with a
+crash that wakes the echoes in the hills for miles and shakes the
+ground. Then send him into the thick brush, where the stems are so
+crowded that they have shot high up into the sky. Two cuts on one side,
+and one on the other, an inch or two from the earth, and he drops his
+axe, and leans all his weight against the stem. It cracks and snaps; he
+shakes it, and gently it sways, bending its elastic top till it touches
+the ground before the stem has left its hold on Mother Earth. Before it
+has had time to fall its neighbor is attacked, and a broad strip of
+sunlight is soon let into the wood. Hard work? Of course it is: a day's
+chopping will earn you sore wrists and aching arms, but a fine appetite
+and the soundest of sleep. Unless a new-comer has had experience in the
+art and practice of wood-cutting, he will find it too slow work to
+undertake with his own hands the clearing of wild land to make his
+homestead. Let him buy a place where some of the rough early work has
+been already done, and there are plenty to be had, and by all means let
+him by degrees, and as time serves, enlarge his clearing and extend his
+fields. Or, let him contract for the clearing at so much the acre. Some
+of the very best wheat-land in this valley is covered with oak-grubs
+which have sprung up within the last twenty years to a height of from
+ten to twenty feet. Chinamen are generally used to clear this land,
+being engaged at the rate of from eighty to ninety cents a day; that
+is, from three shillings fourpence to three shillings tenpence English.
+They want looking after closely to get full value from their work. They
+come in gangs of any size wanted, and have to be provided with a rough
+hut to sleep in; they furnish their own food and cooking. The oak-wood
+is not only cut, but the roots are grubbed out, and the land left ready
+for the plow. The wood is cut into four-feet lengths and stacked ready
+for carting away. It is worth almost anywhere in the valley not less
+than three dollars a cord; that is, a pile eight feet long, four feet
+wide, and four feet high. Thus the farmer who has a little capital and
+so can afford the first outlay, need not hesitate to clear this
+oak-grub land, as the value of the cord-wood and the first year's crop
+should more than defray the expense of the grubbing.
+
+In England it is usual to bring into farming course gradually woodland
+that has been cleared, sowing oats first. Here, on the contrary, the
+farmer may expect a good wheat crop from his cleared woodland the first
+year.
+
+Yet another method of clearing is very effective and economical,
+especially at a distance from the haunts of Chinamen. A strong wooden
+windlass is made and fitted with a long lever for one horse. The
+windlass is anchored down near the oak-grub or cherry-brush to be got
+rid of. A strong iron chain is caught round the bush and attached to
+the windlass. The horse marches round and round, and winds up the
+windlass-rope; the roots soon crack and tear. The farmer stands by, axe
+in hand, and one or two strokes sever the toughest roots, and the bush
+is torn up by main force, root and branch. One man and a horse can thus
+do the work of six men, and do it effectually too.
+
+[Sidenote: _PROFITS ON A VALLEY FARM._]
+
+Before we turn to other subjects let me give some idea of what a newly
+arrived farmer may expect to get, if he settles on a valley farm.
+
+Suppose the farm to consist of 400 acres, of which 150 acres are plowed
+land, the remainder being rough pasture, and 30 acres brush. Of the 150
+acres, 90 acres would be in wheat and 60 in oats and timothy-grass. The
+wheat-land would produce 26 bushels to the acre, or 2,340 bushels in
+all. The value may be taken to be 90 cents the bushel, on an average of
+years, or $2,106 in all. The farmer would have a flock of 250 sheep,
+the produce from which in wool and lambs would not be less than $300 a
+year. He would breed and sell two colts a year, yielding him certainly
+$125, probably half as much more. He would have ten tons of timothy-hay
+to sell, producing $75. He should fat not less than a dozen hogs, worth
+$10 each, or $120. We will say nothing of milk, butter, eggs, fruit,
+and garden produce; but, from the sources of profit we have enumerated,
+you will find the return to be $2,726.
+
+The necessary expenses would be the wages of one hired hand, say $300 a
+year; harvesting, $150, and other expenses, such as repairs to
+implements, horse-shoeing, and wheat-bags for the grain, $276, leaving
+a net return of $2,000. Supposing that the cost of the farm was $25 an
+acre, or $10,000 in all, I think the return is a pretty good one on
+such a figure, even if another $1,000 or $1,500 has to be added for
+implements, farm-horses, and sheep, to start with.
+
+The figures I have given are from the actual working of a thoroughly
+reliable man, but relate to a year slightly above the general average
+of profit. You will see a large possibility of improvement in bringing
+more of the unbroken land into cultivation, either in grain or in tame
+grasses, and better sheep and cattle feed. So much for a valley farm at
+present prices. Naturally, the figures will alter as time goes on, as I
+do not imagine that the present prices of land will continue
+stationary, in the face of new railroads, improved communications, and
+growing population.
+
+Let us look at the opportunities of an emigrant with less capital and
+greater willingness to dispense with some of the valley advantages.
+
+[Sidenote: _PROFITS ON A FOOT-HILLS FARM._]
+
+His 400 acres would probably give him only 50 acres of farming, cleared
+land; but adjoining, or at any rate near by, he would find land
+belonging still to the Government, or untilled and unfenced, for his
+cattle to range over. He would have, say, 20 acres of wheat, giving him
+500 bushels, and 30 acres of oats and timothy-hay, yielding 600 bushels
+of oats, of which 200 would be for sale, and the rest for use and seed,
+and 30 tons of hay. He would have, say, 40 cattle, of which 15 would
+come into market each year. The average value of these would be $18, or
+$270 in all. Add 20 hogs at $10, or $200 in all. He must also raise and
+sell three colts a year, giving him $150. Looking to smaller items of
+profit, the farmer's wife should have ten pounds of butter a week to
+sell, at any rate, through the summer months, which at 20 cents a pound
+would give her $2 a week for 25 weeks, or $50 in all. Eggs should yield
+also not less than $40 in the year. This all totals to $1,240, against
+an original outlay of $10 an acre, or $4,000 in all for the farm, and
+$1,500 for implements and stock.
+
+If the farmer is a sportsman, he may add a good many deer in the course
+of the year to the family larder, and also pheasants and partridges and
+quail, from August to November. I use the local names, the ruffed
+grouse and the common grouse being in question.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A spring ride in Oregon--The start--The equipment--Horses and
+saddlery--Packs--The roadside--Bird fellow-travelers--Snakes--The
+nearest farm--Bees--The great pasture--The poisonous larkspur--
+Market-gardening--The Cardwell Hill--The hill-top--The water-shed--Mary
+River--Crain's--The Yaquina Valley--Brush, grass, and fern--The young
+Englishmen's new home--A rustic bridge--"Chuck-holes"--The road
+supervisor--Trapp's--The mill-dam--Salmon-pass law--Minnows and
+crawfish--The Pacific at rest--Yaquina--Newport.
+
+
+Some months ago I noticed an observation in the "Spectator," in a
+critique of a book of the Duke of Argyll's on Canadian homes, to the
+effect that what was wanted was such a description of roadside, farm,
+and woodland as should cause far-away readers to see them in their
+ordinary, every-day guise.
+
+I have often felt the same need in books of travels, when I little
+thought it would ever fall to my lot to try to bring a land thousands
+of miles away before untraveled eyes.
+
+So, take a ride with me, in May, from our town to Yaquina Bay, just
+sixty-six miles off.
+
+I have already said enough of the valley lying here, in the early
+morning, calm and quiet, with the light mist tracing out the course of
+the great river for miles into the soft distance, and the Cascade Range
+standing out clear above. But we turn our backs on the town and face
+toward the west.
+
+[Sidenote: _HORSES AND SADDLERY._]
+
+One word on mount and equipment. The horse is a light chestnut--sorrel
+we call it here--about fifteen hands high, compact and active, with
+flowing mane and tail. He cost a hundred dollars six months back; in
+England, for a park hack, he would be worth three fourths as many
+pounds. He has four paces--a walk of about four miles an hour, a
+jog-trot of five, a lope or canter of six or seven, and a regular
+gallop. He passes from one pace to another by a mere pressure of the
+leg against his sides, and the gentlest movement of the reins. To turn
+him, be it ever so short, carry the bridle-hand toward the side you
+want to go, but put away all notion of pulling one rein or the other.
+He will walk unconcernedly through the deepest mud or the quickest
+flowing brook, and climb a steep hill with hardly quickened breath; if
+he meets a big log in the trail, he will just lift his fore-legs over
+it and follow with his hind-legs without touching it, and hardly moving
+you in the saddle. And he will carry a twelve-stone man, with a saddle
+weighing nearly twenty pounds, and a pack of fifteen pounds behind the
+saddle, from eight in the morning till six in the evening, with an
+hour's rest in the middle of the day, and be ready to do it again
+to-morrow, and the next day, and the day after that.
+
+The saddle is in the Mexican shape, with a high pommel in front, handy
+for a rope or gun-sling, and a high cantle behind; it has a deep,
+smooth seat, and a leather flap behind and attached to the cantle on
+which the pack rests; huge wooden stirrups, broad enough to give full
+support to the foot, and wide enough for the foot to slip easily in and
+out. A horse-hair belt, six inches wide, with an iron ring at each end,
+through which runs a buckskin strap to attach it to the saddle, and by
+which it is drawn tight, forms a "sinch," the substitute for girths.
+The word "sinch" is a good one, and has passed into slang. If your
+enemy has injured you and you propose to return the compliment in the
+reverse of Christian fashion, "I'll sinch him," say you. If a poor
+player has won the first trick by accident, "I guess he'll get sinched
+soon," says the looker-on.
+
+I advise no Englishman to bring saddlery to Oregon. He will save no
+money by doing so, and will not be fitted out so well for the
+hours-long rides he will have. I have only heard one Englishman out of
+fifty say that he prefers the English saddle, after getting used to the
+Mexican, and he had brought one out with him and used it out of pride.
+
+Behind the saddle is the pack. Just a clean flannel shirt and a pair of
+socks, a hair-brush, a comb and tooth-brush, fit us out for a week or
+two; baggage becomes truly "impedimenta" when you have to carry it on
+your horse. You need not carry blankets now, for there are good
+stopping-houses at fit distances apart. But you may, if you wish, bring
+your Martini carbine, or Winchester rifle, for we may meet a deer by
+the way. So we start.
+
+The first mile or two is along the open road. A brown, rather dusty
+track in the center, beaten hard by the travel; on either side a broad
+band of short grass; and snake-fences, built of logs ten feet long,
+piled seven high, and interlaced at the ends. In the angles of nearly
+every panel of the fence grows a rose-bush, now covered with young
+buds, just showing crimson tips. As we canter by, a meadow-lark gives
+us a stave of half-finished song from the top of the fence, and flits
+off to pitch some fifty yards away, in the young green wheat, and try
+again at his song. The bird is nearly as large as an English thrush,
+with speckled breast, and a bright-yellow patch under the tail. Just in
+front of us, on the fence, sits a little hawk, so tame that he moves
+not till we pass him, and then by turns follows and precedes us along
+the road, settling again and again upon the tallest rails. He is gayly
+dressed indeed, with a russet-brown back and head, and a yellow and
+brown barred and speckled chest, and all the keenness of eye one looks
+for in his tribe.
+
+[Sidenote: _SNAKES._]
+
+Early as it is, here and there in the road is one of the little brown
+snakes that abound in the valley; seduced from his hole by the warm
+sun, he is enjoying himself in the dust, and only just has time to
+glide hastily away as the horse-hoofs threaten his life. Their
+harmlessness and use in waging war on beetles, worms, and frogs, ought
+to save their lives; but they are snakes, and that suffices to cause
+every passer-by to strike at them with his staff.
+
+The face of the country is vivid green, the autumn-sown wheat nearly
+knee-high, and the oats running the wheat a race in height and
+thickness. The orchard-trees close to the farmhouse we are approaching
+stand clothed from head to foot in flower; the pear-trees, whose
+branches are not now curved and bent with fruit, tower as white
+pyramids above the heads of the blushing apples.
+
+Close by the orchard-fence the ewes and lambs feed, the little ones
+leaping high and throwing themselves away with the mere joy of warm sun
+and young life.
+
+The farmer sees us coming, and scolds back the rough sheep-dog noisily
+barking at the strangers as he comes to his gate to shake hands. "Won't
+you hitch your horse and come in?" he says; "I want you to look at
+these bees--I have got six swarms already." And under the garden-fence
+stands a long, low-boarded roof, and under it a whole row of boxes and
+barrels, of all ages and sizes, with a noisy multitude coming and
+going. Straw hives are unknown, and any old tea-chest is used. Not much
+refinement about bee-keeping in Oregon; but honey fetches from thirty
+to fifty cents a pound.
+
+We mount again, and, passing through a couple of loosely made and
+carelessly hung gates, we enter the big pasture. Not very much grass in
+it; it is wet, low-lying, undrained land. The wild-rose bushes are
+scattered here, there, and everywhere in clumps, and the face of the
+field is strewed with the dull, light-green, thick and hairy leaves of
+a wild sunflower, whose bright-yellow flowers with a brown center, all
+hanging as if too heavy for the stalk, have not yet matured. The cattle
+are very fond of this plant, and do well on it. An enemy of theirs is
+the lupin, here called the larkspur, one of the earliest of spring
+plants. Its handsome, dark-blue flowers do not redeem it, for the
+cattle are deceived by it, eat, and are seized with staggers, and will
+sink down and die if not seen to and treated. One of our friends tells
+us that he cures his larkspur-poisoned cattle with fat pork, lumps of
+which he stuffs down their throats. This information we submit to an
+unprejudiced public, but we do not guarantee that this remedy will
+cure. It is generally two-year-old cattle which partake and
+sicken--perhaps the calves have not enterprise enough, and the older
+cattle too much sense.
+
+The plant is not so very common, but it has to be watched for and
+extirpated when found. Between the pasture and the wheat-fields stands
+another snake-fence and a gate. Alas! by the gate, and to be crossed
+before we reach it, is the Slough of Despond--a big, deep,
+uncompromising pool of black, sticky mud. The horses eye it doubtfully,
+and put down their noses to try if it smells better than it looks, and
+then step gravely in, girth-high almost, till we open and force back
+the heavy gate.
+
+Skirting the wheat-field, between it and the creek, hardly seen for the
+undergrowth of rose-bushes and hazel, with here and there a big
+oak-tree, the road brings us out into a patch of garden-ground, filled
+with vegetables for the town housekeepers. Just now there is little to
+be seen but some rows of early peas and spring cabbage. Later on, the
+long beds of onions, French beans, cauliflowers, and all the rest, with
+the melons, squashes, or vegetable marrows, pumpkins, cucumbers, and
+tomatoes (which were the glory of the gardener), showed the full
+advantages of the irrigating ditches, fed by the higher spring, which
+are led here, there, and everywhere through the patch. For, remember,
+we had almost continuous fine weather, with hot sun and few showers,
+from the middle of May till the middle of October.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE CARDWELL HILL._]
+
+But here is the main road again, which we left to turn across the
+fields, and we are at the foot of the Cardwell Hill. The wood lies on
+both sides of us, and we mount rapidly upward. The wild-strawberry
+creeps everywhere along the ground, its white flower and yellow eye
+hiding modestly under the leaves. The catkins on the hazel-bushes
+dangle from each little bough. The purple iris grows thickly in the
+frequent mossy spots, and the scarlet columbine peers over the heads of
+the bunches of white flowers we knew not whether to call
+lilies-of-the-valley or Solomon's seal, for they bear the features of
+both. The purple crocuses have not yet all gone out of bloom, though
+their April glory has departed, and the tall spear-grass gives elegance
+all round to Dame Nature's bouquets.
+
+We have ample time to take in all these homely beauties, for the road
+is too thickly shaded by the wood for the sun to dry the mud, and our
+horses painfully plod upward, with a noisy "suck, suck," as each foot
+in turn is dragged from the sticky mass.
+
+But the undergrowth is thinner as we mount; first oak-scrub and then
+oak-trees growing here and there, with grass all round, take the place
+of the copse, and the mountain air blows fresh in our faces as we near
+the summit. Halting for a moment to let the horses regain their breath,
+we turn and see the whole broad valley lying bright in sunshine far
+below. So clear is the air that the firs on the Cascades, forty miles
+away, are hardly blended into a mass of dark, greenish gray; and the
+glorious snow-peaks shining away there twenty miles behind those firs,
+look to be on speaking terms with the Coast Range on which we stand.
+
+But we pursue our westward course along a narrow track following the
+hill-side near the top, leaving the road to take its way down below, to
+round the base of the hill which we strike across. This hill is bare of
+trees, and is covered now with bright, young, green grass, soon to be
+dried and shriveled into a dusty brown by the summer sun. We wind round
+the heads of rocky clefts or canyons, down each of which hastens a
+murmuring stream. There the oaks and alders grow tall, but we look over
+their heads, so rapid is the descent to the vale below.
+
+The mountains on the distant left of us are Mary's Peak and the Alsea
+Mountain; the former with smooth white crown of snow above the dark fir
+timber; and away to the right, among lower, wooded hills, we catch one
+glimpse of the burned timber, the thick black stems standing out clear
+on the horizon-line.
+
+Passing down the hill and by the farmhouse at the foot, with its great
+barn and blooming orchard, we strike the road once more, passing for a
+mile or two between wheat-fields, with the Mary River on the left
+closed from our sight by the screen of firs that follow it all the way
+along; then by a bridge and by other farms, and between fir-woods of
+thickly standing trees, and up and down hill, with here and there a
+level valley in between, we strike the Mary River again for the last
+time, and climb the Summit Hill.
+
+We are twenty-two miles from our starting-point, and claim a meal and
+rest. We are among old friends as we ride up to Crain's to dine, and
+the noonday sun is hot enough for us to enjoy the cool breeze among the
+young firs behind the house, as we stand to wash hands and face by the
+bench on the side of the dairy built over the stream close by. The
+horses know their way to the barn, to stand with slackened sinches, and
+nuzzle into the sweet timothy-hay with which the racks are filled.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE YAQUINA VALLEY._]
+
+On our way once more, in half an hour we stand on the edge of the
+water-shed, and look down far into the Yaquina Valley, lying deep
+between rugged and broken hills below. As we dip below the crest, the
+character of the vegetation changes at once.
+
+We have left the thick woods behind. The last of the tall green firs
+clothes the crest we have passed, and the black burned timber is dotted
+along the hill-sides.
+
+Last year's brake-fern clothes the hills in dull yellow and brown,
+except where patches of thimble-berry and salmon-berry bushes have
+usurped its place. The wild-strawberry has been almost entirely left
+behind, and instead there is the blackberry-vine trailing everywhere
+along the rough ground, and casting its purple-tinged tracery over the
+fallen logs. There is plenty of grass among the fern, and the wild-pea
+grows erect as yet, not having length enough to bend and creep. The
+river Yaquina comes down from a wild, rough valley to the right, to be
+crossed by a wooden bridge close to a farmhouse on rising ground. Two
+of our recently arrived Englishmen have bought this place, and are well
+satisfied with their position. About eight hundred acres of their own
+land, of which quite three hundred are cultivable in grain, though not
+nearly all now in crop, and really unlimited free range on the hills
+all round for stock; some valley-land which produces everything it is
+asked; a garden-patch where potatoes grew this year, one of which was
+six pounds in weight; a comfortable house and substantial barn; a
+trout-stream by their doors; a railroad in near prospect to bring them
+within two hours of a market at either end; and, meanwhile, a demand at
+home for all the oats and hay they can raise for sale--it would be
+strange, indeed, I think, if they who had supposed they were coming
+into a wilderness with everything to make, were not well pleased.
+
+The only things they complain of are the scarcity of neighbors and bad
+roads--both, we hope, in a fair way to be overcome. They look contented
+enough, as they stand by their house-door to bid us good-day as we ride
+by. The valley widens out and narrows again in turn. In each open space
+stands a farmhouse, or else the site demands one.
+
+As we get nearer to the coast, the river forces its way through quite a
+narrow gorge, following round the point of a projecting fern-covered
+slope, and under the shadow of the high hill on the northern side. The
+great blechnum ferns, with fronds three or four feet long, are
+interspersed with the thimble-berry bushes, and border the road.
+Syringa and deutzia plants and two varieties of elder, which bear black
+and red berries, but are now bright with abundant flowers, clothe the
+steep bank overhanging the river, which here widens out into calm
+pools, divided by ripples, and runs over rocks. And see, here is a
+natural bridge; a huge fir has fallen right across, and the farmer has
+leveled the ground up to the top of the trunk, some six feet high, and
+has set up a slender rail on each side of his bridge, and over it he
+drives his sheep into the less matted and tangled ground on the far
+side.
+
+[Sidenote: "_CHUCK-HOLES._"]
+
+The road, cut into the steep hill-side, never gets the sunshine; the
+mud clogs the horse's feet and fills the "chuck-holes"--traps for the
+unwary driver. Be it known that oftentimes a great log comes shooting
+down the hill in winter, and brings up in its downward course on the
+ledge formed by the road. Notice is sent to the road supervisor by the
+first passer-by, and this functionary, generally one of the better
+class of farmers, who has charge of the road district, calls out his
+neighbors to assist in the clearing of the road. He has legal power to
+enforce his summons, but it is never disregarded, and the "crowd" fall
+on with saws, axes, and levers. They soon cut a big "chunk" out of the
+log, some ten feet long, wide enough to clear the center of the road,
+and roll it unceremoniously away down the hill, or lodge it lengthwise
+by the roadside. There they leave matters, deeming spade-and-shovel
+work beneath them. Next winter's rain lodges and stands in the dint
+made by the trunk when it fell, and in the depression left by the men
+who rolled the middle of the log away. Never filled up, or any channel
+cut to run the water off, a "chuck-hole" is formed, which each wagon
+enlarges as it is driven round the edge to escape the center. Woe
+betide the stranger who does not altogether avoid, or boldly
+"straddle," the "chuck-hole" with his wheels! The side of the wagon
+whose fore and hind wheels have sunk into the hole dips rapidly down,
+and he is fortunate who escapes without an upset, and with only showers
+of liquid mud covering horses, driver, and load, as the team struggles
+to drag the wagon through. But, pressing through the gorge, we emerge
+into a more open stretch. On the right of us rises a smooth, round
+hill, fern-covered to the top; and on the opposite side, next the
+river, planted on a pretty knoll just where the valley turns sharply to
+the north, thereby getting a double view, is Mr. Trapp's farmhouse, our
+resting-place for the night. We have made our forty-four miles in spite
+of the muddy road and steep grades, and there is yet time before supper
+to borrow our host's rod and slip down to the river for a salmon-trout.
+Excellent fare and comfortable beds prepare us for the eighteen miles
+we have yet before us on the morrow, and we get an early start. Two
+miles below Trapp's is Eddy's grist-mill, with its rough mill-dam, made
+on the model of a beaver-dam, and of the same sticks and stones, but
+not so neatly; the ends of the sticks project over the mill-pool below,
+and prove the death of numberless salmon, which strike madly against
+them in their upward leaps, and fall back bruised and beaten into the
+pool again.
+
+An effort was made to pass a law, this last session of the Legislature,
+compelling the construction of fish-passes through the mill-dams; but
+it was too useful and simple a measure to provoke a party fight, and
+therefore was quietly shelved. Better luck next time.
+
+[Sidenote: _MINNOWS AND CRAWFISH._]
+
+Presently we leave the Yaquina River, which, for over twenty miles, we
+have followed down its course; for never a mile without taking in some
+little brook, where the minnows are playing in busy schools over the
+clean gravel, and the crawfish are edging along, and staggering back,
+as if walking were an unknown art practiced for the first time. The
+river has grown from the burn we first crossed to a tidal watercourse,
+with a channel fifteen feet in depth, and, having left its youthful
+vivacity behind, flows gravely on, bearing now a timber-raft, then a
+wide-floored scow, and here the steam-launch carrying the mail. But we
+climb the highest hill we have yet passed, where the aneroid shows us
+eleven hundred feet above the sea-level, and from its narrow crest
+catch our first sight of the bay, glittering between the fir-woods in
+the morning sun.
+
+We leave the copse-woods behind, and canter for miles along a gently
+sloping, sandy road; the hills are thick in fern and thimble-berry
+bush, with the polished leaves and waxy-white flowers of the sallal
+frequently pushing through. We have got used by this time to the black,
+burned trunks, and somehow they seem appropriate to the view. But the
+sound of the Pacific waves beating on the rocky coast has been growing
+louder, and as we get to the top of a long ascent the whole scene lies
+before us.
+
+That dim blue haze in the distance is the morning fog, which has
+retreated from the coast and left its outlines clear.
+
+On the right is the rounded massive cape, on the lowest ledge of which
+stands Foulweather Lighthouse. The bare slopes and steep sea-face tell
+of its basaltic formation, which gives perpendicular outlines to the
+jutting rocks against which, some six miles off, the waves are dashing
+heavily.
+
+Between that distant cape and the Yaquina Lighthouse Point the
+coast-line is invisible from the height on which we stand, but the
+ceaseless roar tells of rocky headlands and pebble-strewed beach.
+
+Below us lies the bay, a calm haven, with its narrow entrance right
+before us, and away off, a mile at sea, a protecting line of reef, with
+its whole course and its north and south ends distinctly marked by the
+white breakers spouting up with each long swell of the Pacific waves.
+
+Under the shelter of the lighthouse hill, on the northern side, stands
+the little town of Newport, its twenty or thirty white houses and
+boat-frequented beach giving the suggestion of human life and interest
+to the scene.
+
+Away across the entrance, the broad streak of blue water marking the
+deep channel is veined with white, betraying the reef below--soon, we
+trust, to be got rid of in part by the engineers whose scows and barges
+are strewed along the south beach there in the sun.
+
+[Illustration: Yaquina Bay, Newport, 1880.]
+
+[Sidenote: _NEWPORT._]
+
+On that south side a broad strip of cool, gray sand borders the harbor,
+and there stand the ferry-house, and its flag-staff and boats.
+
+Looking to the left, the fir-crowned and fern-covered hills slope down
+to Ford's Point, jutting out into deep water, which flows up for miles
+till the turn above the mill shuts in the view.
+
+But we must not wait, if we mean to catch any flounders before the tide
+turns, and so we hurry down to the beach and along the hard sand
+bordering the bay under the broken cliffs, and are soon shaking hands
+with the cheery landlord of the Sea-View Hotel, who has been watching
+us from his veranda ever since we descended the hill from Diamond Point.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Hay-harvest--Timothy-grass--Permanent pasture--Hay-making by express--
+The mower and reaper--Hay-stacks as novelties--Wheat-harvest--Thrashing
+--The "thrashing crowd"--"Headers" and "self-binders"--Twine-binders
+and home-grown flax--Green food for cows--Indian corn, vetches--Wild-oats
+in wheat--Tar-weed the new enemy--Cost of harvesting--By hired machines
+--By purchased machines--Cost of wheat-growing in the Willamette Valley.
+
+
+Neither the first nor the second year did hay-harvest begin with us
+till after the first week in July. We did not shut the cattle off the
+hay-fields till the end of February, so that there was a great growth
+of grass to be made in four months and a half.
+
+How different our hay-fields are from those in the old country! I
+should dearly like to show to some of these farmers a good
+old-fashioned Devonshire or Worcestershire field, with its thick, solid
+undergrowth and waving heads. I should like them to see how much feed
+there was after the crop was cut.
+
+Here timothy-grass is everything to the farmer. Certainly, the
+old-country man would open his eyes to see a crop waist-high, the heavy
+heads four to seven inches long, and giving two tons to the acre. And
+he would revel in laying aside for good and all that anxiety as to
+weather which has burdened his life ever since he took scythe and
+pitchfork in hand. We expect nothing else but dewy nights and brilliant
+sunshine, so that the habit is to cut one day, pile the grass into huge
+cocks the same day, and carry it to the barn the next. Hay-stacks are
+unknown; the whole crop is stored away in the barn; and you may see
+sixty, eighty, or a hundred tons under the one great roof, and no fear
+of heating or burning before the farmer's eyes.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE MOWER AND REAPER._]
+
+The glory of the scythe has departed. Every little farmer has his
+mower, or mower and reaper combined; or else, if he can not afford to
+pay two hundred dollars or thereabout for his machine, he hires one
+from his more fortunate neighbor, and pays him "six bits"--that is,
+seventy-five cents--per acre for cutting his crop. Wood's, McCormick's,
+or the Buckeye, are the favorites here.
+
+Our own machine, with one pair of stout horses, cuts from nine to
+twelve acres a day, according to the thickness of the crop and the
+level or hilly nature of the ground. It looks easy--just riding up and
+down the field all day--but try it, and you will find you have to give
+close attention all the time, to be ready to lift your knives over a
+lumpy bit of ground or round a stump, and to cut your turns and corners
+clean; and there are no springs to your seat, and a mower is not the
+easiest carriage in the world.
+
+Nor is it light work to follow the horse hay-rake all day, lifting the
+teeth at every swath. Pitching hay is about the same work all the world
+over, I think; but at home one does not expect to make acquaintance
+with quite so many snakes, which come slipping down and twisting and
+writhing about as the hay is pitched into the wagon. It is true they
+are harmless, but I don't like them, all the same.
+
+We put up a big hay-stack each year, in spite of the most dismal
+prophecies from our neighbors that the rain would mold the hay, that it
+would not be fit to use, and that even a "town-cow" would despise it
+(and they will eat anything from deal boards to sulphur-matches, I
+declare). But the event justified us, and the whole stack of 1879 was
+duly eaten to the last mouthful.
+
+Wheat and oats follow close on the heels of the hay. We finished our
+stack on the 17th of July, and began cutting wheat on the 27th.
+
+There is one harvest, and only one, on record in Oregon, where rain
+fell on the cut grain and injured it. The rule is to feel absolutely
+secure of cutting your grain, thrashing it in the field as soon as cut,
+and carrying it from the thrashing-machine straight to the warehouse.
+
+There is lively competition to get the thrasher as soon as the grain is
+cut. The "thrashing crowd," of some seven or eight hands, which
+accompany the thrasher, have a busy time. They get good wages--from the
+$2.50 for the experienced "feeder" of the machine, to the $1.50 for the
+man who drives and loads the wagon, or pitches the sheaves. They travel
+from farm to farm, setting up the thrasher in a central spot, and
+"hauling" the sheaves to it. The quantity passed through the machine in
+one long day varies from one thousand to fifteen hundred bushels with
+horse-power; driven by steam, the quantity will run up to upward of two
+thousand bushels. These quantities seem very large by the side of those
+yielded by English machines, but they are too well authenticated to be
+open to doubt.
+
+[Sidenote: "_HEADERS" AND "SELF-BINDERS._"]
+
+A great wheat-field of a hundred acres, with headers and thrasher going
+at once, is a lively scene. The "header" is a huge construction ten
+feet wide. Revolving frames in front bend the wheat to the knives,
+where it is cut and delivered in an endless stream into a great
+header-wagon, driven alongside the cutting-machine. Six horses propel
+the header in front of them, and move calmly along unterrified by the
+revolving frames and vibrating knives. As soon as the header-wagon is
+filled, it is driven off to the thrasher, whirring away in the center
+of the field, and an empty one takes its place.
+
+Six horses to the header, two each to three header-wagons, eight to the
+horse-power on the thrasher, and one to the straw-rake, are all going
+at once. One man driving the header, one each to the three wagons, two
+feeding and tending the thrasher, one fitting and tying up the
+wheat-bags as the cleaned and finished grain comes pouring from the
+machine, and one hand at the straw-rake, are all busily at work. Very
+speedily the field is cleared, and the just now waving grain lies piled
+in a stack of wheat-bags in the center, waiting the departure of the
+"thrashing crowd," to be hauled by the farmer to the warehouse.
+
+A little of the straw is taken to the farmhouse, for use as litter in
+stable and pig-sty; the rest is set fire to as soon as the wheat is
+gone, and a great, unsightly, black patch is the last record in the
+field of the year's crop.
+
+The worst features of the "header" are that the wheat has to be much
+riper than for the reaper or self-binder, and consequently more is
+strewed about the field and lost; the machine cuts the wheat higher up
+also, and consequently leaves more weeds to ripen and leave their seed.
+Its advantage is the greater breadth of its cut and more rapid rate of
+work. In more general use is the reaper or self-binder.
+
+Several of our farmers' wives and daughters can take their turns on
+these machines, and give no despicable help to the hardly-worked men.
+This year it is expected that twine will be substituted for wire, thus
+removing one great objection. A twine-binder was exhibited at the State
+Fair at Salem, in full operation, and worked well. Besides getting rid
+of the damage and danger of the wire getting into the thrashing-machines,
+an additional advantage will be the fostering the growth of flax in the
+State, and its working up into the harvest-twine. Be it known that
+these counties of the Willamette Valley produce the finest and best of
+flax, samples of which secured the highest premium at the Centennial
+Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876.
+
+The culture of flax and its manufacture afford, as far as I can judge,
+one of the very best of the various openings at present attracting both
+labor and capital to the State. As a mere experiment I had twenty-two
+acres of flax sown on the 17th of June, on some land about three miles
+from Corvallis which unexpectedly came under my control. In seven weeks
+from that day I gathered a handful, indiscriminately, from an average
+spot in the field; the fiber of this was seventeen inches long.
+
+The flax that was grown in Linn County, ten miles from here, and used
+in the twine-factory there, produced fiber from two feet and a half to
+three feet in length. In January last we saw it hackled, and the
+workman, a northern Irishman of long experience, told us, as he gave
+the hank he held in his hand a dexterous and affectionate twist, that
+he had never handled better in ould Ireland.
+
+I should dearly like to see linen-works established here; not only are
+linen goods unreasonably dear on the Pacific coast, but it goes against
+the grain to see a splendid raw material produced and not turned to the
+best account. Flax is not found here to be an exhausting crop. The
+farmers who have grown it say, on the contrary, that their best
+wheat-crop has followed flax; while to neither one crop nor the other
+is any fertilizing agent used.
+
+[Sidenote: _GREEN FOOD FOR COWS._]
+
+One of the great difficulties the farmer finds here is to keep green
+food going for his cows during the harvest months. One successful
+expedient is to grow a patch of Indian corn or maize. Well cultivated,
+and the ground kept stirred and free from weeds, the absence of rain
+does not prevent its growth, and its succulent green leaves are eagerly
+munched at milking-time by the sweet-breathed cows.
+
+Another crop just introduced here is the vetch, better known as tares,
+for the same purpose. Two friends of mine in Marion County, forty miles
+north of this place, have found the experiment a very successful one;
+the appearance of the two or three acres I put in this last winter goes
+far to justify them. Sown in December, about two bushels to the acre,
+the growth is very vigorous and the produce heavy.
+
+Continuous cropping in wheat for many years has fostered the growth of
+the wild-oats, now a great disfigurement and drawback to the wheat-crop
+in this valley. Traveling north to Portland by train, this last
+harvest, it was sometimes even hard to say whether wheat or wild-oats
+were intended to be grown. Nothing but summer fallowing, thoroughly
+applied and regularly followed, can remedy this. I have known a farmer
+to send his wheat to the mill, and get back half the quantity in
+wild-oats.
+
+To the timothy-hay fields a noxious plant called "tar-weed" is the
+great enemy on all damp or low-lying spots. The plant was new to us,
+but, once seen, is never forgotten. Fortunately, it matures later than
+the timothy, and so does not get its seeds transferred; but it is
+almost disgusting to see the skins and noses of the horses and cattle
+turned into the field when the hay is off, coated with a glutinous,
+viscid gum, to which every speck of dust, every flying seed of weeds,
+sticks all too tightly. Plowing up the field, and summer fallowing, are
+the only remedies when the tar-weed gets too bad to endure. Tar-weed is
+an annual which grows some eight or ten inches high, one stalk from
+each seed; short, narrow, hairy leaves of a dingy green and a tiny
+colorless flower offer no compensation in beauty for the annoyance it
+occasions as you pass through the field, and find boots and trousers
+coated with the sticky gum. It is a relief to know that it affects the
+valley only, and does not mount even the lower hills of the Cascade and
+Coast Ranges.
+
+Before leaving the subject of harvesting I ought to give the cost.
+
+It is not now the question of the capitalist who can afford to pay from
+$750 to $1,200 for his thrashing-machine in addition to $320 for his
+self-binding harvester to cut his grain; but of the struggling farmer,
+who has to make both ends meet by economy and fore-thought.
+
+We will suppose that he has seventy acres of wheat to harvest, and that
+it will produce twenty bushels to the acre, a moderate suggestion.
+
+[Sidenote: _COST OF HARVESTING._]
+
+The cutting and binding in sheaves of the crop by a neighbor's
+self-binder will cost him $1.25 per acre, the contractor supplying the
+wire. The machine will cut and bind nearly ten acres a day; the cost,
+therefore, for the seventy acres will be $87.50, or say $90, to be
+safe.
+
+The thrashing will cost him six cents a bushel for his wheat, or $84
+for his fourteen hundred bushels; and the farmer has to supply food for
+the men and horses whose services he hires. This expense will naturally
+vary according to the liberality and good management of the farmer and
+his wife. It falls heavily on the hostess to provide for seven or eight
+hungry men, in addition to her own family; but plentiful food, well
+cooked, is no bad investment, for it reacts strongly on both the
+quantity and the quality of the work done.
+
+A fair average cost is fifty cents a day for each man, and the same for
+each horse. The expense of keep of the cutting and binding, man and
+three-horse team for seven days, will, therefore, be $15. On a similar
+basis the keep of the "thrashing crowd" and twelve horses, for a day
+and a half and something over, will cost just $16.
+
+The total outlay, therefore, on harvesting a wheat-crop of twenty
+bushels per acre on seventy acres, _when all services and all machines
+have to be hired_, will be $205. Or an average of just fourteen and
+two-thirds cents per bushel.
+
+A glance will show what a good investment the self-binding harvester
+is, if only well cared for when harvest is over. The farmer who has a
+machine of his own saves more than six cents a bushel, and, on a crop
+of fourteen hundred bushels only, would pay for the machine in less
+than four years.
+
+Let us see, then, what wheat-growing in the Willamette Valley costs--a
+matter of deep interest to the intending emigrant, and to farmers in
+other parts of the world who have to compete with Oregon-grown wheat.
+
+We will take the same seventy acres, as a reasonable extent for a small
+valley farm. Once plowing, at the rate of two acres a day with a
+three-horse team, or one and a half acre for a two-horse team--that is
+thirty-five days' labor for man and three horses. Twice harrowing, at
+the rate of fourteen acres a day--that is ten days' labor for a man and
+two horses. Sowing, at the rate of twenty-one acres a day, or three and
+a third days' labor for a man and four horses. The seed will cost $98,
+at the rate of two bushels per acre and seventy cents a bushel.
+
+The cost, therefore, of growing the crop will be $98 in money, and the
+labor of one man for forty-eight days and a third, and of a pair of
+horses for sixty-nine and a quarter days.
+
+Putting the farmer's labor into money at the rate of a dollar a day,
+and that of his team also at the rate of half a dollar a day for each
+horse (and these are here the regular rates of wages), the result will
+be $117.50; add the $98 for the seed, and you arrive at a total of
+$215.50; or, on seventy acres, an average of three dollars and eight
+cents an acre; or, on fourteen hundred bushels, of fifteen and
+four-tenths cents per bushel. To this add the fourteen cents and
+two-thirds for harvesting and thrashing, and add twelve days' labor for
+man and one team of horses hauling the grain to the warehouse: this
+represents an additional cost of one cent and seven tenths per bushel,
+and the _total cost then is thirty-one cents and seven tenths per
+bushel_.
+
+[Sidenote: _COST OF WHEAT-GROWING._]
+
+Remember that this wheat is grown on the farmer's own freehold, which
+may have cost him twenty or twenty-five dollars per acre. Do not forget
+also a taxation of about fifteen thousandths a year on the total value
+of the farmer's estate, as arranged between him and the assessor--land,
+stock, implements, and everything else he has beyond about three
+hundred dollars' worth of excepted articles. But add no rent or tithe,
+and recollect that in this calculation the farmer's own labor and that
+of his team are charged at market price against the crop.
+
+The charge for warehousing the wheat till it is sold is four cents a
+bushel; and the wheat-sacks, holding two bushels each, will cost from
+ten to twelve cents each.
+
+Add, therefore, still nine and a half cents a bushel for subsequent
+charges, and the farmer who kept accounts would find his wheat, in the
+warehouse and ready for market, represented to him an outlay of
+forty-one cents and a quarter a bushel.
+
+If he sells at eighty-five cents a bushel, that gives him a profit of
+$8.75 per acre on the portion of his farm in wheat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The farmer's sports and pastimes--Deer-hunting tales--A roadside yarn--
+Still-hunting--Hunting with hounds--An early morning's sport--Elk--The
+pursuit--The kill--Camp on Beaver Creek--Flounder-spearing by torchlight
+--Flounder-fishing by day--In the bay--Rock oysters--The evening view
+--The general store--Skins--Sea-otters--Their habits--The sea-otter
+hunters--Common otter--The mink and his prey.
+
+
+The Oregon farmer has one great advantage over his Eastern or European
+brother. Starting from the first of January, he has until July comes a
+good many days wherein he can amuse himself without the detestable
+feeling that he is wasting his time and robbing his family. The ground
+may be either too hard or too soft for plowing; or he may have sown a
+large proportion in the autumn and early winter, and so have little
+ground to prepare and sow in spring; and he has little, if any,
+stock-feeding to do as yet.
+
+A good supply of hay is the only addition to the pasture-feed that he
+need provide; so long, that is, as he is content to work his farm in
+Oregon fashion.
+
+Many a one is within reach of the hills where range the deer, and
+shares in the feeling strongly expressed to me the other day, "I would
+rather work all day for one shot at a deer, than shoot fifty wild-ducks
+in the swamps."
+
+As I was riding out to the hills not long since, I met an old friend of
+mine returning from a week's hunt in the regions at the back of Mary's
+Peak.
+
+[Sidenote: _A ROADSIDE YARN._]
+
+His long-bodied farm-wagon held some cooking-utensils, the remains of
+his store of flour and bacon and coffee, his blankets, his rifle, and
+the carcasses of his deer. With him were two noble hounds, Nero and
+Queen--powerful, upstanding dogs; stag-hounds with a dash of bloodhound
+in them; black and tan, with a fleck of white here and there. "Had a
+good time, John?" we asked, as we stopped at the top of a long hill for
+a chat. "Well, pretty good--ran four deer and killed three; got my
+boots full of snow, and bring home a bad cold," he answered. "Where did
+you camp?" "Away up above Stillson's, there"--pointing to the
+mountain-side just where the heavy fir-timber grew scattering and thin,
+and the clean sweep of the sloping crest came down to meet the wood.
+"We was there inside of a week, hunting all the time." "See any bear?"
+"Just lots of sign, but I guess my dogs haven't lost any bear; the old
+dog got too close to one a bit ago, and came home with a bloody head
+and a cut on his shoulder a foot long." "Find many deer?" "Had two on
+foot at once one day: killed one, and hit the other, but he jumped a
+log just as I shot, and I guess I only barked him; I ran after him to
+try for another shot before he got clear off down the canyon, but I
+tumbled over a log myself in the snow, and just got wet through, and my
+boots all filled with it." "Pretty rough up there, isn't it?" "Well, it
+wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fallen timber; but you can't
+get through them woods fast when you have to run round the end of one
+big log one minute and then duck under another, and then scramble on to
+the next for dear life, and half the time get only just in time to see
+the last of the deer as he gets into the thick brush." "Better come out
+with us after the ducks, John." "Blamed if I do!" came out with an
+unction and energy that startled us. "Can't understand what you fellers
+can see in that duck-hunting." And, with a cheery good-by, the old boy
+spoke to his horses, and off they went down the hill, the brake hard
+held, and the wagon pushing the team before it on the rough corduroy
+road.
+
+Still-hunting is the more sportsmanlike way; but the deadlier fashion
+is this hunting with two or three hounds: the slower they run, the more
+chance for the guns.
+
+One day last summer, returning from the bay, we stopped for the night
+at a farm by the roadside, among the burned timber. The fern had not
+grown up yet, but the hillsides were green and thick with salmon-berry
+and thimble-berry growth.
+
+Two or three hounds--not of the very purest breed, but still
+hounds--were lounging about the door, and greeted us with a noisy
+welcome as we dismounted.
+
+The sons of the house were telling, round the fire before we went to
+bed, of the hundred and thirty deer they had already killed this
+season. They urged us to have a hunt in the morning, promising to get
+all done, so that we might be on the journey again by nine instead of
+seven.
+
+Breakfast was over by a quarter to six, and we started. Four in the
+party--two farmers' sons and two travelers--and three hounds. The
+huntsman carried a Henry rifle of the old model; his younger brother a
+rifle of the old school--long, brown, heavy-barreled, throwing a small,
+round bullet. Round the huntsman's neck hung an uncouth cow's horn, to
+recall the hounds if they strayed too far away.
+
+[Sidenote: _HUNTING WITH HOUNDS._]
+
+The sun was just driving off the early mist as we tramped along the
+road by the side of the river, toward the spot where they intended
+throwing off. But before we reached the place a quick little hound
+threw up her head, and, with a short, sharp cry, dashed into the brush
+between us and the river; the other hounds followed, and we heard the
+plunge and splash as the deer, so suddenly roused from his lair, took
+to his heels.
+
+The hounds took up in full cry along the opposite canyon, which led high
+up the hill-side, and the huntsman followed, his jacket changing color
+at once as he pushed through the dew-laden brush.
+
+Under the guidance of the younger brother, we crossed the river also,
+and, following the farther bank, soon came to an open, grassy spot,
+from the upper side of which a view was got of the course of the river
+as it wound round the lower side in a graceful sweep. The trees, willow
+and alder, were thick on the bank, but here and there we caught more
+than a glimpse of the brown water as it hurried along.
+
+One of us being posted here, our guide took the other still higher up
+the stream.
+
+Sitting down under the lee of a big old log, its blackness hidden under
+the trailing brambles and bright ferns, we waited and watched.
+
+The cry of the hounds came faint on the air from the hill-side above
+us, hounds and quarry alike invisible, and, as the sides of the canyon
+caught the sounds, echo returned them to us from all points in
+turn--fainter and still fainter, until we thought the chase had gone
+clear over the mountain into the distant valley beyond; and we sat
+watching the two little chipmunks, grown hardy by our stillness, which
+were chasing each other in and out among the brambles, then stopping to
+watch us with their bright-black, beady eyes.
+
+No sounds at all, and then a far-off music, just audible and no more.
+But it comes nearer, and we see our guide creeping toward us, rifle in
+hand, his face white with excitement and suspense. He can not resist
+the temptation of passing us to get command of the lower reach of the
+stream, and we have sympathy with his nineteen years, and take no
+notice. Presently a distant splash in the river, and then a scrambling
+and splashing along the water's edge, and we catch a glimpse of a
+bright-yellow body flitting rapidly between the trees. The young
+hunter's rifle cracks, but the deer only gains in speed and dashes by.
+There is a clear space of ten or fifteen yards between the tree-trunks
+on our right, and, as the deer rushes past, we get a quick sight,
+almost like a rabbit crossing a ride in cover at home, and the
+Winchester rings out. Whether by luck or wit we will not say, but the
+splash ceases suddenly, and, running to the bank, there lies the deer,
+shot through the neck close to the head, drawing his last long breath.
+He was soon dragged out on to the grassy bank, and a feeling of pity
+was uppermost as we admired his graceful limbs, neat hoofs, and shapely
+head. In about ten minutes' time came the hounds, their eager cry
+ceasing as they caught sight of their quarry, lying motionless before
+them. The last hunters' rites were speedily paid, and we went a mile
+higher up the stream, to where a brook joined it, flowing quickly down
+from the southern hill.
+
+The hounds were again thrown into the brush, and before long were once
+more in full cry. This time the shot fell to the young huntsman's
+share, and we saw nothing of the chase till, hearing his rifle, and
+noticing the ceasing of the voices of the hounds, we pushed our way to
+the spot, to find the obsequies of a second deer already in progress.
+
+Leaving one deer on a log by the roadside, with a note attached to it,
+asking the stage-driver to pick it up and bring it for us into
+Corvallis, when he passed, in a couple of hours' time, we retraced our
+steps, mounted our horses, and were on our road, according to promise,
+by very soon after nine o'clock.
+
+[Sidenote: _STILL-HUNTING._]
+
+Still-hunting is a more arduous business. The hunter has the work to do
+of finding the deer; his rifle must slay it; if he wounds it, he must
+follow it on foot; the only help he can get is that of one steady old
+dog, which must never stray from his side.
+
+Starting from his camp in the early dawn, he mounts the hill-side,
+carefully examining each likely spot of brush as he passes it, taking
+special note of each sheltered patch of fern. Very carefully he climbs
+the logs, avoiding every dead branch that may crackle under his weight,
+and parting the brush before he pushes through. When he reaches the
+crest, he follows it along, scrutinizing every canyon closely, for his
+prey lies very wisely hidden. At last, he sees a gentle movement in the
+brush, and the deer rises from his lair, stretches his neck, arches his
+back, and snuffs round at each point of the compass to try if there be
+danger in the air. The hunter sees his chance, judges his distance as
+cleverly as he can, remembering that in this clear mountain air he is
+almost sure to underestimate the range; the shot rings out, and the
+deer springs high into the air, to fall crashing down the steep
+canyon-side.
+
+The common deer of Western Oregon is the black-tailed _Cervus
+Columbianus_. In the early spring many of them leave the mountains
+and traverse the valley-land to the closely timbered sloughs and brush
+bordering the Willamette River. But, as the valley has been more
+closely cultivated and the farms spread in a nearly unbroken line, the
+deer have but a poor chance. Some settler is almost sure to get a
+glimpse of the visitor as he tops the snake-fence into the oat-field
+for his morning feed, and the rifle, or worse, the long muzzle-loading
+shot-gun which carries five buckshot at a charge, hangs by or over the
+wide fireplace. If not killed outright, the poor beast carries with him
+a lingering and dangerous wound. But, away in the hills, I do not hear
+that the number is appreciably diminished; many of the hunters get a
+deer almost every time they go out. So wasteful are they that they
+carry off only the hind quarters, which they call the hams, and the
+hide, leaving the fore quarters and head to taint the air.
+
+The white-tailed deer (_Cervus leucurus_) is now very rare. He
+frequents the more open spots; he chooses the bare slopes at the top of
+Mary's Peak and the Bald Mountain; he is not so shy as his black-tailed
+brother, and so falls an easier victim to the rifle. He abounds in the
+Cascade Range on the eastern side of the Willamette Valley, where he is
+found in the same haunts as the larger mule-deer. The noblest deer we
+have in Oregon is the wapiti (_Cervus Canadensis_), invariably known in
+this country as elk.
+
+A day or two ago I saw a pair of fresh horns standing in front of one
+of the stores in the town, which were quite four feet six inches long,
+spread three feet six inches at the tips, and weighed forty pounds by
+scale.
+
+[Sidenote: _ELK._]
+
+As we handled them, a dry-looking, bearded, long-booted fellow joined
+the group. "Those horns are nothing much," said he; "I killed an elk
+some time back in the Alseya country, back of Table Mountain, that when
+we set the horns on the ground, tips downward, a feller could walk
+upright through them." "Oh, yes," said we; "did you walk through them,
+stranger?" "Wal, no, I guess not," said he, "but a feller might, you
+know."
+
+The elk go in bands of from seven to twenty in number, and their tracks
+through the woods are trampled as though a drove of cows had passed
+along. To kill an elk you can not go out before breakfast and return to
+dine. You must secure a good guide, who knows the mountains well; you
+must take a pack-horse, with food and blankets, as far into the wilds
+as the last settlement reaches, and there leave him. Then slinging your
+blankets round your shoulders, and packing some flour, bacon, and
+coffee, a small frying-pan and coffee-pot, and tin cup, into the
+smallest possible compass, and taking your rifle in your hand, not
+forgetting the tobacco, you must strike into the woods.
+
+When night comes on, build your fire, fry your bacon, make some damper
+in the ashes, smoke the pipe of peace, and lie down under the most
+sheltering bush. No snakes will harm you, nor will wolf or cougar
+molest you, and the softness of your bed will not tempt you to delay
+long between the blankets after the first streak of dawn.
+
+Rise and breakfast, and then on again. All that day, perhaps, you will
+have to tramp on and on, seeking one mountain-slope after another; here
+skirting brush too thick to penetrate, there walking easily through the
+low fern among the massive red and furrowed trunks of the gigantic
+firs.
+
+Your guide finds "sign," and reports that it is not fresh enough to
+follow; so pursues his course till, looking back on the devious miles
+of weary wandering, you can hardly credit it that you have been but
+eight-and-forty hours on the trail. But your camp is pitched once more,
+and dawn has again roused you from your ferny bed. Listen! the branches
+are crackling and rustling close by. You and your guide race for the
+spot, rifle in hand, too eager almost to duly remember woodland rules
+of caution. Crouching and crawling as you get closer to the sounds,
+peering through the fern, you see--what? Six, eight, ten, twelve,
+seventeen great beasts; one with enormous head, two others with smaller
+but still imposing antlers; the rest the mothers of the herd.
+Unconscious of danger, they browse round; both rifles speak together,
+and the monarch and one of the smaller stags lie prostrate. You stay
+hidden; the deer group together in a confused crowd, too foolish and
+excited to think of flight. Again your comrade fires, and another
+falls, and yet another, till, in disgust at the needless slaughter, you
+step from your shelter, and the survivors rush madly away, crashing
+through the wood as if a herd of cattle were in flight.
+
+I have known men, not usually cruel or excitable, get so maddened in a
+scene like this, that seven great elk lay dead together before they
+thought of stopping firing; and yet they knew that from the wilderness
+they stood in it was impossible to carry off the meat of even one!
+
+Many hunters prefer elk-meat to any deer; others think the fawn of the
+white-tailed deer the best eating in the world.
+
+[Sidenote: _CAMP ON BEAVER CREEK._]
+
+One night last summer we camped out on Beaver Creek, nine miles south
+of the Yaquina, along the beach. We had been trout-fishing all day from
+a canoe, and were glad to stretch out before the fire limbs that had
+been somewhat cramped from the need of balancing the rocking craft with
+every cast of the fly. Before the fire stood roasting a row of trout,
+held in place over the hot embers by a split willow wand. We heard
+voices approaching through the wood, and presently a half-breed hunter
+and two friends of ours came in sight. They had been out two days after
+elk, but failed to find. On the way back they came across a doe and
+well-grown fawn; the latter they had killed, and brought it in. It was
+speedily skinned and cut up, and a loin, shoulder, and leg were
+skewered on sticks and roasting in the blaze. No bad addition to our
+fish supper, deer-meat and trout; the coffee was the only contribution
+of civilization to the meal, and a merry evening, extended far into the
+night, followed, as the logs were piled on, and the ruddy glow and
+showers of sparks lighted up the wild but comfortable scene, dancing in
+the lights and shadows of the overhanging trees.
+
+Did you ever hear of flounder-spearing by torch-light? I have tried it,
+and do not propose to try it again. Yaquina Bay abounds in flounders--a
+flat fish resembling the turbot more than the flounder; red-spotted
+like the plaice, and weighing from one pound up to five or six. After
+nightfall, when the evening tide has just turned to come in, and the
+sandy channels and banks are all but bare, away from the main
+deep-water, channels of the bay, you may see tiny specks of distant
+lights moving on the black water. These are the Indian canoes. Take a
+skiff from the beach by the hotel at Newport, and row out to sea. Here
+are two or three lights near together, under Heddon's Point, on the
+south shore. Row on till the lights in the hotel are blended into one,
+and the dark outlines against the sky of the overhanging cliffs are
+lost to sight. No sound reaches you in the darkness, but the recurring
+rattle of the sculls in the rowlocks, and the soft lapping of the tide.
+The lights you are seeking grow brighter, and you distinguish the glare
+of the fire and the moving, dim form of the fisherman. The canoe, some
+sixteen feet long, is boarded roughly across amidships, and on a thin
+layer of sand and wood-ashes burns a pine-knot fire. The Indian stands
+in the bows, his back to the fire; as you look, he poles himself along
+by driving the handle of his long spear into the sand underlying the
+shallow channel. His fire burns dim for a moment, and he turns and with
+the same spear-handle he trims it; then, stooping, throws on it a fresh
+lump of the resinous pine. The fire dulls for an instant, then flares
+with a bright light, and a thick puff of smoke rises into the air, on
+which the glare falls strongly. The short, athletic form of the Indian,
+and his swarthy, flattened features, glittering eyes, and bushy hair,
+stand out for a moment in strong relief. He turns, and again looks
+keenly into the black water. A moment, and he strikes, the spear making
+the water flash as it dips swiftly in. Yes, he has it, and the frail
+boat quivers as he balances it ere he lifts out his struggling prey,
+and, with a deft, quick motion, throws the fish off, flapping and
+bouncing on a heap of victims in the stern of the canoe. Without a
+smile or word, or an instant's respite, he turns again and resumes his
+keen watch, moving to the shallower waters as the tide makes.
+
+[Sidenote: _FLOUNDER-SPEARING BY TORCHLIGHT._]
+
+I had a friend who was an enthusiast in the sport, and he beguiled me
+to join him. About eight we started, and about two in the morning we
+returned. Warm as the weather was, I was chilled to the bone; and the
+worst of it was, I had not succeeded in striking one single fish. My
+friend armed me with a long spear and a lantern, and deposited me in
+the stern of the boat; similarly provided, he knelt in the bow and
+pushed the skiff along from bank to bank of sand and mud. My light did
+not burn brightly enough to show more than the dimmest outlines of the
+fish, just off the sandy bottom of the bay. Here scuttled an old crab,
+scared by the novel light, and hurrying for shelter, crab-fashion, to
+the nearest bunch of weeds. There was a school of tiny fish, their
+silver sides glancing as the ray reached them; and there, again, a
+quick, white flash betrayed the sea-perch, not waiting to be spoken to.
+Every now and then my friend darted his long spear at what he said were
+the flounders, but I could see nothing with my untrained eyes but a
+gray cloud and a gentle stirring of the sand. He did get one fish at
+last; and I, being too proud to say how bored and tired I was, waited
+sleepily for the rising tide to drive us home. How glad was I when he
+announced that the water was now too deep to see distinctly, and how
+thankfully I stumbled up the slimy steps by the little wharf and in to
+bed!
+
+[Sidenote: _FLOUNDER-FISHING BY DAY._]
+
+Flounder-fishing in the daytime is good sport. Find out the nearest
+camp of Indians there on the beach, crowded under a shelter of sea-worn
+planks, a few fir-boughs, and a tattered blanket; the smell of tainted
+fish pollutes the air, and a heap of flounders, each with the
+triangular spear-mark, attests the skill of last night's fishermen.
+"Any fish, muck-a-muck?" say you, blandly. Without turning her head, or
+raising herself from her crouching posture by the old black kettle,
+stewing on a tiny fire of sticks in the center of the hut, the old
+crone grunts out, "Halo" (none). "Want two bit?" you say, nowise
+discouraged. Money has magic power nowadays, and she rises slowly and
+shuffles past you to where a rag or two are drying in the sun on a
+stranded log. From under the clothes she brings out a dirty basket of
+home make, and in it is a heap of greenish, struggling prawns. She
+turns out two or three handfuls into the meat-tin you have providently
+brought, holds out her skinny hand for the little silver pieces, and
+buries herself in her shanty without another word.
+
+Fit out your fishing-lines and come aboard; the tide has turned, and
+the wind blows freshly across the bay. The surf keeps up its continuous
+roar on the rocky reefs outside. On the sand-bank in front of you sits
+a row of white and gray gulls preening themselves in the morning sun; a
+couple of ospreys are sailing overhead in long, graceful, hardly-moving
+sweeps, and away out by the north head hangs an eagle in the air,
+watching the ospreys, that he may cheat them of the fish he looks to
+see them catch.
+
+Set the sail and let her go free, and away rushes the little boat,
+tired of bobbing at her moorings by the pier--away across the bay, to
+where the south beach sinks in gentle, sandy slope. Take care of that
+waving weed, or we shall be on the edge of the bank! Here we are, and
+down goes the kedge in six feet of water, close to but just clear of
+that same edge.
+
+Now for the bait; tie it on tightly with that white cotton, or the
+flounders will suck it off so fast that you will have nothing else to
+do but keep replacing it. Keep your sinkers just off the bottom, and a
+light hand on the line. A gentle wriggle, a twitch, and you have him;
+haul him in steadily. Up he comes, a four-pounder, tossing and flopping
+in the bottom of the boat. Here comes a great crab, holding on to the
+bait grimly, and suffering you to catch him by one of his lower legs
+and toss him in. Now for a sea-perch; what a splendid color!--bands of
+bright scarlet scales, interlaced with silver. But what is this? A
+stream of water flows from the fish's mouth, and in it come out five or
+six little ones, the image of their parent. I wonder if it is true (and
+I think it is) that the little ones take refuge inside their parent in
+any time of need? The fishermen on this coast call this the
+"squaw-fish," from this sheltering, maternal instinct.
+
+But we have been here long enough; the water is too deep, the fish have
+gone off the feed, and we shall have to beat back, lucky if we do in
+two hours the distance we ran in half an hour on our way.
+
+The tide has run nearly out this evening: a good chance for some
+rock-oysters. Get your axe and come along. Where? Along the coast
+toward Foulweather; we shall find those long reefs almost bare. We
+climb over the big reef on the north head of the harbor, under the
+lighthouse hill, and wind in and out on the hard sand among the rough
+rocks, all crusted over their sides with tiny barnacles. There is
+little kelp or seaweed here. The surf beats too powerfully in this
+recess, away from the shelter of the great outer reef.
+
+See that group of Indian women and children away out there, barelegged,
+digging with their axes in the rock. They are after the rock-oysters
+too.
+
+Now is our chance. Jump on to that rock before the next wave comes in,
+and climb on to the reef beyond it and get out to low-water mark. Here
+we are. Do you see that crevice? Chip in and wrench the piece off; the
+rock is soft enough sandstone to cut with that blunt old axe. Here is
+the spoil--soft mollusks, are they not, and not pretty to look at? But
+wait for the soup at dinner to-morrow before you pronounce on them. And
+we dig, and then venture farther out and farther, till the turn of the
+water warns us to get back.
+
+The evening is closing in; the sun has set, leaving a hot, red glow,
+where his copper disk has just sunk beyond the Pacific horizon; and the
+eye wanders out from the infant waves, at foot just tinged with red,
+and reflecting the light as they move up in turn to catch it, to the
+blue and still darker blue water beyond, out to the sharp indigo line
+where sky and water meet.
+
+No land between us and the Eastern world; the mind can hardly grasp the
+idea of the vast stretch of sea across which this new world reaches
+forth to join hands with old China and Japan.
+
+[Sidenote: _SEA-OTTERS._]
+
+Before we go to bed, step for a moment into the quaint general store
+all but adjoining the hotel. What a medley! Flour and axes; bacon and
+needles and thread; fishing-lines and bullock-hides; writing-paper and
+beaver-traps; milk-pails and castor-oil; tobacco in plenty, and skins;
+and a smell compounded of all these and more, but chiefly the product
+of that batch of skins hanging from that big nail in front of you, and
+lying piled on the bench by your side. Take them down, and turn them
+over; Bush won't mind. And we shake hands with the proprietor, coming
+from the darkness at the back. He has borne an honorable limp ever
+since the war, and has never yet quite recovered from illness and
+wounds. He swears by Newport as the best, and healthiest, and most
+promising place in the world. "Say," he whispers in our ear, "got a
+sea-otter skin to-day!" "Where did you get it, Bush, and who from, and
+how much did you have to pay for it?" "Got it from the Indians," he
+says; "they shot it away up by Salmon River, beyond Foulweather, and
+had to give more dollars for it than I care to say." "Where did they
+get it?" "Where they always do, away out in the kelp among the surf."
+"Don't they ever come to land?" "No," he answers, "they live, and
+sleep, and breed out in the kelp. But if you want to know all about
+them, why don't you ask Charlie here? He has been trading this summer,
+and last winter and spring, up by Gray's Inlet in Washington Territory,
+where they are plenty." So saying, he calls up the captain of the
+steam-schooner lying at her moorings by the quay.
+
+From this man, and from hunters and Indians all along the coast, I have
+gathered many a tale of the habits of the sea-otter, and of the fate of
+those that have been killed; for the rarity of the beast, and the
+beauty and value of its skin, interest these men, both from their
+hunters' instinct and from the mere money business of it. I know also
+that scientific naturalists desire all the facts they can get, that
+such facts may be placed on record before this connecting link between
+the seals and the otters perishes from the earth. I believe that the
+sea-otter (_Enhydra marina_) is only met with on this north Pacific
+coast, along which it is gradually being driven northward by constant
+hunting. Thirty years ago they were common along the Oregon sea-line;
+now the killing of a single specimen is noted in the newspapers; and
+hardly more than one a year is generally met along the coast. They
+inhabit the belt of tangle and kelp, which is found a few hundred yards
+from the beach, beyond the shore-line of sand or rock. They are never
+seen ashore, or even on isolated rocks; when the sea is warm and still,
+they live much on the surface, playing in the weed; sometimes,
+supporting their fore-feet on the thickest part of the wavy mass, they
+raise their head and shoulders above the weed, and gaze around. Parents
+and children live together in the weed; I have not heard of more than
+two young ones being seen in the family group. The skeleton is about
+four feet long: the fore-paws are short, strong, and webbed; almost in
+the same proportions as a mole's; the hinder extremities are flappers,
+like the seal's. The hide is twice the size of the common otter's; the
+fur the most beautiful, soft, thick, and glossy in the world--dark-brown
+outside, and almost yellow beneath, like the seal's. They are sometimes
+shot from a steam-schooner, like my friend's, lying-to at a safe
+distance, but much more commonly from the shore. Along the coast of
+Gray's Inlet several hunters make a regular business of it. Quite high
+watch-towers of timber are built just above high-water mark, and on
+these the hunter climbs with his long-range rifle, and watches. He
+provides a man on horseback to follow any otter he may be fortunate
+enough to kill, up or down the coast, and take possession of it when
+thrown up on the beach by the tide. These men seem to prefer the Sharp
+rifle for accuracy of long-range fire. That they are no mean proficients
+may be judged when I mention that one hunter killed upward of sixty last
+year; the skins, or most of them, my friend the captain bought, at
+prices, varying with size and condition, of from fifty to one hundred
+dollars each. I am told that about August the young ones are seen in
+company with their parents; but that the otters may be met with at
+almost any time in the year when the sea is calm enough for them to be
+marked among the tangle.
+
+[Sidenote: _COMMON OTTER. MINK._]
+
+The common otter (_Lutra Californica_) abounds in the tidal
+portions of the rivers along this coast. Two Indians, whom I know, shot
+six in an hour or two among the rocks bordering a little cove some
+eight miles north of the Yaquina, into which a little river empties
+itself. The skins are not quite so large as those of the English otter,
+but the fur is valuable. The mink (_Putorius vison_) resembles the
+polecat, but is nearly twice as large, with nearly black fur; it
+frequents the borders of the streams, and takes to the water with the
+greatest readiness. We have rabbits in Oregon (_Lepus Washingtonii_)
+not much more than half the size of the common rabbit of Europe, but
+similar in habits and place of residence. It is on these that the mink
+chiefly preys. I was walking my horse along a quiet stretch of sandy
+road, between thick bushes, returning from the Yaquina one day in
+summer, when a rabbit darted out before my horse and down the road for
+a hundred yards as hard as he could go; then into the bushes, then back
+into the road, and up the other side, close to me, evidently in the
+greatest fear. I stopped to see. Presently, a mink came out where poor
+Bunny first appeared--nose to the ground, and hunting like a ferret. He
+followed the rabbit's track step by step down the road, into the
+bushes, back again close to me, then into the brush; and then out came
+poor rabbit again, the heart gone out of him. Stopping an instant, then
+going on a few steps, stopping again, and at last, trembling, he
+bunched himself into his smallest compass in the middle of the road,
+and there awaited his fate. Not losing one twist or turn, patient,
+fierce, inexorable, the enemy followed, not raising his nose from the
+trail till he was almost on his prey. Then a quick bound; the rabbit
+was seized by the head, almost without a struggle, and dragged nearly
+unresisting into the bushes down toward the river's edge, while I
+passed on, musing on the points of resemblance between cousins on
+opposite sides of the world. Fortunately, these rabbits are very
+scarce. They are hardly seen in the valley; they live solely in the
+woods, never in or about the cultivated ground.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Birds in Oregon--Lark--Quail--Grouse--Ruffed grouse--Wild-geese--
+Manoeuvres in the air--Wild-ducks--Mallard--Teal--Pintail--Wheat-duck
+--Black duck--Wood-duck--Snipe--Flight-shooting--Stewart's Slough--
+Bitterns--Eagles--Hawks--Horned owls--Woodpeckers--Blue-jays--Canaries
+--The canary that had seen the world--Blue-birds--Bullfinches--
+Snow-bunting--Humming-birds at home.
+
+
+I have read comments on the scarcity of birds in America. This may be
+true in some parts; here, in Oregon, we have abundance, except of
+singing-birds. Of these last the meadow-lark is almost the sole
+example; and his song, in its fragmentary notes and minor key, does not
+even remind one distantly of his English cousin, who always seems to
+express by his gush of complete and perfect melody the joy that fills
+his being:
+
+            "... In a half sleep we dream,
+    And dreaming hear thee still, O singing lark!
+    That singest like an angel in the clouds."
+
+The quail (_Oreortyx pictus_) has one long, sweet whistle, with the
+peculiarity that it is almost impossible to follow up and find the bird
+by his note; it sounds so close that you expect the bird is standing on
+the nearest log, but you look in vain; then it calls you from a hundred
+yards off, among the brush; again from the other side, and you try to
+drive him out of the left-hand thicket; but all the while your dog is
+working in the wood twenty yards ahead. You turn your head just in time
+to see a dark-brown bird flit like a flash across the road and
+disappear.
+
+In the shooting-season the quail is one of the hardest birds to kill.
+They run in front of the dog in the brushwood with the greatest speed,
+then rise and fly for fifty or a hundred yards like lightning, and then
+take to their heels again.
+
+In harvest-time the grouse (_Tetrao obscurus_), here called the
+partridge, come down from the fir-woods to the grain-fields and give
+good sport. They frequent the corners of the fields, nearest to the
+brush, and as the brood rise, ten or a dozen in number, and wing
+quickly across to shelter in the wood, it reminds one of old times and
+of partridge-shooting in Norfolk or Suffolk ten years ago.
+
+When the grain is cleared off, the grouse keep to the slips and corners
+of brush nearest to the field for some weeks. As the season advances,
+they take to the fir-woods again, and lose their interest to the
+sportsmen by becoming in the first place almost impossible to find, and
+next worthless for the table from their turpentine taste. After the
+grouse have left the harvest-fields and got back into the woods, the
+shot-gun sportsman must be quick indeed to shoot as the bird rises and
+makes for the nearest tall fir. There he perches and defies you. The
+rifle-shot waits till the bird has taken up its place on the bough and
+peers over to look after the dog; then he shoots and often kills,
+though the head and neck of a grouse thirty or forty yards off is not a
+very big mark.
+
+The ruffed grouse (_Bonassa Sabinensis_), here called the pheasant, is
+a fourth larger than the common grouse, with beautiful bright-brown
+plumage, dashed with yellow, and a spreading tail. He frequents the
+oak-grubs and scattering brush of the foot-hills, and is found all
+through the less dense portions of the woods of the Coast Range. He
+gives good sport, rising to the dog and giving a longer flight, and
+offering the sportsman a fairer chance.
+
+[Sidenote: _WILD GEESE._]
+
+As soon as the first half of October has passed by, the cry of the
+wild-geese is heard far away in the sky, and their V-shaped companies
+are seen winging their southward course. These first advance-guards do
+not stay, and scarcely ever descend low enough to tempt even the most
+sanguine shot. But in a week or so the main army arrives. Following up
+the general course of the Willamette River, they betake themselves to
+the sand- and gravel-bars of the river to spend the night, leaving in
+the early morning for the bare harvest-fields, where, after a vast
+amount of debate and consideration, and many long, circling flights,
+they descend to feed. Now every kind of firearms sees the light, and
+the gun-maker of the town begins to reap his harvest.
+
+As you ride along the country roads in the valley, you see a lurking
+form behind almost every fence. It is a kind of sport exactly suiting
+the average Oregonian, who likes his game to come to him, and is great
+at watching for it.
+
+Following with your eye the line of timber that betokens the river's
+course, you see six or seven great flocks of geese (_Bernicla
+Canadensis_) on the wing at once; some in the far distance, mere
+specks in the air, others near enough for you to overhear their
+conversation, which goes on continually. However confused the crowd
+that rises from the river, it is but a few seconds until order is
+taken. One flies to the head to guide the band, others take places on
+either side behind him; regular distances are kept, leaving just enough
+room for free motion, but no more. Inside the head of the V, and
+generally on its left side, fly two or three geese in a little
+independent group. I think it is from these that the officer appears in
+turn to lead the van.
+
+How many times have I watched their evolutions with delight!--all the
+keener that the band was coming my way; that the quick, regular beats
+of the wings had nearly stopped, and the spread pinions showed they
+were about alighting in the very field under the snake-fence of which I
+crouched, double-barrel in hand.
+
+The voices grow louder; the conversation and debate is perfectly
+confusing; they are near enough for you to note the outstretched necks
+and quick eyes glancing from side to side; the blue-gray colors on the
+wings, with the black bars, are plain. Waiting till they have passed
+over, some thirty yards to the right--for it is of no avail to shoot at
+them coming to you (the thick feathers turn the shot)--here go two
+barrels at the nearest birds. What a commotion! There is a perfect
+uproar of voices all declaiming at once, and away they scatter as hard
+as they can, resuming regular order in a hundred yards, but leaving one
+poor bird flapping on the ground. My dog runs to pick him up, but can't
+make out the big bird, and comes inquiringly back to know what on earth
+I mean by shooting at birds he surely has seen--"Yes, about the
+home-pond, master--what _are_ you about?"
+
+The geese are sorely destructive to the autumn-sown wheat; the farmer
+welcomes the sportsman from selfish motives, as well as from his usual
+hospitality, when he sees him, gun in hand.
+
+The wild-geese are nearly all of one variety (_Bernicla Canadensis_); a
+few white ones (_Anser hyperboreus_) appear now and then, prominent
+among their gray brethren by their snowy plumage. Wild-ducks come next,
+and by the end of the first week of November the sportsman's carnival
+is in full swing. First come the mallard and his mate (_Anas boschus_),
+in small bands; next follow the whistling and the common teal
+(_Querquedula cyanoptera_ and _Nettion Carolinensis_); then the pintail
+(_Dafila acuta_) in great bands; following these, the wheat-duck, or
+gadwall (_Chaulelasmus streperus_), in multitudes; then, at a short
+interval, the redhead (_Fuligula Athya Americana_) and the black duck
+(_Fulix affinis_). These stay with us all the winter, as do also the
+wood-duck (_Dix sponsor_), and until the crocuses cover the wild ground
+once again. We have the snipe (_Gallinago Wilsonii_) in our
+marsh-lands, but not in large numbers, and one specimen of the great
+solitary snipe has been killed.
+
+The snipe have a curious instinct for knowing exactly how many one
+piece of marsh will support. Near this house is a wet corner, fed by
+springs and also by ditches. The extent is about an acre; it is covered
+with rose-bushes and alder-shoots, and with rushes. In this are usually
+three snipe, never more. Several times each winter we have cleared the
+three out, but in a week or so successors fill their places.
+
+[Sidenote: _FLIGHT-SHOOTING._]
+
+Our favorite sport in winter is "flight-shooting"--killing the geese
+and ducks as they fly round the swamps at evening, preparing to settle
+for their night's feed. This comes in after the day's work is pretty
+nearly done. Mounting our ponies about four o'clock, we canter off to a
+big swamp about three miles off. Through this flows a little stream,
+whose water swells with the winter rains into two little lakes. Long
+grass and sedges cover the ground, and a good many patches of reeds
+give shelter.
+
+Arriving just as the sun is setting behind the mountain south of Mary's
+Peak, his departing rays strike in brilliant red and yellow light along
+the surface of the pools, filling the valley with quivering, purple
+haze. We post ourselves at long intervals along the marsh, crouching
+while the light lasts, among the reeds. Just as the red light fades
+away, a group of black specks is seen against the sky, rising from the
+fir-timber that bounds the distant river. They grow quickly larger, and
+presently the rapid beat of wings is heard, as they whistle through the
+air overhead. The first flight round is high up in the sky, as they
+take a general view. Circling at the far end of the swamp, back they
+come, this time nearer to the ground. Just as you are debating if you
+dare risk the shot, whish! whish! comes the big band of teal close
+behind you, dashing by with a swoop worthy of the swiftest swallow, and
+defying all but a chance shot into the thick of them. By this time the
+big ducks are past, your chance at them is gone, and you hear in a
+second or two the bang! bang! from lower down the swamp, telling of one
+of your comrades' luck. Here come some more--right, left, overhead,
+behind--till an unlucky cartridge sticks in your gun, and the scene
+falls on an unhappy wretch cursing his luck, and devoting himself, his
+gun, his powder, the ducks, the swamp, and all Oregon to the infernal
+deities!
+
+Night has fallen; the pale gold-and-green light has faded from the sky;
+the dark purple line of mountains has turned into a solid mass of the
+darkest neutral tint; one star after another has shown out overhead, to
+be reflected in the still, shallow water in which you stand.
+
+A low voice calls out of the darkness, "Time to go home, I suppose."
+And a quick canter along the muddy road, possible only because the
+horses know every step of the way, soon brings us home to a late meal,
+where all our battles are fought over again, and the spoils, in their
+various beauty, are proudly shown. Among the game-birds may be included
+the blue crane, which flies in bands of from ten to twenty, high in the
+air. But it does not remain here, and is only killed by chance.
+
+The other day a bittern (_Ardeidae minor_) was shot--a bird somewhat
+larger than the European bittern, but exactly resembling it in all
+essentials.
+
+[Sidenote: _EAGLES, HAWKS, HORNED OWLS._]
+
+Eagles and hawks we have in abundance, and of all sizes. The former are
+destructive to the young lambs even in the valley. How bold they are,
+too! One flew into a bush the other day as I rode across a wide
+pasture, and watched me as I came close by him, never taking to flight,
+though I passed within twenty yards of him--near enough to note the
+defiant, proud expression of his great black eye. Last summer we lost
+chicken after chicken. I could not make out the robber, having taken
+precautions against rats, _et id genus omne_. One night, about ten
+o'clock, our English servant burst into the sitting-room with--"Sir,
+sir, bring your gun; here's a heagle come down on to the roof of the
+barn!" One of us ran out with a gun, and made out a big bird against
+the starlit sky. A shot, and down it came on the roof of the stable,
+making the horses jump and rattle their halter-blocks. It turned out to
+be a splendid specimen of the great horned owl. After his death the
+depredations among the chickens ceased for the time. Very often a pair
+of owls, just like the English barn-owl, are seen beating the swampy
+ground, I suppose after rats; quartering the ground, and examining
+every sedgy patch like a setter-dog.
+
+Two kinds of woodpeckers are common; the smaller sort abounds in the
+burned timber, and again and again in the course of the day's ride you
+hear the tap, tap, and see the little fellow propping himself against
+the black trunk with his strong tail. The larger woodpecker is a
+beautiful bird, with a bright brown-and-gray speckled and barred chest,
+and a scarlet head and top-knot. These birds are eagerly sought by the
+Indians, who adorn themselves with the red feathers, and use them also
+as currency among themselves in various small transactions.
+
+The blue-jays are as noisy in our woods as in other parts of the world,
+and as inquisitive and impertinent.
+
+In summer we have flights of little yellow-birds just like canaries.
+One of my boys brought his pet canary from England in a little cage. He
+cared for and tended it all the long journey, and until we were on
+board the steamer coming up the Willamette. In the course of the
+morning he thought he would clean out his bird's cage. The open door
+was too strong a temptation. Out slipped the captive, and, after a
+short flight or two in the cabin, away he went into the outer air and
+perched on the upper rail of the pilot-house. After a moment he caught
+sight of a flock of little yellow-birds flitting round a big tree by a
+farmhouse on the bank. Off flew the little traveler to join them, and
+the last we saw of him was that he was joyfully joining the new
+company, while his master stood disconsolately watching the escape of
+his favorite.
+
+Flocks of little bluebirds (_Sialia Mexicana_) frequent the town, the
+whole of their plumage a bright metallic blue. Among them is sometimes
+seen the golden oriole (_Icterus Bullockii_), making, with his orange
+jacket and black cap, a brilliant contrast with his blue companions.
+
+Along the fences, and in the clumps of bushes filling their angles, is
+the favorite haunt of a pretty bird (_Pipilo Oregonus_), in plumage
+almost exactly resembling the European bullfinch; like him too in
+habit, as he accompanies you along the road in little, jerky flights.
+
+[Sidenote: _HUMMING-BIRDS AT HOME._]
+
+When the winter day has closed in, and the lamps are lighted, several
+times the little snow-bunting (_Iunco Oregonus_) has come tapping at
+the window, attracted by the light, and seeking refuge in the warmth
+within from the rough wind and driving rain without. In the
+honeysuckle, which covers the veranda and climbs over the face of the
+house, two sets of humming-birds (_Selasphorus rufus_) made their home.
+It was pretty to watch them as they poised themselves to suck the
+honey, and then darted off to one flower after another among the beds,
+returning every instant to their nests, close to our heads, as we sat
+out in the cool evening air. We were taken in several times by the
+humming-bird moths, which imitated exactly the motions of the birds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Up to the Cascades--Farming by happy-go-lucky--The foot-hills--Sweet
+Home Valley--Its name, and how deserved and proved--The road by the
+Santiam--Eastward and upward--Timber--Lower Soda Springs--Different
+vegetation--Upper Soda Springs--Mr. Keith--Our reception--His home and
+surroundings--Emigrants on the road--The emigrant's dog--Off to the
+Spokane--Whence they came--Where they were bound--Still eastward--Fish
+Lake--Clear Lake--Fly-fishing in still water--The down slope east--
+Lava-beds--Bunch-grass--The valleys in Eastern Oregon--Their products
+--Wheat-growing there--Cattle-ranchers--Their home--Their life--In
+the saddle and away--Branding-time--Hay for the winter--The Malheur
+reservation--The Indians' outbreak--The building of the road--When,
+how, and by whom built--The opening of the pass--The history of the
+road--Squatters--The special agent from Washington--A sham survey.
+
+
+After recovering from a sharp attack of illness last fall, I was sent
+away for change of air. I fancied the mountain air would revive me
+speedily; so we resolved to travel up to the Upper Soda Springs, in the
+Cascades. It was two days' journey from the valley. The first twenty
+miles led us across the rich valley portion of Linn County. We had to
+pass through the little town of Lebanon.
+
+Near here we saw an illustration of farming carelessness that I must
+mention. The harvest of 1879 was marked by the first recorded instance
+of rust attacking the spring-sown wheat. The spring was unusually late,
+and when the rains ceased, about the 25th of May, the summer sun broke
+forth at once with unclouded warmth and splendor. The lately sown grain
+sprang up in marvelous vigor, and the crop promised abundantly for the
+farmer, when, just before the wheat hardened in the ear, the rust
+seized it, the leaf took a yellow tinge, and the grain shriveled up.
+The valley portions of Linn, Lane, Marion, and Benton Counties
+suffered, the first-named the most severely.
+
+In our ride across the valley we passed several fields which were
+standing abandoned and unreaped; the preparations for next year's crop
+were in active progress; in one great wheat-field we saw the farmer,
+with his broad-cast grain-distributor fixed in his wagon, sowing his
+seed among the untouched, shriveled crop! And the wonder is that the
+crop of this year, all through this stricken district, was unusually
+fine for both quality and quantity of wheat.
+
+I do not know that a stronger fact could be adduced in proof of the
+still wonderful fertility of this Willamette Valley than that it should
+be possible this year to reap a good crop, grown on ground that was
+neither reaped, plowed, nor rolled--nothing done but to cast abroad the
+seed and harrow it lightly in.
+
+Soon after passing Lebanon, eighteen miles from here, we reached the
+foot-hills of the Cascades; round, swelling, sandy buttes; sometimes
+covered with short pasture-grass; generally bearing a growth of
+oak-brush, sprinkled with firs of a moderate size.
+
+[Sidenote: _SWEET HOME VALLEY._]
+
+We slept at the first toll-gate, at the other side of Sweet Home
+Valley. This pretty vale deserved its name. Some five or six miles long
+by about two in width, there was a good expanse of fertile bottom-land,
+plowed and cultivated; all round the hills rose, lightly timbered in
+part, affording pasture for the cattle. We were told that the first
+five settlers were bachelors, and called the Valley "Sweet Home" to
+induce their lady-loves to follow them so far into what was then a
+wilderness. That their invitation succeeded, I judge from the fact that
+the valley has now three hundred inhabitants; that the settlement was a
+permanent one, I judge from the fact that a neat schoolhouse, well
+filled with scholars, is now the chief ornament of the valley.
+
+The road followed on along the course of the Santiam River, now
+becoming a rapid mountain-stream, with many a rock and ripple. By the
+side of every farmhouse stood one or two "fish-poles," betokening that
+the river was of use as well as ornament to the dwellers by its banks.
+
+The road now led us straight eastward to the mountains, whose
+fir-crowned summits frowned on us from every side. Here and there a
+little valley nestling among the hills had been reclaimed to the use of
+man; and many a neat little farm and well-grown orchard, with fenced
+grain-fields and hay-fields, witnessing to the successful labor of the
+owner, smiled on us as we passed.
+
+On nearly all appeared the magic words: "Hay and oats sold here. Good
+accommodation for campers"; betokening that we were on the main road of
+travel, and that the farmers found a ready market for their produce at
+their very door.
+
+At one farm stood a set of Fairbanks's scales, for weighing and
+apportioning the wagon-loads before undertaking the passage of the
+mountains. The ascent was soon commenced; indeed, we had mounted
+several hundred feet before we were well aware of it, so good was the
+engineering of the road.
+
+[Sidenote: _LOWER SODA SPRINGS._]
+
+The timber grew larger on either side and ahead; no burned timber here,
+but massive, heavy growths, extending mile after mile, of spruce,
+hemlock, and pine, interspersed with many a cedar, tall, straight, and
+strong. Very little undergrowth of brush; a good deal of brake-fern and
+of grass; and by the sides and along the edges of the little gullies
+and canyons that we crossed, the large maidenhair-fern grew in beautiful
+profusion. We were never far from the Santiam, and now and again the
+roar and rush of water told us of little falls and rapids in the
+stream. Always ascending, here with a long, straight stretch of grading
+cut into the hill-side, there with a winding course to cheat the hill
+that rose to bar our road; down a short distance, then along the little
+valley with its farm, then up again, till we gained the brow
+overlooking the settlement at the Lower Soda Springs. The little wooden
+houses, with galleries overhanging the rocky stream; the heavy
+fir-woods clothing the hill-sides; the abundant ferns and creeping
+plants growing down to the water's edge; the abrupt outlines of the
+rocks in places too steep for vegetation--all reminded us of Norway,
+and of happy tours in bygone years. And the welcome we received from
+the hospitable innkeepers served to strengthen the remembrance.
+
+We went down to drink at the soda-springs. Long, inclined ledges of
+white and gray rocks lead down to the river's edge; there, within a few
+feet of the sweet, running water, so near that the rise of one foot in
+actual level of the stream would overrun the spring, we found the
+alkaline spring, welling out from a hole six inches across in one of
+the wide ledges of gray rock. I never yet tasted a mineral water that
+was nice, and it seems as if the medical value of a spring varied
+exactly with its nastiness; so judged, I should say that the Lower Soda
+Springs were very valuable. A few hours more, over broken country,
+which grew wilder as we advanced, brought us in twelve miles' travel to
+our destination. The last few miles entered a burned timber-patch,
+where the black trunks either towered high into the air or lay supine,
+rotting by degrees into yellow mold. The vegetation had a different
+aspect from the Coast Range; a great feature in the brush was the
+abundance of elder-bushes, then covered with blue-gray berries, and the
+flourishing dogwood-trees, whose branches bore a quantity of large,
+white flowers and also of scarlet fruit. We had crossed the Santiam
+several times, here by timber bridges, there by fords.
+
+The excellence of the road, its freedom from rocks and "chuck-holes,"
+alike surprised and pleased us, and my poor bones would have told a sad
+tale if all the stories of "mere wagon-track" had been founded in even
+the semblance of fact.
+
+[Sidenote: _MR. KEITH._]
+
+We mounted the little rise which brought us in sight of Upper Soda
+Springs. On the left of the road stood a barn; on the right, three
+little detached wooden huts, from one of which the thin, blue smoke was
+rising and betokened the habitation of the owner. A thin, bent, elderly
+man issued from the barn with a big bundle of hay in his arms, as we
+drove up, and came across to meet us. "Mr. Keith?" I asked. "I have a
+letter of introduction from a friend of yours, and we wish to stay with
+you for a week or ten days." "You read it to me," was the answer; "I
+haven't got my spectacles." So I read it. "Well, sir, can we stay?" "I
+don't mind men, but I can't abear women," was the somewhat forbidding
+response, as my wife smiled across from the back of the carriage. "I
+don't think you need mind my wife, Mr. Keith; she won't give you any
+extra trouble." "I don't mind cooking for men--they don't know any
+better; but, as for the women, they are always thinking how much better
+they could do it." However, we settled it amicably, and took possession
+of the third little hut, where the bundle of hay was soon shaken out on
+to the two standing bed-places on either side. We made great friends
+with the old gentleman, whose roughness was all on the outside, and who
+slew his chickens, and cooked his cabbages, and stewed his dried plums
+and apples for us without stint, and in a manner that no woman could
+object to.
+
+The situation was most romantic--just under the shadow of a huge body
+of rugged rocks on one side, while on the other Mr. Keith's little
+fields, from which all the dogwood and elderberry bushes had not been
+grubbed out, led to the edge of the bank overhanging the Santiam. The
+river here is a beautiful stream, rocky and broken, deep and shallow,
+by turns, with a trout under every stone.
+
+Mr. Keith's garden was a few steps from the house, in a little bottom;
+although so high up above sea-level (about twenty-five hundred feet, I
+believe), the vegetables were as fine as I ever saw, and the
+grape-vines, trained over a trellis in front of the house, were loaded
+with fruit.
+
+Here, among the hills, trout-rod for me and sketch-book and
+water-colors for my wife, we spent ten happy days. There was no lack of
+company, for, besides our old host, all the passers-by stopped at the
+house. Hardly a day went, even at that late period of the season,
+without from six to ten wagons passing, on their way from Western and
+Southern Oregon to the wide plains and fertile valleys of Eastern
+Oregon and Washington Territory.
+
+The self-reliance, the absolute trusting to the future, of all these
+good people was impressive. The whole family were together: beds,
+chairs, stove, blankets, clock, saucepans, and household stores were
+all packed or piled into the wagon; underneath hung a box or basket
+with a couple of little pigs or a dozen cocks and hens. A couple of
+cows were driven along or took their parts as a yoke of oxen in
+draught; a colt or two and a few young cattle ran by the side, and the
+family dog, presiding over the cavalcade, seemed to have more of a
+burden on his mind than the human heads of the expedition. Many stopped
+to camp for the night, almost all for at least one meal, and all
+without exception to get a drink from the effervescing soda-spring.
+
+[Sidenote: _OFF TO THE SPOKANE._]
+
+One wagon was driven by a pleasant-spoken man; with him were his wife
+and a sick baby of a year old. They had nothing for the baby but
+potatoes and flour. Their stores were but scanty. "Where are you
+going?" said I. "To the Spokane, I guess," was the reply. "Where do you
+come from?" "Well, I had a valley-farm, and we were doing pretty well,
+but I hadn't my health good, and I thought we'd try the Spokane." "Do
+you know where it is you are going?" "No, but they told us to take this
+road and we'd find our way." "Have you any idea how far it is?" "Not
+much; a hundred miles or two, isn't it?" "Put five hundred or so on,
+and you'll get there." "You don't say so! Well, I dare say we shall get
+through all right." "What do you mean to do?" "Well, I haven't money
+enough to buy a farm, so I shall just take up a place." "You mean to
+homestead, then?" "I guess so." "How many miles can you make in a day?"
+"Not more than ten or fifteen with this old scrub team." "Have you
+thought that this is the first week in October, and that you can't
+expect to get there much before January?" "I guess not; but I dare say
+we shall get on very well." "You told me just now you had not much
+money; have you thought how long it will last you, spending two dollars
+a day on the road?" "No, I haven't rightly figured it. I knew we
+shouldn't have much left when we got there." "What makes you want to go
+to the Spokane?" "Well, I've heard it's good land up there." "Isn't
+Oregon good enough for you?" "I don't know but what it is. I didn't
+know the place was so far off." I fetched him a large scale map, and
+left him to think it over after supper. They were off in the morning
+before we were out, and I have no idea whether they reached the
+Spokane; my only consolation was, that the baby was the better for the
+care and food it got that night, and for the additional stores they
+carried away for it.
+
+This conversation was, perhaps, an extreme one; but it is absolutely
+true to facts. All that we talked to were equally hopeful, and few much
+better instructed as to their course. Certainly no people in the world
+could be better qualified to make a little go far, to take cheerily all
+the inevitable discomforts of both the long journey and the new home,
+and to make the best use of every advantage they found or made. Only a
+few were going to this Spokane country, away north in Washington
+Territory; the rest were bound for Eastern Oregon, which is being
+settled up marvelously fast, when the difficulties of getting there,
+and of getting their produce out from there, are taken into account.
+
+The stretch of burned timber country ended about the Upper Soda. All
+round it, and on from there eastward, grew miles upon miles of
+magnificent fir, hemlock, spruce, and cedar-trees, averaging three feet
+through, and, I judged, a hundred and fifty feet in height. I measured
+several of the dead trees on the ground, which ran from two hundred and
+twenty to two hundred and fifty feet in length, and the tops of all of
+them were gone.
+
+A few miles farther on eastward are Fish Lake and Clear Lake. The
+former merits its name from the abundance of trout from one to three
+and four pounds in weight. In summer the water shrinks away to little
+more than a stream in the middle of the depression which forms the
+lake, and a growth of rich, succulent grass follows the subsidence of
+the waters. Clear Lake, some four miles off, is vastly different. It
+evidently occupies the place of a great and sudden depression of
+timber-covered country, for, looking down into the deep, clear water,
+the great firs are seen still standing erect on the bottom, far, far
+below. Fly-fishing on this lake is wonderfully good. Throw the flies on
+to the still water, oh! so quietly, and there let them lie motionless;
+in a moment or two a dim form shines deep down, rising with a quick,
+vibrating motion, and up comes your friend: with a greedy snatch he
+takes the fly, and bolts downward with it, to be speedily checked and
+brought to book.
+
+Soon begins the descent, much more gradual than the ascent, and not so
+prolonged, since all Eastern Oregon is a kind of plateau, elevated from
+one to two thousand feet above sea-level.
+
+[Sidenote: _VALLEYS IN EASTERN OREGON._]
+
+A stretch of lava-bed is soon reached, the acme of desolation, where
+the road has been painfully worked by crushing down the rugged blocks,
+or laboriously moving them with levers from the path. Two or three
+miles carry us across, and then the bunch-grass country begins. Great
+tussocks of succulent feed for spring and early summer, dried by the
+hot sun into natural hay for autumn and winter use, afford pasture for
+countless herds of cattle. Even here there are watercourses and springs
+a few miles apart. The valleys--namely, Des Chutes, Crooked River
+Valley, Ochoco, Beaver Creek, Grindstone Creek, Silver Creek, Harney
+Lake, and Malheur--stretch in a practically unbroken line across the
+whole of the remainder of Oregon to the eastern boundary of Snake
+River.
+
+Take Crooked River Valley as a specimen. It varies from one to three
+miles in width, but is bounded, not by the steep and rugged hills we
+are used to in the Coast Range, but by gently swelling bluffs, covered
+with bunch-grass to and over their tops. The valley-land is rich and
+fertile, and wherever cultivated yields abundantly in potatoes,
+cereals, vegetables, and small fruits of all kinds. Sixty and eighty
+bushels of oats to the acre is not an unusual crop. And tame grasses
+take firm hold of the country wherever opportunity is given them. The
+bunch-grass slopes, with occasional sagebrush scattered among the
+grass, are not to be always set apart for such common use as at
+present.
+
+Precisely the same character of land has been plowed up and put into
+wheat during the last few years round Walla Walla, just north of the
+northeast corner of Oregon, and produces forty bushels of wheat to the
+acre. Indeed, it is from country like this that the great crops of
+Northeastern Oregon and Washington Territory are produced; crops
+yielding a magnificent return, if not to the farmer whose enterprise
+and industry have served to raise them, yet to the recently formed
+transportation company called the Oregon Railway and Navigation
+Company, by whose boats plying on the Columbia the wheat is carried to
+Portland to be shipped.
+
+At present these vast stretches of rolling hill and dale are the home
+of the cattle-rancher--a strange and wild life. A suitable site is
+fixed on, commanding ample water privilege, with some valley-land near
+by to grow sufficient hay, and to raise the desired quantity of oats
+and vegetables; here the house is built, the lumber being hauled by
+wagons perhaps fifty or a hundred miles from the mill. The rancher's
+family consists of his wife and children, and possibly five or six
+herdsmen. While looking after cattle, these men almost live in the
+saddle. Horses abound, and form as good a source of revenue as cattle,
+in proportion to the capital engaged. The Eastern Oregon horse is
+taller and bigger-boned than the valley horse, but naturally his
+education is not so well attended to, and he is apt to be "mean" and to
+buck. Little recks his rider, and after a bout of bucking, in which the
+horse has not dislodged the man, but has shaken up every bone in his
+body till he is sore all over with the constant jar, as the horse comes
+to the ground all four feet at once after a mighty jump, then it is the
+man's turn. Driving in the heavy Mexican spurs, with their rowels two
+or three inches across, the rider starts wildly out, and mile after
+mile the open country is crossed at a hard-gallop. The herd is soon
+seen and ridden round, and a close lookout is kept to see if any
+stragglers have joined the band, and if the calves and yearlings are
+all right. Branding-time comes twice a year, in spring and autumn, when
+the cattle of a whole "stretch" of country are driven together,
+separated according to the various ownerships determined by marks and
+brands.
+
+In spring come in the Eastern buyers, who travel through the country,
+collecting a huge drove of perhaps from ten to twenty thousand head.
+The three-year-old steers fetch about fifteen or seventeen dollars a
+head; no wonder the ranchers prosper, considering that the cost from
+calfhood was only that of herding.
+
+Some of the provident ones collect one or two hundred tons of natural
+hay against the severities of winter. It may be that for two or three
+years the hay will stand unused; then comes the stress. Deep snow will
+cover the face of the country and lie for weeks, too deep for the
+cattle to live, as in ordinary winters, on the dry bunch-grass
+protruding from the snow, or easily reached by scratching a slight
+covering away. Even an abundant store will not save all, for many of
+the herd will have taken refuge in distant valleys, or perhaps have
+retreated far off the whole range in the face of the driving storm. And
+even those that are found will move very unwillingly from any poor
+shelter they may have secured toward the life-saving food.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE MALHEUR RESERVATION._]
+
+There is a large Indian reservation called the Malheur Reserve; the
+road crosses its southwest corner. These Indians are quiet enough now,
+but only three years ago there was an outbreak among them. One rancher
+had built a fine stone house, just outside the reservation bounds, and
+there lived in comfort, surrounded by all the necessaries and many of
+the luxuries of life. He had six or eight thousand head of cattle and
+some three hundred horses in his band. One morning a friendly Indian
+rode up in haste, telling him to get away, as the hostiles were coming
+to kill them all. Mounting their horses, the rancher and his wife took
+to flight; they looked back from the hill-top to see the flames and
+smoke rising from their comfortable home, telling how narrow had been
+their escape. A hurried ride of fifty miles took them to safe refuge;
+and the speedy repulse of the Indians, and their being driven once
+again within their own boundaries, enabled the rancher to rebuild his
+house, and restore once more his household goods.
+
+This road was built by men who were sent out from Albany, and spent
+years in the work, rifles by their side; for the country fourteen years
+ago was not the safe domain it has now become. The first idea was to
+use the pass through the Cascades (which is the lowest and safest in
+Oregon, so far as I can learn), to build a road to open the plains of
+Eastern Oregon to the Willamette Valley. After a good deal of the work
+had been accomplished, a suggestion was made to the owners of the road
+that if they would undertake to extend it clear across the State to the
+Idaho boundary, a distance from Albany of some four hundred and fifty
+miles by the necessary deviations from a straight line, a land grant
+might probably be procured from Congress to aid the work. Whatever may
+be said of the general policy of granting the national lands to
+corporations to aid wagon-road and railroad enterprises, there may
+surely be cases where the effect is not only to secure the execution of
+the work, but also to encourage the settling up of a district, and the
+consequent increase of the population and wealth of a State.
+
+Here was the state of affairs in Eastern Oregon prior to 1866: A vast
+country, adapted for the gradual settlement and ultimate habitation of
+a prosperous race, was lying at the mercy of a few roving bands of
+Indians, who made the lives and property of even casual travelers their
+speculation and sport. What was the value then of all that country?
+Could any purchaser for it have been then found, at even a few cents an
+acre?
+
+[Sidenote: _BUILDING OF THE ROAD._]
+
+The projectors of the road took their lives in their hands when they
+ventured forth to work. They risked themselves, their horses and
+equipments. Every pound of food consumed had to be brought in wagons
+from their starting-point. As they progressed, their danger and
+difficulty increased with every mile they traversed; and the last
+section of the road was built by men who had suffered themselves to be
+snowed in and shut off from families and friends, and to give up every
+chance of succor in distress, that the work might not stand still. And
+it was no light work, even judged by us who travel the road at ease,
+and have hardly a passing glance for the rocky grade, the deep cutting,
+the ponderous lava-block, the huge black trunk. How appalling must the
+undertaking have appeared to those who had first to face the dangers
+and difficulties of a mountain-chain, to plan for and survey out the
+most favorable route among heavy timber and rocky precipice, beside
+rushing waters and through deep gorges; and then across those wide and
+then silent plains, where the timid antelope ranged by day, and the
+skulking wolf by night made solitude hideous with his melancholy howl!
+No roadside farms to welcome them, no little towns to mark, as now, the
+stages of their journey, but farther and farther into the wilderness,
+till four hundred miles lay between the workers and the valley-homes
+they had left months before.
+
+And this was no wealthy corporation, which has but to announce its
+readiness to receive, and dollars are poured into its lap by a public
+hungry for dividends, until it has to cry, "Hold, enough!" Here were no
+regiments of yellow workmen, trained to labor in many a ditch and
+grade; but citizens of Oregon, who desired to build up their State; who
+believed the records of their fellows as to the miles of country that
+could be forced to contribute their quota of productions if but the way
+were opened in and out; who, having themselves prospered in the sound
+and moderate way in which Oregon encourages her children, were ready to
+risk what they had gained in a cause they knew was good--these men
+combined their energies to the common end. It was an enterprise which
+roused and maintained the kindly interest of all. The working parties
+in the Cascade Range were followed up by the teams of those who desired
+the first choice of settlement in the promised land beyond.
+
+By the time the last great log that barred the pass was reached, a long
+string of wagons stood waiting its removal. While the long saws were
+plied, and then the levers brought, all stood in expectation; willing
+hands lent their eager aid: the great wooden mass rolled sullenly away,
+and the tide of settlement poured through the gap. Between that day in
+1867 and 1880 upward of five thousand wagons have made the journey,
+and, to the honor of the original locators be it said, all without
+accident arising from the road.
+
+The first few years all went merry as a marriage-bell. The road
+naturally followed the fertile valleys; and small blame to the
+road-makers if, having the whole country before them, they chose the
+smoothest and cheapest route. No man will climb a hill and cut his way
+along its side if he can find good level ground at the bottom.
+
+The road-makers were entitled under their congressional grant to
+alternate mile-square sections in a wide belt on either side of their
+road; the intervening sections were, of course, opened to settlement by
+the construction of the road. The open-valley sections were soon seized
+on, and a band of settlements justified, even so soon, the principle of
+the road-grant.
+
+[Sidenote: _SQUATTERS._]
+
+But to many men in this world, and Oregon has her share, the
+descriptive motto is not, "Labor is sweet, and we have toiled," but the
+antithesis, "Other men have labored: let us enter into the fruits of
+their labor." So squatters entered with the legitimate settler, or
+close on his heels, and took possession of many a section of the road
+company's land, "taking the chances," as they would express it, of
+something happening to help them to hold. To aid matters, these men
+fenced across the road near their houses, and carried the road round on
+the hill-sides above their farms. The settlers were not slow to follow
+so promising an example, and, to have the benefit of the bottom-land
+through which the road ran, they also pushed the road away up the
+hills.
+
+On more than one occasion the road company sent and had these fences
+removed and opened the original road afresh. But travelers did not aid
+them; for here came in a trait of American character I have often
+noticed, namely, unwillingness to insist on strict right against their
+neighbors, and a readiness to make any shift, or agree to and use any
+_detour_, when to keep the old, straight road would involve a question.
+So the valley road got disused in places, and travel went round by the
+hills.
+
+Next, the squatters bethought them that they might in time upset the
+road grant, and get good title to their neighbors' vineyard. So they
+sent on a petition to Washington, alleging that the road had never been
+made; that there was no road at all; that there had been a colossal
+fraud. But the matter was investigated, and discovery made that the
+United States authorities had ceased to have any jurisdiction so long
+ago as 1866. Still, those who were agitating thought something might be
+made of it. So, somehow or other, the Secretary of the Interior, Mr.
+Carl Schurz, was induced to interfere, not deterred by the knowledge
+that the land department had declined to act twelve months before; and
+so, a year after the squatters' complaint had been refused, an agent
+was sent out to report; he was well armed with the assailants' stories
+in advance, and he need be a man of superexcellent straightforwardness
+and hardihood unless he too could "see something in it."
+
+In this case the phoenix was not discovered, and the eyes, ears, and
+common-sense of hundreds of men who knew the road well were outraged by
+a report that no road existed or had been made except for about sixty
+miles at the western end; and that the road, if road it could be
+called, was a mere wagon-track, capable of use only for a short time
+and under exceptionally favorable circumstances!
+
+It was of course assumed that, at so great a distance from
+headquarters, a hostile report would end matters, and that all the
+advantages hoped for by the squatters, and by any and all who had
+espoused their cause, would be forthwith enjoyed.
+
+We have yet to learn that the American Congress will consent to be made
+parties to such an outrageous conspiracy; to cast an infamous slur on
+the characters of American citizens who ventured much in an undertaking
+for the public good; in violation of plain and acknowledged principles
+of law, to hamper and delay an enterprise relying on the title gained
+in 1871, and quietly enjoyed for ten years.
+
+[Sidenote: _HARNEY LAKE VALLEY._]
+
+The largest of the valleys through which this road passes is Harney
+Lake Valley, only about eighty miles from the eastern boundary of the
+State, which will receive fuller description farther on.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Indian fair at Brownsville--Ponies--The lasso--Breaking-in--The
+purchase--"Bucking" extraordinary--Sheep-farming in Eastern Oregon--
+Merinos--The sheep-herder--Muttons for company--A good offer refused
+--Exports of wool from Oregon--Price and value of Oregon wool--Grading
+wool--Price of sheep--Their food--Coyotes--The wolf-hunt--Shearing--
+Increase of flocks--"Corraling" the sheep--Sheep as brush-clearers.
+
+
+[Sidenote: _BREAKING-IN._]
+
+Some of our people wanted to buy ponies this last fall, and heard that
+the Indian pony fair at Brownsville, about twenty-five miles from here,
+was the best place. They rode off one fine October morning, and
+returned the next day but one, with a handsome four-year-old. The scene
+as they described it was exciting and interesting. I should say that
+the town of Brownsville is a lively little place, with seven or eight
+hundred inhabitants, and some fine woolen-mills. It is the nearest
+valley town to the mountains accessible by the wagon-road to those
+crossing from Eastern Oregon. Near the town was the fair-ground, a
+large, fenced inclosure, with from two to three hundred ponies
+careering about it in a state of wild excitement. Nearly all the
+Indians were Warm Springs, some few Nez-Perces. Both these tribes are
+far finer-looking and better grown than our coast Indians. They wear
+white men's clothes, but deerskin moccasins on their feet. Except for
+the absolute straightness of the black hair, these men almost exactly
+resemble the gypsies as seen in Europe; they are very like them too in
+many habits of mind and life--equally fond of red and yellow
+handkerchiefs for neck-wear for the men or head-gear for the women.
+Several of the Indians were on foot, others on horseback in the
+inclosure where the horses ran. On our friends telling one of the Warm
+Springs chiefs who was standing there of their wish to buy a horse, he
+questioned them as to the kind they wanted, and the price they were
+willing to give. Then, on giving some directions to one of the Indians
+on horseback, that worthy unslung his lasso from his saddle-horn and
+rode into the crowd of horses. The whole wild band were kept on a rapid
+gallop round and round. The Indian soon selected one, and flinging his
+lasso over its head he turned and stopped his horse abruptly, and the
+captive was brought to the ground with a shock enough to break every
+bone in his body. He was quickly secured by another rope or two by
+other Indians standing near, and was then carefully inspected. Not
+being altogether approved, he was set free again, and quickly rejoined
+the band. Another was caught, and another, and at last a trade was
+arrived at, subject to the breaking-in of the horse in question. The
+horse, carefully held by lasso-ropes, was quickly saddled, a hide
+bridle with sharp and cruel curb-bit was slipped over his head, a young
+Indian mounted, and all the ropes were let go. Away went the horse like
+an arrow from a bow; then as suddenly he stopped; then buck-jumping
+began, while the Indian sat firm and unmoved, seemingly immovable. This
+play lasted till the horse tired of it, and then off he went at a
+gallop again. Before he got too far away the rider managed to turn him,
+and he was kept going for an hour and more till he was utterly
+exhausted, and the white foam lay in ridges on his skin. By this time
+all the bucking had gone out of him, and he suffered himself to be
+brought quietly back to the corral, and he was handed over to the
+purchaser as a broken horse. A long negotiation as to price had ended
+in sixteen dollars being paid in silver half-dollar pieces (the Indian
+declined a gold ten-dollar piece), and a red cotton handkerchief which
+happened to peep from our friend's pocket, which clinched the bargain.
+
+The average size of the ponies was just under fourteen hands; the shape
+and make were exceedingly good. There was one splendid coal-black
+stallion, a trifle larger than the rest, whose long mane and tail
+adorned him; for this the Indians declined all moderate offers, and got
+as high as fifty dollars, and would hardly have sold at that. There was
+a considerable proportion of the spotted roan, which is the traditional
+color for the Indian "cayuse."
+
+[Sidenote: _THE SHEEP-HERDER._]
+
+Sheep-farming in Eastern and Northern Oregon has become a very
+important pursuit; it is also followed largely in the southeastern
+portion of the State. As sheep advance cattle retire, and many a growl
+have I listened to from the cattle-men, and most absurd threats as to
+what they would do to keep back the woolly tide: even to the length of
+breeding coyotes or prairie-wolves for the special benefit of the
+mutton. The merinos, French. Spanish, and Australian, thrive better in
+the drier climate east of the Cascades than in this Willamette Valley.
+The vast expanse of open country covered thinly with grass involves the
+herding system. One of our fellows undertook this business near Heppner
+in Umatilla County. He had entire charge of a flock of 1,700 merinos.
+There was an old tent for him to sleep in, but he preferred to roll
+himself in his blankets on the open ground. No company but his dog, and
+no voices but the eternal "baa, baa" of the sheep, which almost drove
+him mad. His "boss" came out to him once in three weeks with a supply
+of coffee, flour, beans, and bacon; and, if meat ran short, there was
+abundance of live mutton handy. About once in three weeks, on the
+average, a stray traveler would cross his path, and have a few minutes'
+talk and smoke a pipe. He had not the relaxation of sport, for the
+sheep have driven deer and antelope from the country. Early in the
+morning his sheep were on the move; he had to follow them over the
+range; about noon they lay down on the hill-side, and he stopped to eat
+his scanty meal. All the afternoon they wandered on, till evening fell,
+by which time they were back on the sheltered hill-side, which stood
+for headquarters, and where the tent was pitched. Day in, day out, the
+same deadly round of monotonous duty, until he hated the look, the
+smell, the sound of a sheep, and I think has an incurable dislike to
+mutton which will last him all his life. Don't you think that his forty
+dollars a month was earned? When October came, and a few flakes of snow
+heralded the coming winter, the "boss" came, and warned him that he
+must now elect whether or not to spend the winter with the sheep, as
+the way out would shortly close. If he would stay, he could have a
+share in the flock to secure his interest, and could also take his pay
+in sheep, which would thus start his own individual flock. The offer
+was a tempting one; the path was the same that all the successful
+self-made sheep-men had followed; cold and privation alone had not many
+terrors to a hardy man; but--one look at the sheep decided him; he
+could not stand their society for six months longer. So he left, and
+returned to the valley, like a boy from school.
+
+I know one or two men, who, forced to accept a situation of this sort,
+have used the time for the study of a language, and, after a few months
+with the sheep, have come out accomplished Spanish, Italian, or German
+scholars. But it takes some resolution to overcome the temptation to
+drift along, day by day, in idleness of mind and body more and more
+complete.
+
+The Portland Board of Trade reports that, for the year 1879, 766,200
+pounds of wool were received at that city from Eastern Oregon, and
+2,080,197 pounds from the Willamette Valley, showing in value an
+increase of about thirty-five per cent. over the previous year. But
+Messrs. Falkner, Bell & Co., of San Francisco, reported that the
+receipts at that city of Oregon wool aggregated 7,183,825 pounds for
+the clip of 1879. The figures for 1876 were only 3,150,000 pounds. It
+should be noticed also that Oregon wool commands an excellent price in
+the market, even six cents higher than California, possessing greater
+strength and evenness, and being free from burs. The valley wool is
+clearer from sand and grit than that from Eastern Oregon.
+
+But much remains to be done in this valley. Far too many of the farmers
+are absolutely careless about scab; and sheep, infested with this
+noxious parasite, are suffered to run at large and poison the
+neighbors' flocks. It is true that a law intended to extirpate this
+curse now exists; but neither is legislation as sufficient nor its
+enforcement so strict as in Australia, though the necessity for both is
+full as great. There is but little encouragement either to the valley
+farmer to expend labor and money in improving the quality of his flock,
+when he sees his neighbors' inferior fleeces command just as high a
+price, the wool from perhaps ten or twenty farms being "pooled" without
+regard to quality. The remedy is of course found in grading the wool;
+steps for this purpose are being talked over by many intelligent
+farmers, and I expect soon to see them carried out.
+
+The exhibit at Philadelphia of Oregon wool received medals and diplomas
+from the Commissioners of the Centennial of 1876, with high and
+deserved praise. And the show at the Paris Exhibition of 1878 was also
+splendid; the Oregon fleeces equaling the Australian in length,
+strength, evenness, and beauty of fiber.
+
+[Sidenote: _PRICE OF SHEEP._]
+
+I shall have a little more to say as to the breeds of sheep when the
+State Fair at Salem is described, where the best specimens were
+supposed to be, and I believe were collected. Sheep in this valley are
+worth from $1.25 to $1.75 for store-sheep for the flock, and from $2 to
+$3 for mutton-sheep in winter. The wool of a sheep may be taken to
+fetch $1 on an average of seasons. The sheep eat grass all the year
+round; they have never seen a turnip or cole-seed. I know many farmers
+who have kept sheep successfully for twenty years on nothing whatever
+but the natural wild grasses. The great enemy of the sheep in these
+foot-hills, where the pasture is intermixed with brush, and borders on
+the thicker brush and timber of the mountains behind, is the coyote.
+Two or three of these little wolves will keep half a county on the
+alert, destroying far more than they eat. This "varmint" is somewhat
+larger than a Scottish sheep-dog, and of a tawny color; he has long
+hair like a colley, and is much more cowardly than fierce. He lives in
+the thick brush, whence he steals out at dusk on his murderous errand.
+He hunts generally alone, though one of our friends saw three together
+one evening this winter. His pace is a long, untiring gallop, and it
+takes a very good hound to run him down.
+
+The usual plan of the hunt is for several rifles to command the outlets
+from a piece of woodland, and then to take into the brush a collection
+of five or six of the best hounds that can be got together. When the
+scoundrel breaks cover he may go fast, but the rifle-bullet or buckshot
+goes the faster, and it would not do to miss.
+
+The sheep killed by the coyote is identified by the two little holes on
+either side of the throat, where the wolf has struck and held to drink
+the fast-flowing life-blood. The carcass is rarely torn. But the worse
+and more common coyote is the mongrel hound. Every now and again one of
+these impostors takes to murdering, and, demure and quiet as he looks
+by day, slouching around the barn, spends his nights killing the
+neighbors' sheep. There is not much chance for him if he is but once
+seen; his life is a very short if a merry one.
+
+When shearing-time comes round there are plenty of applicants for the
+job. The price is usually five cents a head, the farmer providing food,
+but the shearer finding his own tools. Some of these fellows will clip
+a hundred sheep a day, or even more: true, you must look after them to
+prevent scamping, in the shape of cuts on your sheep, and wool left on
+in thick ridges, instead of a clean, good shear. We expect an increase
+of at least one hundred per cent. on the ewes at lambing-time, even
+though so little cared for; those farmers who are good shepherds too,
+improve greatly on this average. The lambs must be well looked after,
+unless the wild-cat, eagle, and coyote are to take their toll. Not half
+the sheep are kept in this valley that ought to be, and that will be,
+when change or succession of crops are universally practiced.
+
+[Sidenote: _"CORRALING" THE SHEEP._]
+
+The amusing part of sheep-keeping in our coast-hills is "corraling," or
+gathering them for the night. By day they roam freely over the
+hill-sides, and you would be surprised to see how they thrive in
+brushwood and among fern, where the new-comer could hardly detect a
+blade of grass. These mountain-sheep, too, are more hardy and
+independent than the valley flocks. But, when the lambs are about, I am
+sure it is wise to undertake the labor of collecting them in the
+"corral" for the night. Without your sheep-dog you would be lost, for
+you would not have a chance on the hill-sides, and over and under the
+occasional logs, with sheep that jump and run like antelopes. But the
+dog cures all that, and you can stand in the road and watch Dandy or
+Jack collect your flock just as well as if he were in the cairns and
+corries of old Scotland, whence he or his grandfather came. I like to
+see them march demurely in at the open gate, and then run to the log
+where you have scattered a handful of salt for them, every grain and
+taste of which is eagerly licked up. And they are excellent
+brush-clearers; they love the young shoots of the cherry and
+vine-maple, and keep them so close down that in one or two seasons at
+most the stub dies, and can be plowed out and burned. Therefore every
+settler who takes up land, or buys a partly cleared farm, will find
+both pleasure and profit in his sheep, and that to him they are a
+necessity, even more than to the valley farmer. He must expect a
+percentage of loss from the wild animals, but his vigilance and love of
+sport together will reduce that percentage to the lowest point.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+The trail to the Siletz Reserve--Rock Creek--Isolation--Getting a
+road--The surveying-party--Entrance at last--Road-making--Hut-building
+in the wilds--What will he do with it?--Choice of homestead--Fencing
+wild land--Its method and cost--Splitting cedar boards and shingles--
+House-building--The China boy and the mules--Picnicking in earnest
+--Log-burning--Berrying-parties--Salting cattle--An active cow--A
+year's work--Mesquit-grass on the hills.
+
+
+When I traveled through Oregon in 1877, we visited the Siletz Indian
+reservation. To get there from the district called King's Valley, where
+we were, we had to take the mountain-trail first cut out by General
+Sheridan, when, as a young lieutenant, twenty years ago, he was
+stationed on this coast. The trail went up one mountain and down
+another, and crossed this river and that creek, till, at the foot of
+one long descent from a lofty ridge, which we thought then, and which I
+know now is, the water-shed between two great divisions of this county,
+we entered a valley entirely shut in. At the southeastern end, where we
+entered it, it was a narrow gorge, down which a quick stream hurried,
+with many a twist and turn, and over many a rocky ledge. The hill-sides
+above were thick with fern and berry-bearing bushes, and the black
+trunks of the burned timber stood as records of the great fire; but the
+stream ran through a leafy wilderness, where maple, alder, and cherry
+shut in the trail, and the maiden-hair and blechnum ferns grew thickly
+along the banks. The valley widened out as we advanced, and we found it
+in shape almost like an outspread hand, the palm representing the
+central level bottom, and the fingers the narrow valleys and canyons
+between the encompassing hills. The trail led us by turns along the
+bottom and the lower steps of the hill-sides. We camped to dine, and
+explored some distance up the side-valleys, coming on old Indian
+camping-places, with the bones of deer and beaver scattered round.
+
+The isolation of the place, hidden away there among the hills, the
+fresh abundance of the vegetation, the mellowness of the thick, fat
+soil shown where we crossed again and again the creek dividing the
+valley down its entire length, all charmed me; the steep yet rounded
+outlines of the hills often recurred to me when I was very far away.
+When I came back to Oregon, in 1879, I took the first chance I had of
+going over this old ground.
+
+The question was, if it were possible to run in a road out of the main
+Yaquina road, which I knew lay but some five or six miles off.
+
+So I sent out a surveying-party to ascertain, and a rough time they
+had. It rained almost incessantly; the brush was thick; they lost their
+way; it got dark, and they went wandering on till they struck a trail
+which led them to a river. "Now we're all right," said the leader;
+"this is the Yaquina; the road is on the other side of the creek." So
+they struck into the rushing water, then running in flood, and waded
+across waist-deep. But no road on the other side; only a dark trail
+leading into thick brush. Presently it was pitch-dark, and the surveyor
+confessed he did not know where he was; that this was certainly not the
+Yaquina, and apparently there was no road. The rain still fell heavily,
+and saturated them and their packs. Then one of the horses, which they
+were leading along, slipped from the bank into the flooded stream, and
+nearly dragged his owner after him. At last they determined to camp.
+Not a dry spot and no dry wood could they find. So they lay down under
+the shelter of the biggest log, and ate a supper of raw bacon and an
+odd lump of stale crust. Not even a match would light, and they staid
+out the weary hours of darkness as best they could, wishing for dawn.
+
+With the earliest light they were on foot once more, and, after
+wandering a little farther, the leader identified the Rock Creek
+Valley, and pointed out the Siletz trail. They had found a route, but
+certainly not the route I wanted.
+
+Next I went out myself and questioned the settlers down the road as to
+the trails across. At last we struck on what looked from a distance the
+lowest gap in the encircling mountains, and made up our minds to keep
+on trying for a road through that till we got it, or were satisfied it
+was impossible. Perseverance answered, and we struck a trail up the
+course of the Yaquina River nearly to its source, and then through some
+thick wood to the foot of the mountain, on the other side of which was
+the Rock Creek Valley; then up the mountain to the low gap, and thence
+the way was plain down into Rock Creek.
+
+[Sidenote: _ROAD-MAKING._]
+
+Road-making in Oregon is like road-making elsewhere. We had a party
+of twelve or fourteen men at work, and had to build three huts at
+intervals before the road got through. The huts only took a few hours
+to construct. Cut down a dozen cherry poles, straight and long; saw off
+a cedar log and split it up again and again, till you get planks out of
+it four feet long and about an inch or so thick. Drive your cherry
+poles into dug holes, and set up the frame of your hut; build a recess
+five feet wide and two feet deep at one end for a chimney; board the
+whole in, and double the boarding on the roof; line the inside of the
+chimney with damp earth for about two feet up, and then carry that up
+above the roof of your house also by boards; hang a door on a couple of
+wooden hinges made by choosing strong forked pieces of crab-apple which
+will not split; beat down the floor level and hard, and, if you are
+very luxurious, set up standing bed-places, or bunks, of cherry-pole
+legs and cedar boards for the beds, and your habitation is complete--as
+soon, that is, as you have brought in a huge back-log and set a great
+fire blazing. Cut off a few chunks of wood level for chairs, and fix
+two or three boards against the walls for shelves, and you have no idea
+of the comfort you can get out of your house.
+
+We dug, and graded, and moved logs, and built bridges, and laid
+corduroy crossings over wet places, and in about three months the way
+into Rock Creek was clear. I confess to a little pride when the first
+wagon went safely in, and down into the level bottom below. The next
+question was the hard one, What will he do with it? The wilderness was
+before us; how were we to civilize it? Gazing down into the valley,
+with here a ferny slope, there a copse filling acres of bottom, then a
+deep canyon with green trees, there a beaver-dam flooding the best piece
+of land at every high water, and everywhere the great black trunks,
+standing or lying prostrate, in some places heaped together in the
+wildest confusion--it was a case that called for the "stout heart to
+the stiff brae."
+
+The first thing was to settle the place for a homestead, supplied with
+water, but out of the reach of flood. And a rising ground, some hundred
+yards from the river, along one side of which ran a clear little stream
+at right angles to the creek, supplying a chain of three beaver-ponds,
+overhung with trees and shrubs, was chosen.
+
+[Sidenote: _FENCING WILD LAND._]
+
+The next thing was to find out the most open spaces, free from logs and
+brush, and which could be plowed for oats and hay. Three such were soon
+set apart, lying far distant from each other, and therefore giving
+three distinct centers from which clearing should spread. Then the plow
+was set to work to tear up the ferny ground, and what few logs there
+were had to be cut in pieces and split for burning. Next came the
+fencing. It takes five thousand rails, ten feet long and five or six
+inches thick, to make a mile of snake-fence. A man can split from one
+to two hundred rails a day, according to the soundness and straightness
+of grain of the timber; and good hands will contract to saw the logs,
+split the rails, and keep themselves the while, for about a dollar and
+a quarter the hundred rails. The difficulty was, that not one in forty
+of the fallen logs was sound, and the rail-splitters had to wander all
+up and down the valley and far up the hill-sides to get the right
+material. However, eleven thousand rails were provided and gradually
+hauled to their places, and the fields and the intervening spaces of
+wild lands all fenced in.
+
+Meanwhile, as we were too far from a mill to haul lumber to any
+advantage, we had to rely on the cedar, which splits more evenly and
+easily than the fir; and some five thousand boards, six inches wide and
+from four to six feet long, were got ready; while the timbers for the
+house and barn were split from straight-grained, tough fir. Then came
+the shingles, and a contract at two and a half dollars a thousand set
+two excellent workmen going, and first fifty thousand and then twenty
+thousand more were made on the spot. Then the house-building and
+barn-raising went on merrily, though with constant grumbling at the
+expense of time in preparing the rough materials, instead of having
+ready-sawed lumber from the mill. We sent to the saw- and planing-mill,
+fifteen miles away, for doors and windows, and one wagon brought in all
+that were needed for a nine-roomed house, at a cost of just eighty
+dollars; the doors and door-frames ready, and the windows duly glazed.
+At last the house was barely habitable, and we moved in in patriarchal
+procession.
+
+We treated ourselves to one China boy to cook and wash. For his benefit
+a cooking-stove was sent out, and set up in a handy kitchen, close to
+but detached from the house. These China boys are well off for sense.
+The wagon was heavily laden with stores, and the mules were struggling
+up a muddy hill. "Get out, John, and walk," said the Scotch driver, and
+John had to obey. Long before the top was reached, John got in again at
+the rear, and scrambled back into his place. "Get out, John, I tell
+you!" "Never mind, Kenzie; horsee no see me get in; they know no
+better."
+
+But a good deal of the cooking went on over a bright fire of logs down
+on the ground in front of the house, where the tripod of sticks stood,
+with the black kettle depending. For the children it was a continuous
+picnic; two or three times a day they were bathing in the river; and
+whenever they were not tending the fires, which were burning up the
+logs and brushwood all the time, they were off, fishing down the creek.
+
+There was abundant employment for every hour of the day, and a
+comfortable assurance that the work once done was done for good; that
+is, that each patch of ground cleared and sown was so much actual
+visible gain.
+
+[Sidenote: _LOG-BURNING._]
+
+At night the scene was most picturesque--bright stars overhead, and
+great fires going in twenty places, lighting up the whole valley with a
+crimson radiance. Some of the huge trunks, fifty or sixty feet high,
+were lighted by boring two auger-holes so as to meet a couple of feet
+deep inside the tree; the fire would lay hold of the entire mass, and
+cataracts of sparks burst out in unexpected places high up the stem,
+pouring out in a fiery torrent at the top. And then, when the tree had
+been burning for a day or more, it would fall with a heavy crash, and a
+great spout of fire would start forth.
+
+And then there were the berrying-parties. All the women and children
+would start for the hills, and come back, their baskets laden with ripe
+blackberries, and the crimson thimble-berries, and yellow
+salmon-berries, and scarlet huckleberries, and later on with the black,
+sweet sal-lals. And they filled their nut-bags and pockets with the
+wild hazels.
+
+If it rained too hard, and it did once or twice, the pocket-knives were
+all in use, and candlesticks, and salt-cellars, and other trifles, were
+cut out of the ever-useful cherry and crab-apple.
+
+And the cattle had to be salted. This went on near the house, and in
+the great corral, to get them to recognize their headquarters, a most
+necessary knowledge for them before the winter set in. They were quick
+to learn, and, after a time or two, a short excursion down the valley,
+with a pocketful of salt, and the long-drawn cry of "Suck, su-uck,
+su-u-uck," would bring a speedy gathering from distant hills and tall
+patches of valley-fern, and a long procession would follow the caller
+back to the corral.
+
+These cattle, most of them mountain-bred, do tricks that would make a
+valley-cow's hair stand on end. We got one fine young heifer into the
+narrow branding-corral, to milk her. This was shut off from the large
+corral by a fallen log five feet thick, which looked high enough to
+keep the idea of scaling it out of any cow's mind. But I saw her make a
+standing high jump on to the top of the log, and over, as neatly as the
+best-trained hunter could possibly have done it, even if his rider had
+the hardihood to put him at it.
+
+Even while getting their own livelihood on the wild feed on the
+mountain-sides, where you and I could see nothing but fern and
+thimble-berry bushes, the cows grew fat and yielded abundance of milk,
+and that very rich. And even through the rainy months of winter the
+cattle have kept themselves fat and flourishing.
+
+[Sidenote: _MESQUIT-GRASS ON THE HILLS._]
+
+The work has now been going on nearly eleven months, and this is the
+position to-day: The road is made. The house is built, but not quite
+finished inside. The big barn is finished, with stable attached. The
+orchard is cleared, plowed, planted with trees, which have now nearly a
+year's growth, and is in part seeded down into permanent pasture; as to
+the other part, it is in potatoes and onions. Two fields--one of four,
+the other of eight acres--are cleared and plowed, and will be in oats
+this spring. Another field, across the river, is cleared, but not yet
+plowed. The garden round the house is prepared. Another field, near the
+house, of about three acres, is cleared, plowed, and now being sowed
+down in clover. Another clearing, of about two acres, on old beaver-dam
+land by the river, is planted in cabbages in part, and the rest will be
+in carrots and beets. About two hundred acres are fenced in for sheep,
+and about ninety head are on it, helping out the brush-cutting by
+eating the shoots. About fifteen hundred acres of hill-land were burned
+and sowed down in mesquit-grass, which is now, at one year old, about
+three inches high. Some forty head of cattle, chiefly cows and calves,
+and a few two-year-olds, are in the valley and all doing well; the
+steers were sold fat to the butcher in December last. The building work
+has been done by one carpenter and an assistant, and he has had
+occasional help in preparing boards. The doors and windows came from
+the mill; and the timbers and boards were got out of the rough logs by
+separate contract. The outside work has been done by three men, and an
+occasional fourth. The place will support itself this year, if all goes
+well, and next year should yield a fair profit. No doubt a more
+experienced deviser, and more constant supervision, might have shown a
+speedier profit. But I have given these details by way of example in
+bringing wild land in, and making a "ranch" of it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+The Indians at home--The reservation--The Upper Farm--Log-cabins--
+Women must work while men will play--The agency--The boarding-house
+--Sunday on the reservation--Indian Sunday-school--Galeese Creek
+Jem--The store--Indian farmers--As to the settlement of the Indians
+--Suggestions--A crime--Its origin--Its history--The criminals--
+What became of them--Indian teamsters--Numbers on the reservation
+--The powers and duties of the agent--Special application.
+
+
+At Rock Creek we are only ten miles from the Siletz Indian agency, and
+I have paid many visits there, and have seen a good deal of the working
+of the agency, and also know a good many of the Indians pretty well.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE RESERVATION._]
+
+First, as to the place itself. There is no question that on the
+reservation is some of the best land in the country, and the most
+easily improved. At some not very distant geological date, the valley
+must have consisted of a series of lakes, connected by rivers. On the
+sides of the hills are two clearly defined terraces, and the flat
+bottoms, are not covered with heavy timber, either alive or dead. There
+must have been one convulsion which let the waters out and reduced the
+level to the lower terrace, and then a subsequent one which abolished
+the lakes altogether, leaving the Siletz River for the water-course of
+the whole district. Entering the reservation from the Rock Creek trail,
+there is about six miles of rough and tangled country to get through,
+where the hills are broken, and the river foams and breaks every now
+and again over rocky ledges. The brush is thick along the river-banks,
+and the thimble-berries grow so high and strong that, as you ride by,
+you can pluck the berries from the level of your face.
+
+Mounting a hill, which closes the gorge ahead of you, the whole valley
+known as the Upper Farm lies before you. At this point Rock Creek joins
+the Siletz itself, which here is a wide and rushing stream, and divides
+the valley along its entire length into two unequal parts. The hills
+fall back on either side of you and lose their broken forms, becoming
+long slopes, draped thickly with the heavy brake-fern. Here and there
+stand the houses of the Indians, each with its grain- and hay-fields;
+while of cattle of all ages, and little groups of ponies, there is no
+lack.
+
+Except in one or two instances, the houses are log-cabins, and you miss
+the staring white paint so common in this country. The barns also are
+log-built.
+
+There is not much show of neatness about the houses, fences, or the
+inhabitants. As you ride along, you pass an old crone or two, with bare
+feet, and ragged, dirty petticoats, each with a large basket on her
+back, supported by a broad band across the forehead, in which she is
+carrying home the potatoes she has been digging in the field.
+
+Round one or two of the doors you see a group of lazy ones, men and
+children, lying or squatting on the grass or in the dust of the bare
+patch in front--the women you see through the open door at work inside
+the house. The voices cease as you come in sight, but your salutation,
+either in Chinook or English, is civilly returned, and a quick glance
+takes in at once your personal appearance and that of your horse, and
+every detail of your equipment. You see a few men at work in the
+fields, but only a few. The men are better dressed than the women; torn
+or ragged clothes are very rare, and nearly every man has a red or red
+and yellow handkerchief loosely knotted round his head. Here come two
+cantering after you on their ponies; one carries a rifle, and you
+recognize him as one of the reservation Indian police. He asks you your
+destination and business, and, as you are bound straight for the
+agency, he lets you go on without a pass. They are bound to be strict,
+and to see that unauthorized visitors do not enter, and, above all,
+that no whisky comes within the reservation boundaries.
+
+Four miles more along the road, nearly all the way through farms, or by
+open pasture-fields, where grass and fern dispute possession, but all
+through fine bottom-land, varying in width from one to two or three
+miles across, brings you to the agency on the Middle Farm. What timber
+is left standing are huge firs, splendid specimens of trees. Here is
+the agency, the central spot of the reservation-life. The prominent
+building there, two stories high, with overhanging eaves, spick and
+span in new white paint and red shingles, is the boarding-house. Here
+some forty or fifty Indian children of all ages are collected from the
+outlying portions of the reservation, and are clothed, fed, and
+trained; their actual teaching goes on in the adjoining school-house.
+The low, gray house in the orchard, behind the boarding-house, is where
+the agent lives; those other two white houses, each in its garden, are
+inhabited by the farmer and the builder or head-carpenter and
+millwright. In front of the boarding-house is a pretty, open
+grass-field of six or seven acres; and that neat, white structure at
+the lower corner of it is the store. The Indians' houses are dotted
+round; the fields are better kept and cultivated than the Upper Farm;
+there is a notable absence of loafers and stragglers round, and more
+farming going on; several teams of horses are in sight.
+
+[Sidenote: _INDIAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL._]
+
+The agent receives us kindly, and shows us round everywhere with
+interest in his work and its results. One Sunday I was there, and,
+hearing the church-bell calling to service, went in. The Sabbath-school
+was just beginning in the school-room behind the boarding-house. It was
+a mixed assembly of all ages, some ninety or a hundred in all. The
+women were better dressed, and the little children had been treated to
+all the comforts and care in the way of dress their parents could
+muster. There was a great variety of type apparent, for the remnants of
+thirteen tribes of the coast and Klamath and Rogue River Indians are
+collected on this reservation. Nearly all could speak a little, and
+understand more, English--and I think we could have got on quite as
+well without the help of the Indian interpreter, who turned our English
+into fluent Chinook. This man, named Adams, is an excellent fellow,
+well instructed, capable, civil, and, I believe, an earnest Christian
+man. The agent asked me to take the Bible-class at the far end of the
+room, and soon I was the center of the observant eyes of a dozen Indian
+men of all ages. Certain of them were friends of mine. Old Galeese
+Creek Jem, a little fellow about five feet high, with a broad face and
+a pair of twinkling, laughing eyes, had brought us some salmon in Rock
+Creek a few days before, and was under promise to bring us some more on
+Monday. Two or three of the others always stopped for a chat as they
+passed through. All of them, I noticed, were curious to see how King
+George's man would act in this new capacity. I am bound to say that
+they showed considerable knowledge and some reflection in the answers
+they gave. Perhaps this is not to be wondered at, considering the
+resolute efforts made now for several years past to instruct and
+Christianize the Indians here.
+
+At the store I found an excellent stock of all things that the Indians
+need, and marked at prices which enabled them to lay their money out so
+as to get its fullest value. The assistant told me that they were all
+keen traders, and alive to minute differences in quality and texture of
+their purchases.
+
+[Sidenote: _SUGGESTIONS._]
+
+The great majority of the men now heads of families on this
+reservation, engaged in farming a little, and sufficiently instructed
+in methods of labor to add considerably to their resources by working
+during a part of the year for the outside farmers, who are very ready
+to employ them, do not, I consider, either wish or require to be
+treated any longer as children or wards of the United States
+Government. In my judgment, the time has come to apply a far different
+rule. Many to whom I have talked, and others whose opinions I have
+gathered from trustworthy sources, desire earnestly to be relieved from
+the restrictions and to abandon the privileges of their present
+condition. If the lands they now farm, the houses they now dwell in,
+could become their private property, I believe that they would support
+themselves and their families in respectability. It may be desirable,
+it probably is, to prevent their having now the power of free sale and
+disposal of such lands, so as to guard them at the outset from
+designing purchasers; but I believe the larger part by far would prize
+earnestly their separate estate. Why should not an independent officer
+have power to establish such families on homesteads of their own, on
+sufficient evidence of character and capacity--such men ceasing
+thenceforth to have claims for support on the agency as a whole, but
+still entitled to all the common benefits of the school, the church,
+and the store? The open land of the reservation would be diminished, of
+course, but how could it be put to better purpose? I am persuaded that
+the sight of their neighbors established on homes of their own would
+operate as a strong stimulus to those growing up and entering on life,
+to decent and orderly behavior. And as one district of a reservation
+became thus settled up, I think the boundaries of the open land devoted
+to general Indian purposes might be proportionately removed and
+contracted.
+
+Naturally, this plan would be of slow operation, but I think it would
+be sure. I am aware of the powers given to Indians by the homestead act
+to obtain land, but the plan differs in important respects from that
+set out above.
+
+The Indians on the Siletz reservation, of which alone I know anything
+from personal observation, are not all of the desirable class to whom I
+have referred. Some mistiness on the moral law yet remains. For
+instance, a murder was committed by three of them a month or two ago.
+It took place on the northern and remote part of the reserve, far away
+from the agency itself.
+
+Here lived one who, being a quack-doctor, claimed the character of a
+mighty medicine-man, having power to prescribe for both the bodies and
+souls of his patients. To him resorted many of his neighbors, whose
+faith in his charms and spells was boundless.
+
+He undertook the cure of the wife of one Charlie, and the poor thing
+endured his remedies patiently. But the woman grew worse and worse.
+Charlie and his friends debated the case, and at last concluded that,
+if the medicine-man could not cure the woman according to his contract,
+and that she died, it would prove to them that the doctor was a humbug,
+and deserved to die the death.
+
+The catastrophe arrived, for the woman died. A council was held, and
+due inquiry made. The decision was fatal to the doctor, and Charlie and
+two friends undertook to secure that no one else should be misled and
+defrauded by the quack.
+
+Proceeding to his house, away up north by Salmon River, near the
+sea-coast, the three fell on the medicine-man with clubs, and, despite
+threats, prayers, and entreaties, they beat him to death. The news soon
+spread, and was carried to the ears of the agent.
+
+I can not help confessing to a half sympathy with the murderers, though
+I am fully aware of the enormity of the crime. It would be a
+satisfaction to feel justified in conscience in calling for a bodily
+expiation of the false pretenses and ignorant mummeries that did one's
+wife to death. And I hear that the Indians in question, while
+acknowledging that they knew they were sinning against the laws that
+governed life on the reservation, yet evidently had no consciousness of
+intrinsic wrong.
+
+However, they were arrested by the agent, and carried off to Fort
+Vancouver for detention and trial. Hence they escaped, but were pursued
+by the soldiers. One, being caught, refused to submit, and was shot by
+the corporal in charge of the party in the act of flight; the others
+were recaptured, and what their fate is or will be I do not yet know.
+
+But, as one stands on the beach at Newport, and sees a long string of
+wagons and teams coming down from the reservation for supplies, each in
+charge of its owner, a respectable-looking Indian, it is impossible not
+to wish for them the separate life and property they themselves desire.
+
+The number of Indians on the Siletz reserve is most variously stated;
+the estimates range between twenty-four hundred and four hundred. I
+should fancy the truth to be nearer the smaller than the larger
+figures. It is obvious that the conditions of life, the stage of
+civilization, the state of education, the desire or readiness to
+acquire or own separate and individual property, must vary in every
+reservation. It is impossible to apply the same rules to each, and I do
+not presume even to have an opinion regarding reservations other than
+the one in our immediate neighborhood.
+
+[Sidenote: _POWERS AND DUTIES OF THE AGENT._]
+
+I had no idea till lately of the overwhelming power held by the agent.
+No Indian can leave the reservation, however well established his good
+character, and for however temporary a purpose, without the pass of the
+agent. No one can enter the reservation, even to pass through it, or to
+stay a night with one of the Indians at his house, without the same
+leave. Work on the roads or in the fields of the reservation is at the
+absolute order of the agent; no _corvee_ in ancient France could press
+more crushingly on the peasant than could the order of a harsh or stern
+agent on his charge. In the choice and erection of houses, in the
+furnishing and distribution of stores, in matters of internal police of
+all sorts, his word _is_ law. If any one desires to study the working
+of an instructed despotism in a partly civilized community, he can see
+it carried to its logical extreme on an agency.
+
+So long as the Indians possess the attributes of children it may be
+right so to treat them. But I presume it was intended by the framers of
+the existing system that at some date the pupils should put away
+childish things and emerge from the condition of tutelage. The question
+is, whether that time has not come already in many instances.
+
+My observations have all had reference to a reservation honestly
+governed, as I believe, with the best intentions toward its
+inhabitants. But how the system would lend itself to dishonest measures
+and arbitrary, even cruel, treatment, it is not hard to imagine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The Legislative Assembly--The Governor--His duties--Payment of the
+members--Aspect of the city; the Legislature in session--The lobbyist
+--How bills pass--How bills do not pass--Questions of the day--Common
+carriers--Woman's suffrage--Some of the acts of 1878--Judicial system
+of the State--Taxes--Assessments--County officers--The justice of the
+peace--Quick work.
+
+
+The Legislative Assembly of the State of Oregon meets for a session of
+forty days once in every two years, at Salem, the capital of the State.
+
+The Assembly consists of a Senate of thirty members and a House of
+Representatives of sixty members. Senators are elected for four years
+and Representatives for two years; but half the whole number of
+Senators go out of office every two years, so that at every biennial
+election the whole number of Representatives and half the whole number
+of Senators are chosen.
+
+The proportion of Senators and Representatives pertaining to any county
+may be varied after each United States or State census, in accordance
+with the results of that census, as showing the number of white
+inhabitants in the county or district and their proportion to the total
+white population of the State.
+
+The executive power of the State rests in the Governor, who is chosen
+by the white voters in the State every four years. His duties are
+various and important. They are defined by the Constitution as follows:
+He is commander-in-chief of the military and naval forces of the State,
+which forces he may call out to suppress insurrection or to repel
+invasion. He must take care that the laws be faithfully executed. He
+must inform the Legislative Assembly as to the condition of the State,
+and recommend such measures as he deems expedient. He may, on
+extraordinary occasions, convene the Legislative Assembly by
+proclamation, and must state to both Houses, when assembled, the
+purpose for which they are convened. He must transact all necessary
+business with the officers of government, and may require information
+in writing from the officers of the administrative and military
+departments upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective
+offices. He has power to grant reprieves, commutations of sentences,
+and pardons for all offenses except treason--this last offense being
+under the direct control of the Legislative Assembly. He has power to
+remit fines and forfeitures--subject in all these cases to his
+reporting to the Legislative Assembly his exercise of such powers, and
+his reasons therefor. He must sign all bills, and has the power of
+veto. The Houses of the Legislative Assembly may, on recommittal, pass
+bills over such veto by votes of two thirds of members present. He has
+power to fill vacancies occurring in any State office during the recess
+of the Legislative Assembly. He must issue writs of election to fill
+vacancies occurring in the Legislative Assembly, and all commissions
+must issue in the name of the State, signed by the Governor, sealed
+with the seal of the State, and attested by the Secretary of State.
+
+In case of vacancy in the office of Governor the Secretary of State has
+to discharge his duties till the next election-time comes round.
+
+Oregon manifests a good deal of pride in her various Governors; the
+portraits of several of them adorn the Capitol building.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE LEGISLATURE._]
+
+Members of the Legislature receive pay at the rate of three dollars a
+day during the session. The President of the Senate and the Speaker of
+the House of Representatives receive five dollars a day. In addition,
+they all get mileage for their journeys to and from Salem.
+
+During the session of the Legislature the capital city is crowded and
+busy; a strong and intelligent interest is shown in the meetings of
+this miniature Congress, all of which are open to the public.
+
+The preservation of order, of course, depends largely on the character
+and influence of the presiding officers; but the members of both Houses
+appeared to me remarkably amenable to discipline. The debates in the
+Senate were generally decorous, even to dullness; the House presented a
+more lively scene, a good many members being sometimes on their feet at
+once.
+
+The great faults appeared to an outsider to be the tendency to make
+very unnecessary speeches, and the constant calling for divisions, by
+name, on the most trivial points. Thus, much time was wasted.
+
+The objectionable feature was the presence of a numerous "lobby." The
+persons constituting this institution made themselves seen and heard in
+season and out of season; no man or corporation having any bill to
+promote could leave it to the uninfluenced consideration of the
+members, but sent to Salem paid retainers, to attend the sittings, to
+haunt the members, to study their proclivities and intentions, and to
+get together and cement such alliances as should secure the passage of
+the various bills.
+
+Bills may be introduced in either House, but may be amended or rejected
+in the other; save only that bills for raising revenue must be
+introduced in the House of Representatives.
+
+It becomes a matter for grave consideration in which House a bill
+should be introduced, as the prestige of success in one House may help
+to carry it through the other.
+
+Oregon as a State voted Democratic for some years, and that party
+commanded a majority in the Legislature. But, prior to the last
+elections, namely, those held in 1880, various splits or dissensions in
+the Republican party, or among its managers, were got rid of, and a
+Republican majority in the Legislature, and the election of a
+Republican Representative to Congress, followed.
+
+The first struggle when the Legislature meets is over the choice of
+presiding officers. The chief reason for this interest is that on the
+President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House devolves the duty
+of nominating the various committees to which bills shall be referred.
+There are committees on finance, Federal relations, commerce,
+railroads, and several others. The Houses pay some respect to the
+report of a committee on a bill--especially if it be unanimous; but the
+chief province of the committees appeared to me to be to obtain
+possession of a bill, and then according to the private views of the
+committee or of a majority of its members to expedite, or hinder, and
+perhaps entirely prevent, its passage. And thus, again, the power or
+rather the influence of the presiding officers was felt.
+
+Every kind of parliamentary tactics was practiced; no device that I
+ever heard of was unknown and unused by these far-Western politicians.
+One thing was very noticeable, namely, that the great fights of the
+session were over matters involving, or supposed to involve, private
+interests.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE LUNATIC ASYLUM._]
+
+Thus, for many years it has been the custom in Oregon for the State to
+let out to a physician the care of the insane, he receiving from the
+State so many dollars for each patient, the cost to the State being
+collected from the responsible relatives or from the estate of the
+insane person. As the population of the State increased, of course, the
+number of the insane grew also, till about three hundred patients were
+in the doctor's care.
+
+Not a whisper was heard against the management: there was good
+supervision; the patients were well and wisely treated, and the
+percentage of cures quite up to the average of the most successful
+public asylums. But many persons thought the time had come to have a
+State asylum, with its buildings, and committee of management, and its
+staff. So a bill was introduced to this end; the physician who was then
+contracting, and for many years had contracted, with the State for the
+care of the insane, objected. Then rushed in the lobbyists, and every
+stage in the struggle was watched, and wrangled over, and schemed for,
+as if the whole future of the State depended on the result. In spite of
+the efforts of the doctor and his following, the State-asylum advocates
+won the day, and ultimately the bill passed.
+
+Plans for the new asylum have since been prepared, and the building is
+begun. Another vast question, which divided the Legislature into two
+hostile camps, was whether or not the narrow-gauge railway company
+should carry an act giving it the use of a piece of ground at Portland,
+called the _levee_, which had been presented to that city a few years
+ago, but now lay practically unused. The railroad company had marked
+the ground for its terminal purposes; the city of Portland objected.
+This fight was most bitter, but ended by the country members joining in
+support of the bill, and carrying it over the heads of the Portland
+members by swinging majorities--animated largely by a spirit of
+resentment at the Portland members having been very active in striving
+to defeat a bill for preventing unfair discrimination by railroad and
+steamboat corporations throughout the State.
+
+This was another of the burning questions. The transportation business
+of the State is now largely controlled by one great corporation, called
+"The Oregon Railway and Navigation Company," formed by amalgamating
+divers ocean and river steamboat companies, and purchasing or
+constructing detached lines of railroad.
+
+The two lines of railroad running north and south up and down the
+Willamette Valley not being as yet absorbed, a lively competition
+existed so far as river and railroads ran parallel. Outside the limits
+of competition the corporations took it out of the people by what they
+thought were oppressive exactions.
+
+Further, the headquarters of both companies being in the city of
+Portland, and their course of transportation carrying all the traffic
+of the State in and out through the Portland gate, the continuance of
+this state of things, and the support of the Railway and Navigation
+Company, became the great object of the Portland members of the
+Legislature, as well as of those members who were for any reason
+influenced by the corporations. Hence a deep-lying division of interest
+between them and the country members.
+
+[Sidenote: _COMMON CARRIERS._]
+
+These last desired to pass the bill in question, not only to rectify
+existing unfairness, and to prevent the repetition of former
+oppressions, but as rendering more easy the task of whoever should
+propose to create competing lines, which might connect with or
+intersect those of the present companies. This end was to be gained by
+providing that all transportation agencies, of whatever kind, should
+convey, without preference in time, rates, or method of delivery, all
+passengers and goods presented for transit over the whole or any
+portion of their lines. It left the hands of all companies entirely
+unfettered as to what rates they should charge on fares or freights,
+but insisted that all traffic should be evenly and proportionately
+charged.
+
+The bill was introduced in the Senate, and passed its earlier stages
+triumphantly. Then the corporations and the Portland merchants awoke to
+the possibilities of competition; stimulated also by the knowledge that
+the passage of the bill was desired by the promoters of the Oregon
+Pacific Railroad, designed to bisect the State from east to west, and
+to have its outport at Yaquina Bay. What an outcry arose! Every
+argument that could be tortured by the lobbyists into a criticism of
+the bill was openly and secretly brought to bear on the members. Its
+enemies got it referred to a hostile committee, from which it was with
+great difficulty recalled. Time was asked to understand a bill which
+consisted of but twenty-four lines. Motions for adjournment were made,
+and divided on again and again to waste time. But the most ridiculous
+scene was reached when after the debate on the third reading had
+virtually closed, and the final vote to determine the fate of the bill
+under the "previous question" was just going to be put, the President
+of the Senate, a stout Jewish gentleman from Portland, of German
+extraction, descended to the floor of the Senate to deliver a panting,
+incoherent tirade of abuse, not on the merits of the bill, but against
+the Oregon Pacific Railroad and every one connected with it; denouncing
+as a "lie, and a fraud of the first wather, ghentelmen," a statement
+made by a body of traders and farmers in the valley, and submitted by
+them to the United States Board of Engineers, that the grain which
+would seek an outlet over the proposed road would amount to six million
+bushels annually--which statement had been quoted by the Oregon Pacific
+Railroad Company in their prospectus. Shall I ever forget the look of
+blank amazement on the faces of the Senators while the President's five
+minutes lasted, and he gesticulated and foamed! However, the bill was
+lost by a vote of 16 to 14; one Senator having "ratted" at the last
+moment, to the disgust of a large body of the members of the House, who
+were waiting to seize the bill and carry it up-stairs into their
+chamber.
+
+[Sidenote: _SOME LEGISLATIVE ACTS._]
+
+Among other resolutions carried was one in favor of woman suffrage--a
+triumph celebrated immediately by a supper and reception given to the
+members of the Legislature in the Opera-House at Salem by the ladies
+who had been pressing forward the resolution, and advocating it in some
+cases by a form of lobbying which, however legitimate, I should fancy
+some of the members must have found it hard to resist. Heaven forbid
+that it should ever fall to my lot to hold opposing views and bring
+forward hostile argument to a group of ladies whose heads were as full
+of logic and sense as their faces and forms of smiles and
+attractiveness! To give some general idea of the scope of the State
+legislation, let me quote the titles of a few of the acts of the
+session of 1878:
+
+"An act to amend an act entitled 'An Act to provide for the
+Construction of the Willamette Valley and Coast Railroad.'
+
+"An act to promote medical science.
+
+"An act to protect the stock-growing interests of the State of Oregon.
+
+"An act to regulate salmon-fisheries on the waters of the Columbia
+River and its tributaries.
+
+"An act to secure creditors a just division of the estates of debtors
+who convey to assignees for the benefit of creditors.
+
+"An act for the support of the State University.
+
+"An act defining the rights and fixing the liabilities of married
+women, and the relation between husband and wife.
+
+"An act to authorize foreign corporations to do business and execute
+their corporate powers within the State of Oregon.
+
+"An act to provide for liens for laborers, common carriers, and other
+persons on personal property.
+
+"An act to prevent the spread of contagious and infectious diseases
+among sheep."
+
+Before finishing this chapter I wish to add a few words on the judicial
+system of the State.
+
+The judicial power of the State is vested in the Supreme Court, circuit
+courts, and county courts. The Supreme Court sits at Salem, to hear
+appeals from the circuit courts. It now consists of three judges,
+elected in 1880 to serve six years, four years, and three years
+respectively, their successors holding office for six years.
+
+The State is divided, I believe, into five circuits, and for each a
+judge is elected to serve for six years.
+
+The circuit courts have all judicial power, authority, and jurisdiction
+not specifically vested in any other court, and have appellate
+jurisdiction over the county courts.
+
+[Sidenote: _COUNTY OFFICERS._]
+
+The county court consists of the county judge, who holds office for
+four years, and two county commissioners. Together they transact county
+business, and have a jurisdiction over civil cases where not more than
+five hundred dollars is in issue, and over the smaller class of
+criminal offenses where the punishment does not extend to death or to
+imprisonment in the penitentiary.
+
+The Supreme Court of the United States has a district judge presiding
+over a court at Portland. That court is the arena for trying all cases
+where one of the parties is not a citizen of the State, and also all
+cases in which the Federal laws and Constitution, as distinguished from
+the State system, are involved.
+
+The police of the State is in the hands of the sheriffs and their
+deputies, the sheriff being elected by popular vote every two years.
+The city of Portland has a regular police force of its own. The other
+towns in the State appoint marshals, who perform police duties within
+the city limits.
+
+The sheriffs are also tax-collectors. It should be added that the State
+and county revenue, as distinct from Federal revenue, is collected in
+one payment by an assessment of so many mills (or thousandths) in the
+dollar on the total amount of property of every kind owned in the State
+by the tax-payer. The amount on which each man has to pay is
+ascertained by the county assessor, in consultation with the tax-payer.
+No form of property is allowed to escape, but a reasonable valuation is
+placed on possessions of a doubtful or fluctuating nature; and
+exemptions are allowed for household furniture and clothes and small
+possessions to the extent of three hundred dollars.
+
+The county clerks have also to stand the racket of election every two
+years. In Benton County we are fortunate enough to have the services of
+a gentleman who has been reelected eight times. His long experience in
+the office makes him an absolute dictionary of information on the
+history of every farm in the county. He is, to my mind, an illustration
+of the absurdity of this election and reelection. Every two years he
+has to waste a month in going over the county, spouting on every stump,
+to please the electors. He has had to endure several contests, evoked
+by the sayings, "It's well to have a change now and then," "He's been
+there long enough; let some one else have a show," etc. But any
+new-comer into his office would have to spend a year or two in getting
+up the very information about the county which the experienced official
+has at his very finger-ends. And his long enjoyment of the office is
+the only reason I have heard given for a change.
+
+In the county clerk's office are kept the record-books for the county,
+and also the maps of the various townships, received from the chief
+office at Oregon City. In the record-books are copied all deeds
+affecting the title to land in the county. The chief effect of thus
+recording deeds is to give such public notice of the object of the deed
+that no man subsequently dealing with a fraudulent vender can he
+treated as an innocent purchaser without notice, to the injury of the
+real purchaser. All deeds affecting land have to be executed in the
+presence of two witnesses, and acknowledged before a county clerk or a
+notary public. The interest of a wife in her husband's property is
+carefully guarded; and, in order to give proper title, the wife has to
+join in conveying land to a purchaser.
+
+In addition to the various judicial officers above described, there are
+the not-to-be-omitted justices of the peace. Their functions are
+extensive: among others, they can perform marriages, and at short
+notice, too. I have heard of one justice, known for his expeditious
+ways, before whose house a runaway couple halted on their wagon. The
+man shouted for the justice, who appeared. "Say, judge, can you marry
+us right away?" "I guess so, my son." "Well, then, let's have it."
+Whereupon the justice mounted the wagon-wheel, and there stood with his
+foot on the hub. "What's your name?" "Jehoshaphat Smith." "Well, then,
+wilt thou have this woman, so help you ----?" "Yes." "My fee's a
+dollar; drive on." The justice in the city tries for assaults and
+drunkenness, and administers for the latter seven days in the
+calaboose--a hole of a place in a back alley--detention there no
+trifle, especially if, like a tipsy little friend of mine, he finds, on
+awaking with his customary headache, that his room-mate is a big
+countryman, very drunk, who has the reputation of "smashing everything
+up" when he has got what some here call "his dibs."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Land laws--Homesteads and preemption--How to choose and obtain
+Government land--University land--School land--Swamp land--Railroad
+and wagon-road grants--Lieu lands--Acreages owned by the various
+companies.
+
+
+To make this book useful, I must run the risk of making it tedious by
+some account of the land system relating to the preemption and
+homestead laws applicable to the public lands of the State.
+
+It is true that, long since, the prairie-lands of the Willamette Valley
+have all been taken up and are in private ownership. But there are very
+large tracts indeed of public lands in the hilly and wooded portions of
+Western Oregon still open; there is also an abundance of open land in
+the fine valleys of Eastern and Southern Oregon available. There are
+still upward of thirty million acres unsurveyed out of the sixty
+million nine hundred thousand which the State contains.
+
+There are five United States land-offices in Oregon: namely, at Oregon
+City, for the upper and central parts of the Willamette Valley,
+including also Northwestern Oregon generally; at Roseburg, for
+Southwestern Oregon; at Linkville, for the southeastern portion; at La
+Grande, for Eastern Oregon, strictly so called; and at the Dalles, for
+the great counties of Wasco and Umatilla--the northern part of the
+State. At each of the land-offices a register and a receiver are
+stationed; and the maps of the district are also deposited there for
+general reference.
+
+When the settler has ascertained that a piece of land is eligible--that
+is, that it will suit him not only for clearing and farming, but also
+to build his house on and live there--he goes to the neighbors to find
+out the nearest corner posts or stones, and thence by compass he can
+determine roughly the boundary-lines. The land must lie in a compact
+form, not less than forty acres wide; thus he can take his one hundred
+and sixty acres in the shape of a clean quarter of a section or of an
+L, or in a strip across the section of forty acres wide; but he can not
+pick out forty acres here, and a detached forty there, and so on.
+
+[Sidenote: _HOMESTEADS AND PREEMPTION._]
+
+He then goes to the county clerk's office, where duplicates of the
+land-office maps are kept. He finds out there with sufficient
+correctness if the piece he wants is open to settlement. The
+land-office is the only source of quite certain information, because it
+is possible that a claim may have been put on file at the land-office,
+particulars of which have not yet reached the county clerk. Being
+satisfied that the land is open, the intending settler must next
+determine whether to preempt or homestead. If he desires to preempt,
+and by payment to Government of $1.25 per acre for public land outside
+the limits of railroad and wagon-road grants, or $2.50 per acre for
+land within those limits, to obtain an immediate title, he must be sure
+that he does not fall within the two exceptions; for no one can acquire
+a right of preemption who is the proprietor of three hundred and twenty
+acres of land in any State or Territory, nor can any one who quits or
+abandons his residence on his own land to reside on the public land in
+the same State or Territory.
+
+But, first of all, he or she must have one of the following personal
+qualifications: the settler must be the head of a family, or a widow,
+or a single person; must be over the age of twenty-one years, and a
+citizen of the United States, or have filed a declaration of intention
+to become such. Further, the settler must make a settlement on the
+public land open to preemption, must inhabit and improve the same, and
+erect a dwelling thereon.
+
+No person can claim a preemption right more than once. But the settler
+on land which has been surveyed, and which he desires to preempt, must
+file his statement as to the fact of his settlement within three months
+from the date of his settlement, and he must make his proof and pay for
+his land within thirty-three months from the date of his settlement.
+The fee of $1.50 is payable to the register, and a similar fee to the
+receiver at the land-office on filing the declaratory statement above
+mentioned. It should be added that, if the tract has been offered for
+sale by the Government, payment must be made for the preempted land
+within thirteen months from the date of settlement. If the settler
+desires to obtain a homestead, he must come within the following
+description: the head of a family, or who has arrived at the age of
+twenty-one years, and is a citizen of the United States, or who has
+duly filed his declaration of intention to become such.
+
+The quantity of land thus obtainable is 160 acres, which is, at the
+time his application is made, open to preemption, whether at $1.25 an
+acre or at $2.50 an acre. There was until recently a distinction
+between land within the limits of railroad or wagon-road grants or
+outside of such limits, only 80 acres of the former class being
+obtainable, but the distinction is now done away. The applicant has to
+make affidavit, on entering the desired land, that he possesses the
+above qualifications, that the application is made for his exclusive
+use and benefit, and that his entry is made for the purpose of actual
+settlement and cultivation. He has also to pay fees of $22 for 160
+acres when entry is made, and $12 when the certificate issues; and of
+$11 for 80 acres when entry is made, and $6 when certificate issues.
+Such fees apply to land of the $2.50 price. They are reduced to totals
+of $22 for 160 acres and $11 for 80 acres, for land of the $1.25 price.
+
+Before a certificate is given or a patent issued for a homestead, five
+years must have elapsed from the date of entry. Affidavit has to be
+made that the applicant has resided upon or cultivated the land for the
+term of five years immediately succeeding the time of filing the
+affidavit, and that no part of the land has been alienated. The patent
+gives an absolute title. In case of the death of the settler before the
+title to the preemption or homestead is perfected, the grant will be
+made to the widow, if she continues residence and complies with the
+original conditions; if both father and mother die, leaving infant
+children, they will be entitled to the right and fee in the land, and
+the guardian or executor may at any time within two years after the
+death of the surviving parent, and in accordance with the laws of the
+State, sell the land for the benefit of the children; and the purchaser
+may obtain the United States patent.
+
+From what has been stated, it will be seen that no title to land can be
+obtained from preemptor or homesteader who has not perfected his title.
+Nothing can be done to carry out such a transaction except for the
+holder to formally abandon his right, which can be done by a simple
+proceeding at the land-office, and for the successor to take the
+chances of commencing an entirely fresh title for the land in question.
+Another point to be noticed is that the homestead is not liable for the
+debts of the holder contracted prior to the issuing of the patent. The
+law allows but one homestead privilege: a settler relinquishing or
+abandoning his claim can not thereafter make a second homestead entry.
+If a settler has settled on land and filed his preemption declaration
+for the same, he may change his filing into a homestead, if he
+continues in good faith to comply with the preemption laws until the
+change is effected; and the time during which he has been on the land
+as a preemptor will be credited to him toward the five years for a
+homestead.
+
+The above information is obtained from the statutes of the United
+States, and is generally applicable. The rates of fees given are those
+which apply to Oregon, and vary slightly in different States.
+
+[Sidenote: _SCHOOL AND RAILROAD LAND._]
+
+Besides the public lands open to homestead and preemption, a settler
+may purchase school lands, university lands, State lands, or railroad
+or wagon-grant lands. In each township of thirty-six sections of 640
+acres each, the two numbered 16 and 36 are devoted to school purposes,
+and are sold by the Board of School Commissioners for the State to
+settlers in quantities not exceeding 320 acres to any one applicant,
+and at the best prices obtainable; such lands are valued by the county
+school superintendents for the information of the commissioners, but
+the minimum price is two dollars an acre. A further number of sections
+has been granted by the United States to the State of Oregon for the
+support of the University and of the Agricultural College. The greater
+part of these lands has been sold; some still remains; the average
+price of previous sales is somewhat under two dollars an acre. The
+State also possesses some further lands donated by the United States
+for various purposes, but the quantity is not extensive--except of
+lands known as swamp lands. Where the greater portion of a section is
+properly describable as wet and unfit for cultivation, it is called
+swamp land. Such lands have been granted by the United States to the
+State of Oregon, and are not open to preemption or homesteading. A very
+free interpretation is put on the words "wet and unfit for
+cultivation," and a very large acreage is included. The State has given
+rights of purchase over large bodies of these lands to different
+parties, and at prices which I have heard bear but a small proportion
+to their real value. At every session of the Legislature some fresh
+bills are brought in for dealing with the swamp lands, and a vast
+amount of "lobbying" goes on, which I suppose some people or other find
+a profit in. The great bulk of these lands are situated in Southeastern
+Oregon, in the vicinity of the lakes, such as Klamath Lake and Goose
+Lake; but a good many acres are scattered throughout Eastern and
+Southern Oregon.
+
+[Sidenote: _ACREAGES OWNED BY COMPANIES._]
+
+The largest land-owners in the State are the railroads and the military
+wagon-road companies. The great grant to the Oregon and California
+Railroad extends over the alternate sections within twenty miles on
+either side of the road, to the extent of 12,800 acres for each mile of
+railroad. The total estimated amount of this grant is 3,500,000 acres.
+The West-side Railroad, called properly the Oregon Central, has a grant
+estimated at 300,000 acres. The prices at which these companies sell
+these lands do not exceed seven dollars per acre; and the amount may he
+spread over ten years, carrying seven per cent. interest. The
+wagon-roads have grants the amounts of which are stated as follows:
+
+                                                 ACRES.
+
+  Oregon Central Military Road Company          720,000
+  The Dalles Military Road Company              556,800
+  Corvallis and Yaquina Bay Wagon-Road Company   76,800
+  Coos Bay Military Road Company                 50,000
+  The Willamette Valley and Cascade Mountains
+    Military Wagon-Road Company                 850,000
+
+This last grant is attached to the road company described in a previous
+chapter. The Willamette Valley and Coast Railroad Company also has a
+grant of all the tide and overflowed lands in Benton County, the amount
+being estimated at about 100,000 acres of alluvial land. In many cases
+the companies were unable to obtain the full amount of acreage which
+their grants give them out of the odd-numbered sections within the belt
+covered by the grant. The alternative is for them to get what are
+called "lieu-lands," outside of their declared limits.
+
+So rapid is the tide of settlement, especially in Eastern Oregon, that
+the land-offices are thronged with applicants. A young Englishman who
+came out with me wrote from the Dalles to us last spring that on three
+successive Fridays he had come in from his range to file his homestead
+application, and after waiting the whole day he had been unable to get
+the business done, and had to return to his quarters disappointed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+The "Web-foot State"--Average rainfall in various parts--The rainy
+days in 1879 and 1880--Temperature--Seasons--Accounts and figures
+from three points--Afternoon sea-breezes--A "cold snap"--Winter--
+Floods--Damage to the river-side country--Rare thunder--Rarer
+wind-storms--The storm of January, 1880.
+
+
+I should think that no State is so much scoffed at as Oregon on the
+score of wet weather. Our neighbors in California call us "Web-feet,"
+and the State is called "The Web-foot State." Emigrants are warned not
+to come here unless they want to live like frogs, up to their necks in
+water, and much more to the like effect. And this question as to the
+quantity of rain is one always asked in the letters of inquiry we get
+here from all parts of the world. It is impossible to give a general
+answer, because the rainfall varies in the State from seventy-two
+inches at Astoria, at the mouth of the Columbia River, to twelve inches
+on some of the elevated plains of extreme Eastern Oregon. Western
+Oregon also varies in its different parts; the rainfall of seventy-two
+inches at Astoria sinking by pretty regular stages southward to
+thirty-two inches at Jacksonville.
+
+[Sidenote: _AVERAGE RAINFALL._]
+
+The average rainfall for four years reported by the United States
+Signal-Service Station at Portland is 52-82/100 inches. At Eola near
+Salem the average of seven years is 371-98/100 inches. At Corvallis the
+average of the last three years, taken at the Agricultural College by
+Professor Hawthorne, is 31-62/100 inches; but this last low average is
+produced by the fact of the months of October and November, 1880,
+having been unusually dry. The average rainfall for October, in 1878
+and 1879, was 2-86/100 inches, and for November 4-12/100 inches; while
+in 1880 the rainfall for those months was only 80/100 and 50/100 of an
+inch.
+
+The result of the late setting in of the rains in the fall of 1880 was
+that the grass was very late in resuming its growth, and consequently
+feed for stock during the early part of the winter of 1880-'81 was very
+scanty. But, perhaps, it is better to give the number of snowy and
+rainy days annually occurring, as that is what at any rate the feminine
+part of the families of intending emigrants desire to know. During
+1879, from May to December, there were at Corvallis thirty-five rainy
+days and five snowy. During 1880 there were sixty-nine rainy days and
+nine snowy. In these figures are taken in several days which were only
+showery at intervals, and there are omitted several days when a slight
+shower or two fell, with bright sun in between, but which it would not
+be fair to call rainy days. But the distribution of the rain is of more
+consequence, both to the farmer and to the mere resident, than the
+aggregate. So I will set out the rainy and snowy days for the several
+months, at Corvallis:
+
+1879.--From May 17th to 31st, 5; June, 1; July, 2; August, 3;
+September, 4; October, 2; November, 7; December, 11, and 5 snowy.
+
+1880.--January, 10, and 3 snowy; February, 5, and 2 snowy; March, 5,
+and 3 snowy; April, 10; May, 8; June, 2; July, 1; August, 2; September,
+4; October, 5; November, 5; December, 12, and 1 snowy.
+
+1881.--January, 9 rainy, and 2 snowy; February, 16, 1 snowy; March, 5
+showery, no steady rain.
+
+At Eola, near Salem, about forty miles north of this, the figures
+differ slightly, as will be seen from the following table. But this is
+an average of the seven years, from 1871 to 1878:
+
+  MONTHS.        Number of    Snowy days.   Rainfall,
+                 rainy days.                in inches.
+
+  January          14.6           1.8          5.1
+  February         14.4            .6          5.7
+  March            17.4            .6          6.1
+  April            11.5            .28         3.1
+  May               9.5              0         2.0
+  June              5.               0         1.2
+  July              1.8              0          .24
+  August            2.1              0          .14
+  September         3.4              0          .78
+  October           7.4              0         2.93
+  November         12.2            .58         5.56
+  December         12.5              1         5.13
+
+[Sidenote: _TEMPERATURE._]
+
+The next question is as to temperature. The following figures speak for
+themselves--the highest and lowest temperature in each month, and the
+monthly range, reported by the United States Signal-Service Station,
+Portland, Oregon:
+
+  Legend:
+
+  H = Highest
+  L = Lowest
+  R = Range
+
+                   1874.                1875.                1876.
+
+  MONTHS.     H      L      R      H      L      R      H      L      R
+
+  January    56 deg.26 deg.30 deg.53 deg. 3 deg.50 deg.58 deg.20 deg.38 deg.
+  February   60     31     29     54     24     30     59     32     27
+  March      65     33     32     55     34     21     59     33     26
+  April      77     37     40     83     28     55     67     33     34
+  May        83     43     40     75     40     35     82     36     46
+  June       82     45     37     82     39     43     99     45     54
+  July       88     49     39     95.5   46     49.5   90     49     41
+  August     84     46     38     88     46     42     84     43     51
+  September  88.5   42     46     86     44     42     90     44     46
+  October    77     32     45     78     36     42     79     42     37
+  November   63     27     36     63     28     35     63     34     29
+  December   57     31     26     63     33     30     56     24     32
+
+For comparison's sake we give a similar table for 1878, 1879, and 1880,
+kept at the Corvallis Agricultural College:
+
+  Legend:
+
+  H = Highest
+  L = Lowest
+  R = Range
+
+                   1878.                1879.                1880.
+
+  MONTHS.     H      L      R      H      L      R      H      L      R
+
+  January    55 deg.20 deg.35 deg.46 deg.20 deg.26 deg.50 deg.24 deg.26 deg.
+  February   60     34     26     52     25     27     44     25     19
+  March      67     32     35     66     32     34     54     24     30
+  April      71     31     40     67     32     35     76     29     47
+  May        80     34     46     72     36     36     72     32     40
+  June       92     42     50     73     42     31     85     40     45
+  July       79     53     26     90     45     45     81     42     39
+  August     81     52     29     83     43     40     84     38     42
+  September  73     38     35     84     42     42     80     38     42
+  October    61     32     29     64     28     36     68     28     40
+  November   55     30     25     55     18     37     56     12     44
+  December   54     19     35     56      8     48     56     20     36
+
+The averages of temperature for the four seasons at these three points,
+Portland, Eola, and Corvallis, are as follows:
+
+  POINTS.        Spring.       Summer.       Autumn.       Winter.
+
+  Portland        51.9 deg.     65.3 deg.     52.8 deg.     40.1 deg.
+  Eola            48.3          63.7          51.2          38.2
+  Corvallis       52            67            53            41
+
+The difference between the extremes is therefore for Portland, 25.2 deg.;
+for Eola, 25.5 deg.; for Corvallis, 26 deg. Contrast this with similar
+figures from Davenport, in the State of Iowa. The winter mean there is
+19.9 deg., the summer 75.2 deg.; showing a difference of 55.3 deg.
+
+At Corvallis, throughout the summer months and till late in the fall, a
+daily sea-breeze springs up from the west about one o'clock in the
+afternoon, and continues till night closes in, and then dies off
+gradually. However pleasant this is to the settler heated in the
+hay- or harvest-field, it brings its perils too. I give an earnest
+caution not to be betrayed into sitting down in the shade to cool down,
+with coat and vest off, while this sea-breeze fans a heated brow, or a
+sore attack of rheumatism or its near relative, neuralgia, will very
+likely make you rue the day. Rather put on your warm coat and button it
+close, and let the cooling process be a very gradual one. But if, by
+your own forgetfulness of simple precautions, you have taken cold, and
+rheumatism has you in its grip, do not turn round and abuse a climate
+which is one of the most delightful in the whole temperate zone, but
+blame yourself, and yourself only.
+
+In the winter of 1879-'80 we had a "cold snap." The day before
+Christmas the west wind suddenly veered round northward. What a bitter
+blast came straight from the icy north! The cattle set up their poor
+backs, and crowded, sterns to the wind, into the warmest corners of the
+open fields, and there stood with rough coats and drooping heads, the
+pictures of passive endurance. In two days the ice bore, and everything
+that could be called a skate was tied or screwed on to unaccustomed
+feet; and a beautiful display of fancy skating followed, as all the
+"hoodlums" of the town sought out the Crystal Lake or Fisher's Lake.
+
+Then came the snow; and every one left off skating and took to
+sleighing. The livery-stable keepers made fortunes by hiring out the
+one or two real sleighs; but poor or economical people constructed
+boxes of all shapes and fastened them on runners, making up in the
+merriment of the passengers for the uncouthness of the vehicles.
+
+But the snow, too, only lay a few days, and we were glad when our old
+friend the rain fell and restored to us the familiar prospect. For
+houses here are not constructed for extremes of temperature in either
+direction; and hot, dry air in the sitting-room, where the close stove
+crackles and grows red-hot, is a bad preparation for a bedroom with ten
+degrees of frost in it, or the outside air with the icy wind bringing a
+piece of Mount Hood and its glaciers into your very lungs.
+
+The only good thing was, that it lasted so short a time. And during
+this last winter of 1880-'81 we have had no such experience.
+
+[Sidenote: _FLOODS._]
+
+Instead, we have had trial of floods--the highest since 1860-'61, the
+year of the great flood. After about twenty-four hours' snow, the wind
+went round to the south, and a soft, warm rain followed for nearly
+thirty-six hours more. This melted the snow, both on the Cascades and
+on and round Mary's Peak. The Mackenzie, which is the southeast fork of
+the Willamette, and comes straight from the Cascades, brought down a
+raging torrent into the more peaceful Willamette. All the tributary
+streams followed in their turn. Telegrams brought news from Eugene
+City, forty miles up the river, every hour, "River rising, six inches
+an hour." Soon the banks would not hold the water, which spread over
+the surrounding country.
+
+Corvallis stands high on the river's bank; but looking across over the
+low-lying lands in Linn County, nothing but a sea of moving, brown
+water appeared, in which the poor farmhouses and barns stood as islands
+in the midst. The settlers who were warned in time cleared their
+families out of their houses, and left their dwellings and furniture to
+their fate. The horses and cattle that could be reached in time were
+swum across the river to safety on this side, and an excited crowd
+lined the river-bank, watching the swimming beasts and helping them to
+land, while every skiff that could be pressed into the service was
+engaged in bringing across the women and children and their most valued
+possessions. One man lost fourteen horses which had been turned out on
+some swampy land four miles below the city; others cattle, sheep, and
+pigs; and none within reach of the inundation--that is, within a belt
+of low land averaging two miles from the river in extent--but had their
+fences moved or carried away and heaped in wild confusion. The worst
+case I heard of was of a poor fellow from the East, who had just
+invested his all in a farm of fat and fertile bottom-land a few miles
+from Salem. He had repaired his house and furnished it, had stocked his
+farm, and had written for wife and family to join him. The rain
+descended, the flood came; higher and higher it rose, sweeping off
+fences, drowning cattle; it entered the house and spoiled all of its
+contents. The unlucky owner had to betake himself to a tree, whence he
+was picked by a passing skiff the next morning, bewailing his fate, and
+offering his farm as a free gift to any one who would give him enough
+dollars to return to the Eastern State whence he had just come.
+
+But nearly all the mischief to stock came from neglect of timely
+warning. No one but could have driven all off to safety, for the
+water-worn belt was a very narrow one. Some men gained largely by the
+deposit left by the flood on their land, serving to renew for many
+years the productive qualities; others were in a sad plight--the soil
+being washed away, deep gullies plowed, and a thick coating of stones
+and river-gravel left.
+
+The river rose high enough to flood the lower floors of the wheat
+warehouses from Rosebury to Portland, and in the river-side towns
+caused a great deal of discomfort and some loss; but no loss of life
+resulted. It carried away the new bridges over the Santiam River just
+built by the narrow-gauge railroad, and washed away several miles of
+their new track. It also broke through several viaducts on the
+East-side Railroad, and stopped postal communication for a day or two.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "CHINOOK."_]
+
+The winter of 1880-'81 has proved disastrous to stock in Eastern
+Oregon. As a general rule, the sheep and cattle ranges are covered with
+bunch-grass, which grows from ten to twenty-four inches high during the
+summer months, and is dried by the sun into natural hay. When winter
+comes it brings with it snow from six to eighteen inches deep, and this
+lies light and powdery over the face of the country. The cattle and
+sheep scratch the covering off, and feed on the hay beneath. The
+prevailing winds in the winter there are north and south, and neither
+melts the snow. But now and again comes the west or southwest
+"Chinook." It breathes softly on the snow, and a quivering haze rises
+from the melting mass. When the "Chinook" blows long enough to melt the
+snow away, all goes well. But this last winter, after blowing for a day
+or two and melting the surface, it gave place to a biting blast from
+the north, which froze all hard again. The unfortunate sheep and cattle
+tried in vain to scratch through the icy crust, and died from
+starvation within but a few inches of their food.
+
+In speaking of the rainfall of the State it is right to mention a
+considerable stretch of land lying on the east side of, and directly
+under the lee of, the Cascade Mountains. Here there falls but six or
+eight inches of rain in the year. The residents have, therefore, to
+depend on irrigation for fertility of soil. They have abundant
+facilities for this, as many streams and creeks flow down from the
+Cascades. With irrigation, very heavy crops of grain (as much as forty
+bushels of wheat to the acre) are produced.
+
+Western Oregon enjoys a remarkable immunity from thunder-storms. They
+are of very rare occurrence, and when the thunder is heard it is
+rumbling away in the mountains many miles off. We have seen some summer
+lightning on a few evenings, gleaming away over the hills.
+
+Wind-storms, too, very seldom visit us. In January, 1880, one curiously
+local storm swept from the south through the valley. It bore most
+severely on Portland. A friend there told me that he was looking across
+the river to East Portland, where the Catholic church stood with its
+spire, a prominent object. As he looked, the blast struck it, and, as
+he expressed it, the building melted away before his eyes. Riding
+through the green fir-timber in the hills a few days after the storm, I
+saw several places where the limbs were torn off, and even great trees
+blown down in a straight line, their neighbors within but a few feet of
+them standing unhurt.
+
+[Sidenote: _PLEASANT SPRING WEATHER._]
+
+The Government records in twenty-five years only show three winds
+blowing over the State with a velocity of forty-five miles an hour and
+a force of ten pounds to the square foot. But what a spring we have had
+this year--1881! While the papers have been full of snow-storms and
+floods in other places, here we have had balmy sunshine and mild
+nights, with occasional showers. The old residents call it real Oregon
+weather, and say it always was like this till two or three years ago.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+The State Fair of 1880--Salem--The ladies' pavilion--Knock-'em-downs
+_a l'Americaine_--Self-binders--Thrashing-machines--Rates of speed--
+Cost--Workmanship--Prize sheep--Fleeces--Pure _versus_ graded sheep
+--California short-horns--Horses--American breed or Percheron--
+Comparative measurements--The races--Runners--Trotters--Cricket in
+public--Unruly spectators.
+
+
+About two miles from the city of Salem, the capital of the State, are
+the fair-grounds. Round a large inclosure of some fifteen acres of
+grass-land there runs a belt of oak-wood. Here, inside the
+boundary-fence, are camping-places without end. Until 1880 the State
+Fair has been held in October, but it was then changed to July, in the
+interval between the hay- and the grain-harvest, and so as to take in
+the great national festival on the 4th of July. Every one goes to the
+fair, which lasts a week, for every one's tastes are consulted. The
+ladies have a pavilion with displays of fruit and flowers; of
+needle-work and pictures; of sewing-machines and musical instruments of
+all kinds; of household implements and "notions" various. The children
+delight in an avenue of booths and caravans, where the juggler swallows
+swords, and a genius in academic costume and mortar-board hat teaches
+arithmetical puzzles and the art of memory in a stentorian voice. Here
+is the wild-beast show, and there the American substitute for the Old
+World knock-'em-downs. A canvas-sided court, five-and-twenty feet
+across, contains the game. At the farther side, on a continuous ledge,
+stands a row of hideous life-size heads and shoulders labeled with the
+names and painted in the supposed likeness of the prominent political
+characters of the time. A great soft-leather ball supplies the place of
+the throwing-sticks; and for a quarter (of a dollar) you can have a
+couple of dozen throws at the pet object of your aversion. As fast as
+the doll is knocked over his proprietor sticks him up again; while an
+admiring crowd applaud the hits, or groan, according to their political
+colors.
+
+Here is a great opening for skill, and also (say it in a whisper) for
+trifling bets. A man I know was "dead broke" when he went to the
+knock-'em-down, but by straight throws and cunning he gained a couple
+of dollars in a quarter of an hour, and so got another day in the fair.
+
+The real business of the fair appeals straight to the farmer and
+mechanic.
+
+The long rows of lumber-built sheds are filled with choice sheep,
+cattle, horses, pigs, poultry. The race-track on the farther side of
+the grounds is crowded also every afternoon, while many a rivalry
+between the running or trotting horses of the various counties is
+decided.
+
+[Sidenote: _SELF-BINDERS._]
+
+The implements, too, are a fine show. The "self-binders" display their
+powers by catching up and tying over and over again the same sheaf of
+grain before a curious crowd, far better instructed than you would
+suppose in the intricacies of construction and neatness and rapidity of
+performance of the various machines. Last year the great attraction was
+the Osborne twine-binder, for every one was interested in getting rid
+of the wire that has been injuring the thrashers and hurting the
+digestion of the stock. It was voted a good worker, but complicated, as
+far as we could judge; and the general verdict seemed to be that
+greater simplicity of make and fewer parts to get out of order would
+soon be brought to bear either by these or other makers.
+
+There were two or three thrashing-machines displayed--the Buffalo
+Pitts, the Minnesota Chief, and one or two others. The great
+distinctions between these and the machines of English makers, such as
+Clayton and Shuttleworth, lie in the American drum and cylinder being
+armed with teeth and driven at a rate of speed from twice to three
+times that used in the English machine. The straw is, of course, beaten
+here into shreds between the revolving teeth, and its length and
+consistency far more completely destroyed than in the Clayton and
+Shuttleworth, and so loses much of its value for storing and feeding
+purposes. On the other hand, the grain is better cleaned, and the
+product per hour in clean grain is double that of the English machine.
+The American makers authorize as much as fifteen hundred bushels per
+day with horsepower, and up to three thousand with steam. There were
+several horse-powers shown, for use with the thrashing-machines; these
+left nothing to be desired for simplicity and economy of power. The
+thrashing-machines are of various sizes and prices, ranging from $750
+to $1,500 in value.
+
+An idea prevails in some parts that the mowers and reapers of American
+make are slighter and more fragile than those of English construction.
+Such is not the result of our observation and experience here. On the
+contrary, our "Champion" mower and reaper combined did work over rough
+ground, baked hard with the summer's sun, which demonstrated both
+strength and excellence of work beyond what we should have expected
+from any English machine we know of.
+
+There was a very poor show of chaff-cutters and root-pulpers, because
+our farming friends here have not yet required these indispensable aids
+to mixed farming and succession of crops. After spending a couple of
+profitable hours among the machines, now come and inspect the stock.
+
+[Sidenote: _PRIZE SHEEP._]
+
+We turn first into the long alley of sheep-pens. The first attraction
+is the prize lot of Spanish merinos. Huge, heavy sheep clothed with
+wool almost to their ankles; ungainly to an English eye, from their
+thick necks, and large heads, and deep folds of skin. The shearer was
+at work, and fleeces weighing from seventeen to twenty pounds were
+displayed. We examine eight or ten pens of these merinos, including
+Spanish, French, and German, mostly in use in Eastern and Southern
+Oregon, where the dry climate and wide range suit these sheep exactly.
+There were one or two pens of graded sheep, merinos crossed with
+Cotswold or Vermont bucks. The crosses maintained the weight in wool
+and decidedly showed improved mutton, but the quality of the wool, of
+course, betrayed the admixture of the coarser fiber. There were two or
+three pens of improved Oxfordshires, the breed of which has been kept
+pure by a well-known fancier in Marion County, on the uplands east of
+Salem. The sheep were in many points very pretty, but seemed to us now
+to require fresh blood, as the wool-bearing surfaces were evidently
+reduced. Several pens of pure Cotswolds were exceedingly good, both in
+shape, size, and wool. The Vermont crosses which had been tried in a
+few instances did not seem to us to have been profitable. One thing
+pleased us, namely, that the best sheep, as a rule, came from those
+farmers who bred sheep in inclosed lands and fed them well, as part of
+a general system of farming, rather than from the huge flocks of the
+sheep-men who range the wilds.
+
+The only cattle worth looking at were some Durhams brought up by one of
+the successful California breeders for exhibition and sale. The prices
+he got must have been very satisfactory to him, and proved that some
+Oregon farmers at any rate have the pluck and foresight to give full
+value for good stock.
+
+Next came the horses. The stamp varied from nearly thoroughbred to
+Clydesdale and Percheron stud-horses, with a fair number of mares and
+foals. The parade of the horses each day, as they were led round the
+ring each by its own attendant, was a very pretty sight. Nothing
+special need be said of the well-bred stock--that is much the same the
+world over; only the size proved how well adapted Oregon is for the
+home of horses of a high class. What interested us most were very fine
+specimens of what are called here heavy horses for farm-work. Standing
+fully sixteen hands high, with long but compact bodies, good heads,
+with large, full eyes, and hard, clean legs, fit to draw a light wagon
+six or seven miles an hour over muddy roads, and to drag a sixteen-inch
+plow through valley soil, they seemed to us the very models of the
+horse the valley farmers should breed in any number. We regretted to
+notice the large number of Clydesdales and Percherons; the latter type
+of horse especially we deprecate--tall grays, with thick necks, heavy
+heads, upright shoulders, slim, round bodies, hairy, clumsy legs, huge
+flat feet covered with the mass of hair depending from the fetlock.
+Just such you may see any day in the farm-carts in the north of
+France--a team of four in a string, the shaft-horse overshadowed by the
+huge cart with wheels six feet high; the carter plodding by the side,
+in his blue blouse with his long whip. Just to settle a controversy
+with some Percheron-mad Oregonian friends, we had several horses of the
+two different types measured then and there. We found the Oregon mare
+girthed nearly a foot more round the body behind the shoulders than the
+Percheron horse. The girth of the forearm below the shoulder was
+greater. The Percheron was the taller at the shoulder, the thicker
+round the fetlock, and, I should think, carried two extra pounds of
+horse-hair in mane, tail, and fetlock-tufts. The Oregon mare showed
+just those points which every horse-lover seeks, to testify to
+activity, strength, endurance, and intelligence; the Percheron was
+lacking in such respects, but instead had a certain cart-horse
+comeliness, looking more suitable for a brewer's van in a big city than
+for our farms and roads.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE RACES._]
+
+Like the rest of the world, we answered to the call of the bell, and
+crowded through into the grand stand to see the races. A circular track
+of half a mile, the surface of which was already churned into black
+mud, did not look promising for the comfort of either drivers or
+riders. The benches of the grand stand were crowded with eager
+spectators, ladies predominating--the men were lining the track below,
+while the judges looked down from a high box opposite. The din of the
+men selling pools on the impending race was deafening, and each of the
+little auctioneers' boxes where the sales went on was surrounded by a
+throng of bidders. The first race was for runners, that is gallopers,
+ridden by boys thirteen or fourteen years old. It was not a grand
+display to see three or four horses galloping away, dragging their
+little riders almost on to their necks, and their finishes showed no
+great art. Then came the trotting races, and these were worth seeing.
+Three sulkies came on the track, the driver sitting on a little tray
+just over his horse's tail, and between two tall, slender wheels.
+Catching tight hold of his horse's head, and sticking his feet well in
+front of him, each driver sent his horse at a sharp trot round the
+track to open his lungs. Then the bell rang again, the course was
+cleared, and the drivers turned their horses' heads the same way, and
+tried to come up to the judges' box in line. Once, twice, they tried;
+but the bell was silent, and back they had to come, the horses fretting
+at the bit, and getting flecked with foam in anxiety to be off. The
+third time the three sulkies were abreast as they passed the line, the
+bell sounded once, and off they tore. The drivers sat still farther
+back, and the horses laid themselves down to their grand, far-reaching
+trot. Before two hundred yards was covered one broke into a gallop, and
+had to be pulled back at once, his adversaries gaining a yard or two
+before he could be steadied to a trot again. Here they come in the
+straight run-in, the little black horse slightly in front, the big bay
+next, but hardly a head between them; the crowd shouts wildly, and the
+bay breaks trot just at the critical moment, and the black wins the
+heat, his legs going with the regularity and drive of a steam-engine.
+
+The horses are surrounded by admirers as they are taken out of the
+sulkies, and led off to be rubbed down and comforted before the next
+heat comes on. Then follows a running race, and then another heat of
+the trotting race. This time the bay wins, hard held, and forbidden by
+a grasp of iron to break into the longed-for gallop. Soon comes the
+deciding heat, and the excitement grows intense; the pools are selling
+actively, and speculation is very brisk.
+
+Our sympathies are with the little black; half a hand shorter than his
+antagonist, and more like a trotting-horse than the tall, thoroughbred
+bay. But the fates are against him--size and breeding tell, and the bay
+wins.
+
+Then the band strikes up, and the crowd disperses. Most get back to the
+city by one of the miscellaneous wagons, or hacks, or omnibuses pressed
+into the service of the fair; the rest betake themselves to their
+camping-places among the oak-grubs, after supplying themselves with
+meat and bread from one or other of the temporary stores set up at one
+side of the grounds.
+
+[Sidenote: _CRICKET IN PUBLIC._]
+
+This year the visitors had a new sensation in seeing cricket played on
+the fair-ground, to most of them a new sight. Portland is blessed with
+a cricket club, mostly supported by the emigrants from the old country.
+Corvallis has a similar advantage. The Portlanders, in the pride of
+their strength, and heralded by a paragraph in the "Oregonian"
+newspaper, that the "team selected to beat the Corvallis athletes" had
+gone up to Corvallis, had come for wool and gone home shorn. So, as a
+return-match was under discussion, it was determined to accept the
+invitation of the fair committee and play the return on the
+fair-grounds for the amusement of the visitors. Accordingly, the game
+was duly played out, and ended again in a one-innings defeat of proud
+Portland, to the delight of the spectators from the valley, who are
+generally a little jealous of the airs and graces of the hustling town
+which calls herself the metropolis of the Northwest. There was some
+difficulty in keeping the ground clear; the ladies particularly could
+not comprehend the terrible solecism they were committing in tripping
+bravely across, to speak, to "point," and chat with the wicket-keeper.
+If you could but have seen the horror-stricken faces of one or two of
+our eleven, accustomed to the rigor of the game at Cambridge, Rugby, or
+Cheltenham!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+History of Oregon--First discoverers--Changes of government--Recognition
+as a Territory--Entrance as a State--Individual histories--"Jottings"--
+"Sitting around"--A pioneer in Benton County--How to serve Indian thieves
+--The white squaw and the chief--Immigration in company--Rafting on the
+Columbia--The first winter--Early settlement--Indian friends--Indian
+houses and customs--The Presbyterian colony--The start--Across the
+plains--Arrival in Oregon--The "whaler" settler--A rough journey--"Ho
+for the Umpqua!"--A backwoodsman--Compliments--School-teacher provided
+for--Uncle Lazarus--Rogue River Canyon--Valley of Death--Pleasant homes
+--Changed circumstances.
+
+
+Taking note of the civilized and settled condition of so large a part
+of this State, it is hard to credit that it was only in 1831 that the
+first attempts at farming in Oregon were made by some of the men in the
+Hudson Bay Company's service, and that in 1838 the first printing-press
+arrived. This valued relic is now preserved in a place of honor in the
+State Capitol building at Salem--more accordant with the spirit of the
+times than rusty armor or moth-eaten banners.
+
+The early history is somewhat misty, but the following slight sketch
+is, I believe, accurate:
+
+The coast of Oregon was visited both by British and Spanish navigators
+in the sixteenth century. In 1778 Captain Cook sailed along the coast.
+In 1775 Heceta, and in 1792 Vancouver, both suspected the existence of
+the Columbia River from the appearance of its estuary. But in 1792
+Captain Gray, of Boston, and afterward, in the same year, Captain
+Baker, an Englishman, entered the estuary itself. It was on Captain
+Gray's discovery that the United States Government afterward rested its
+claim to the whole country watered by the great river, the mouth of
+which he had discovered. But Lieutenant Broughton, of the British Navy,
+in 1792 or 1793, a very few months after Captain Gray's visit, actually
+ascended the Columbia for one hundred miles, and laid claim to the
+country in the name of King George III. In 1804 the American Government
+expedition of Lewis and Clark crossed the Rocky Mountains, descended
+the Columbia, and passed the winter of 1805-'6 at its mouth; and the
+records of their discoveries first drew public attention to the
+country. In 1810 Captain Winship, also from New England, built the
+first house in Oregon. Astoria was founded in 1811 by John Jacob Astor,
+of New York, as a trading-port. The British, while the war was raging
+in 1813, took possession of the post and named it Fort George. Then
+followed the Hudson Bay Company, who claimed the sovereignty of the
+country under the terms of their wide charter. They established their
+headquarters for the North Pacific coast at Vancouver, on the north
+bank of the Columbia, about one hundred miles from its mouth. There the
+fort was built, the settlement formed, farming began, and the Governor
+of the Hudson Bay Territory had his Western home.
+
+In 1832 the first school was opened. Between 1834 and 1837 missionaries
+of various denominations arrived, bringing cattle with them; and in
+1841 Commodore Wilkes visited Oregon on an exploring expedition by
+order of the United States Government. From 1816 to 1846 the "joint
+occupancy" of Oregon by the American and British Governments lasted
+under treaty.
+
+In 1843 the people were for the first time recognized, and united in
+forming a provisional government, formally accepted at a general
+election in 1845. By the year 1846 the white population numbered about
+ten thousand souls, and in that year the Oregon Territory, including
+both the present State of Oregon and also Washington Territory, was
+ceded, under the Ashburton Treaty, by the British Government to the
+United States.
+
+Congress formally recognized the Territory of Oregon in 1848, and in
+1849 General Joe Lane entered office as the first Territorial Governor.
+His portrait now adorns the Capitol building. And the old general,
+still erect and in full preservation, in spite of his years and
+services, has been until this spring of 1881 yet seen and respectfully
+greeted at many a public gathering.
+
+[Sidenote: _ENTRANCE AS A STATE._]
+
+In 1859 Oregon was admitted into the Union as a sovereign State; the
+population was 52,465. In 1880 the census gave a total of 174,767
+souls, showing an increase of 122,302 in twenty-one years, and an
+increase of 74,767 over the State census in 1875. But, after all, the
+history of a State is the history of its people.
+
+Nowadays we enter Oregon within twenty days from Liverpool, having been
+speeded on our journey by steamships and railroads in continuous
+connections. Within two years the State expects to have two direct
+lines of Eastern communication--one by the Northern Pacific, the other
+by a line through the southeastern corner of the State to Reno, on the
+Central Pacific--shortening the twenty to sixteen days. Within two
+years more it is hoped that the Oregon Pacific will make communication
+at Boise City, Idaho, with independent Eastern lines, and open a still
+more direct course out to the centers of population and enterprise. But
+in the early days, from 1846 to 1851, when the tide of settlement ran
+first this way, their experiences were widely different.
+
+Listen to the tales some of these men tell--not old men yet by any
+means; the vigor and power of life still burn in most of them, for the
+dates are but thirty years back. But what a different life these
+pioneers led then!
+
+Let me sketch the scene and its surroundings where these "jottings
+round the stove" are made. It is rather a dusty old room, and a rusty
+old stove in the middle, and rather a dusty and rusty company are
+gathered round it. Winter-time is upon us; the rain falls in a
+ceaseless drizzle, and the drops from the eaves patter on the fallen
+leaves of the plane-trees round the house. The time is after the noon
+dinner-hour; no work presses, for the fall wheat is all in, and there
+is a sense of warmth and comfort within, which contrasts with the dim
+scene without, where the rain-mists obscure the hills and fill the
+valley with their slowly driving masses.
+
+Five or six of us "sit around"--mostly on two legs of the chairs, and
+our boots are propped up on the ridge round the stove. We don't go much
+on broadcloth and "biled" shirts, but we prefer stout flannel shirts
+and brown overalls, with our trousers tucked inside our knee-high
+boots. Tobacco in one form or the other occupies each one. Carpets we
+have no use for, and it is good that the arm-chairs are of fir, as the
+arms are so handy for whittling, there being no loose pieces of soft
+wood by. But we are all good friends, and I, for one, do not wish for
+better company for an hour or two "around the stove."
+
+[Sidenote: _A PIONEER IN BENTON COUNTY._]
+
+"So the old man came into Benton County in 1845, did he?"
+
+"Yes, he and his wife and two young children, and took up a claim there
+three or four miles from town."
+
+"Was there a town then?"
+
+"Not much--just three log-cabins and a hut or so; they called it
+Marysville; it did not get the name of Corvallis till years after."
+
+"How about the Indians?"
+
+"Well, there were plenty in the valley, Klick-i-tats and
+Calapooyas--these last were a mean set at that. The valley was all over
+bunch-grass waist-high, and the hills were full of elk and deer."
+
+"Had the old man any stock?"
+
+"He had just brought a few with him from Missouri over the Plains, and
+fine store he set by them. You see the Indians used to come and beg for
+flour and sugar, and a beef now and then. Some of the neighbors would
+give them a beef at times, but the old man used to say he hadn't
+brought no cattle to give to them varmints."
+
+"How did they manage to live at first?"
+
+"Well, the old man used to go off for a week at a time to Oregon City
+to work on the boats there at his trade of a ship-carpenter. He had to
+foot it there and back, and pack flour and bacon on his back for his
+folks, and a tramp of sixty miles at that."
+
+"Did the Indians bother any while he was gone?"
+
+"One time a pack of them came round the cabin and got saucy, finding
+only the old lady at home. They crowded into the house and began to
+help themselves, but the old lady she took the axe and soon made them
+clear out. When the old man came back she told him about it. 'Well,'
+says he, 'I reckon I shall have to stop at home a day or two and fix
+these varmints.' So three or four days afterward back they came.
+
+"The old man he kept out of sight, and the buck they called the chief
+came in and began to lay hold of anything he fancied.
+
+"Then the old man showed himself in the doorway with his old rifle on
+his arm. He looked the chief up and down, and then he says to his wife:
+'Do you see that bunch of twigs over the fireplace? You take them down,
+and go through that fellow while the twigs hold together!' And he says
+to the Indian, 'You raise a finger against that woman, and I'll blow
+the top of your head off!' So the old lady takes down the willow-twigs,
+and goes for the Indian for all there was in it, and beats him round
+and round the house till there wasn't a whole twig in the bunch. Lord!
+You should have seen the whole crowd of twenty or thirty Indians
+splitting with laughter to see the white squaw go for the chief. I tell
+you, sir, that Indian made the quickest time on record back to the camp
+as soon as she let him go, and that crowd never bothered that cabin any
+more. Now, wasn't that much better than shooting and fighting, and
+kicking up the worst kind of a muss?"
+
+"Well, I guess so. Did he have any more bother with the Indians?"
+
+"Not a great deal. You see they were a mean lot, and would lay hands on
+anything they could steal; but there wasn't a great deal of fight in
+them. One time they had been robbing one of the neighbors of some
+cattle, and they went and told the old man. He went up all alone to the
+Indian camp with his rifle, and picked out the man he wanted out of a
+crowd of fifty of them; and he took him and tied him to a white-oak
+tree, and laid on to him with a sapling till he thought he'd had
+enough, and not one of the whole crowd dared raise a hand against him.
+Now the old gentleman's got three thousand acres of land and all he
+wants. How's that for an early settler?"
+
+"Why, pretty good. But you came over the Plains yourself, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes; I was but a little shaver then, in 1845. We came by way of the
+Dalles."
+
+"What sort of a crowd had you?"
+
+[Sidenote: _RAFTING ON THE COLUMBIA._]
+
+"Well, there was my father, Nahum his name was, and my four brothers,
+all older than I was, and there was the Watsons and the Chambers and
+their families in the company. We crossed the Plains all right and got
+to the Dalles. There were thirteen wagons in the party, and we rafted
+them and the cattle and all the rest of it down the Columbia."
+
+"How on earth did you make a raft big enough?"
+
+"Well, we just cut the logs in the woods on the edge of the river, and
+rolled them in and pegged them together with lighter trees laid across.
+It took us about all the morning to get out into the current, and all
+the afternoon to get back again. But, after all, we got to the
+Cascades."
+
+"How did you get past them?"
+
+"We had to just put the wagons together, and cut a road for ourselves,
+six miles round the portage, till we could take to the river again.
+Then we got boats and came all right down the Columbia and up the
+Willamette past where Portland now stands."
+
+"Where was Portland then?"
+
+"There was no Portland, I tell you--just a few houses and cabins. I
+forget what they called the place. Anyhow, we got pretty soon to the
+Tualitin Plains, where Forest-grove Station is now, and there we passed
+that first winter in Oregon."
+
+"Was it rough on you?"
+
+"Well, no--not particularly. All the lot of us crowded into one little
+cabin; but we lived pretty well."
+
+"What did you live on?"
+
+"Well, there was a little grist-mill near by, and the folks had raised
+a little wheat and some potatoes and peas. We got no meat at all that
+winter. The next spring we came on into King's Valley and took up the
+old place--you know where I showed it you--under the hill."
+
+"Weren't there plenty of Indians there?"
+
+"Indians! I should think so; about two or three hundred Klick-i-tats
+were camped in that valley then. Good Indians they were, tall, and
+straight as a dart."
+
+"Who was the chief?"
+
+"A man they called Quarterly. When we came in and camped, that Indian
+came up to my father and said, 'What do you want here?' My father said,
+'We have come here to settle down and farm and make homes for
+ourselves.' 'Well,' says the Indian, 'you can; if you don't meddle with
+us, we won't hurt you.' No more they did; we never had a cross word
+from them."
+
+"Was the country theirs?"
+
+"Well, no; it belonged properly to the Calapooyas, and these
+Klick-i-tats had rented it off them for some horses and cloths and
+things for a hunting-ground."
+
+"Plenty of game?"
+
+"Just lots of it; elk and deer plenty, and the bunch-grass waist-high.
+The Indian ponies were rolling fat; good ponies they were, too."
+
+"What sort of houses had these Indians?"
+
+[Sidenote: _INDIAN HOUSES AND CUSTOMS._]
+
+"The Klick-i-tats had regular lodges: sticks set in the ground in a
+circle and tied together at the top, and covered all over with the rush
+mats they used to make. Good workers they were, too. They and the
+Calapooyas fell out once. I mind very well one day the Klick-i-tats
+came running in to our camp to say there was ever such a lot of
+Calapooyas coming in to attack them. They sent off their women and
+children to the hills, and then drove all their horses down to our
+camp. Strange, wasn't it, they should think their stock safer with five
+or six white men? There must have been several hundred of those
+Calapooyas."
+
+"Did the fight come off?"
+
+"Not that time; they made it up with some presents of horses and beads
+and things."
+
+"What's become of those Klick-i-tats?"
+
+"All that's left of them are gone to the reservation away north on the
+Columbia. They had their big fight with the Calapooyas down there by
+the Mary River bridge, out by Wrenn's school-house, just before we came
+into the country. The Calapooyas were too many for them, for they were,
+I should say, three to one. That was quite a battle, I should say.--But
+here comes one of the early settlers. Why don't you ask him about it?"
+
+Just then the door had been opened, and in came a slender, gray-haired
+minister, with black coat and white collar and tie.
+
+"So you were an early settler?"
+
+"Yes, I had some experiences in early days. Did you ever hear of our
+Presbyterian colony?"
+
+"I think not."
+
+"Well, I was born and raised in Pennsylvania. I had just finished my
+theological course and got married. I had heard a good deal about
+Oregon, and took the notion of getting some Presbyterians to go out
+there. This was in 1851, when the law had been passed giving half a
+section of land to every settler, and half another section for his
+wife, if he had one."
+
+"How did you set about getting Presbyterians together?"
+
+"I just put an advertisement in the Pennsylvania papers that a
+Presbyterian minister intended starting for Oregon in the spring of
+1852, and would be glad for any Presbyterians to join him and found a
+colony there."
+
+"Did you get many answers?"
+
+"About eighty agreed to go, but a good many weakened before the time
+came, and only about forty of them started; some twenty came in
+afterward, so that our party was sixty strong. When we left St. Joe, in
+Missouri, we had twenty wagons. I had a nice carriage with four mules
+for my wife, and a half-share in a wagon and ox-team. We left St. Joe
+in May, 1852, and arrived in Oregon four months and a half afterward."
+
+"Did you travel all the time?"
+
+"We laid over for Sundays, and I preached every Sunday on the journey
+but one, when we were crossing an alkali desert, and had to push on
+through to water."
+
+"Were there many emigrants on the road, minister?"
+
+"There was the heaviest emigration to Oregon that year that there has
+ever been. Many times I have climbed a hill just off the great emigrant
+trail, and counted a hundred wagons and more ahead, and more than a
+hundred behind us."
+
+"Did you carry any feed for your stock?"
+
+"Not any, and it was terribly hard on stock, as the bunch-grass on and
+near the trail was eaten down so close. It was harder on the oxen than
+on the mules. I brought all my mules safe into Oregon, but only one ox
+out of our team."
+
+"How did you do when the oxen gave out?"
+
+"Oh, a man just cut his wagon in half and hitched what oxen he had left
+on to the front half, and left the hinder end there in the desert."
+
+"Did you have trouble with the Indians?"
+
+"None at all; all quiet and peaceable. We came into Oregon by way of
+Boise City, Idaho, and Umatilla and the Dalles. The last sixty miles my
+wife and I walked nearly all the way, for the mules gave out crossing
+the Cascades, and we drove them before us into this valley. The first
+milk and butter was at Foster's, near Oregon City; but one old lady in
+the crowd would not eat the butter her son had bought for her: she said
+it tasted too strong of silver."
+
+[Sidenote: _THE PRESBYTERIAN COLONY._]
+
+"Where did you settle down?"
+
+"About three miles from Corvallis, or Marysville, as it was called
+then. Just twelve houses in the place, and two of them stores."
+
+"What did you do for a house?"
+
+"Just set to and built one. I built it round my wife as she camped in
+the middle. I cut me down a big fir-tree, and split it out into boards
+and shingles."
+
+"What was this valley like then?"
+
+"All open prairie. A man could drive seventy miles without
+stopping--from Salem to Eugene. All this oak-brush has grown up since."
+
+"What became of your Presbyterians?"
+
+"Well, we organized the church the next fall, in 1853, with just seven
+of the sixty persons who had left the East with me the year before. So
+you see we have grown a good deal in these seven-and-twenty years."
+
+Here the minister got up and left the circle. So we turned to a
+brown-coated, cheery fellow in the next arm-chair. "You came round the
+Horn, didn't you, Bush?"
+
+But the cake of tobacco had to be got out of a deep pocket, and a
+pipeful slowly cut off and the fresh pipe started, before the answer
+came; and then a great laugh had to expend its force over the merry
+memories called up by the question.
+
+"We had a pretty rough old time of it, hadn't we, boys?" and a low
+murmur of assent ran round, and all eyes turned, meditatively, to the
+stove. Presently the answer to the first question dropped casually out:
+"Yes, I came round the Horn. I had been whaling in the Pacific, and
+stopped at 'Frisco; we were all mad for the diggings. One day, as I was
+strolling round, I saw a great, big placard on the wall, in letters two
+feet long: 'Ho! for the Umpqua diggings! Lots of gold! Plenty of water!
+Good grub! Fine country! The well-known schooner Reindeer, Captain
+Bachelor, will sail for the Umpqua, October the 15th, 1850!' There were
+four of us in my party, all young and active then, and we made up our
+minds to go, and weren't long about deciding, either. We were up to
+roughing it, too; you see, a few years in a whaler will fit you for
+most anything."
+
+"What was the voyage like?"
+
+"Rough! There were about one hundred and thirty on board the schooner,
+some for the Umpqua, the rest going on to Portland. After knocking
+about at sea for a few days, we made the Umpqua and stood in. The old
+man anchored just under the north beach. As I put my hand on the cable,
+it was like a bar of iron, and I felt the anchor drag. I told the mate,
+and he went and called the captain. Up came the old man, and wouldn't
+believe it at first, but in another minute we should all have been in
+the breakers, and nothing could have saved us. Just then a little boat
+came past and they hollered out, 'You'll be on the beach inside of
+three minutes!' I tell you it was touch and go."
+
+"How did you get off, Bush?"
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "WHALER" SETTLER._]
+
+"The old man shouted to set all sail, and I ran to the helm. I could
+see the channel pretty well, and I just steered her by the look of the
+water. We just shaved a big rock by three feet or so, and ran up the
+river. Presently we anchored again and landed. Then we got a little
+Indian canoe and pulled on up the river."
+
+"What was the country like?"
+
+"Pretty rough."
+
+"But the diggings, Bush?"
+
+"Bless you, there weren't any! It was all a plant."
+
+"Didn't you get back to the coast?"
+
+"No, sir, we were in for it, and we calculated to see it out. The
+country there, in Southern Oregon, pleased us mightily, it looked so
+fresh and green in the valleys, but the mountains were no joke. Then we
+heard of this Willamette Valley, and traveled on north to find it. Two
+of my mates staid down there on Rogue River for the winter, but one
+came on north with me."
+
+"Any adventures, Bush?"
+
+"Not particular. I mind me, though, when we got up to where Monroe City
+is now, there was one log-house. Old Dr. Richardson lived there. As we
+came to the house he came out and stood just outside. I tell you he was
+a picture."
+
+"What like, Bush?"
+
+"Well, he was a great, big, stout fellow, about fifty, with a jolly red
+face. He had on a buckskin hunting-shirt with long fringes, and long
+buckskin leggins, and his old rifle lay ready in the hollow of his arm.
+When we stepped up to him, 'Well, young men, and what do you want?'
+says he. 'We should like to stop here and get some dinner,' says I.
+'What a beautiful place you have got here, sir!' I went on, 'and, if
+you'll allow me to say so, I just admire you for a perfect specimen of
+a backwoodsman.' 'What!' says he, 'what on 'arth do you mean, you young
+thief of a son-of-a-gun?' says he, stepping up to me, to lay hold of me
+by the collar. I tell you, sir, I thought we were in for it, and he was
+big enough to whip the two of us. As good luck would have it, the door
+opened just then, and the old lady stepped out. She just looked and
+then she spoke up. 'Old man,' says she, 'just let me speak to these
+young men.' So, she came and asked us our names and where we came from,
+and I explained to her that I had no notion of insulting the old
+gentleman. 'Oh, well,' says she, 'don't mind him; and now what can I do
+for you? You seem nice, quiet young men.' So she gave us some bread and
+milk, and the end of it all was, they wanted us to stay all winter with
+them."
+
+"So the lady helped you out, as usual, Bush?"
+
+[Sidenote: _UNCLE LAZARUS._]
+
+"They didn't help me always. For the next place we came to was Starr's
+settlement. There were a lot of ladies, quilting. We went into the
+house to ask if there were any claims to be had. 'Are you married?'
+says one of the ladies. 'No, ma'am,' says I. 'Oh, well, then, you can
+just get on; we have got plenty of bachelors already. Say, are you a
+school-teacher?' says she. I thought for a moment if an old whaleman
+dared venture on school-teaching, but I thought, maybe, that was a
+leetle too strong. 'No, ma'am,' says I, at last, 'I am not, but my
+friend here is well qualified.' 'Oh, well,' says she, 'he can stay and
+take up a claim; we have got one here of three hundred and twenty
+acres, we have been saving up for the school-teacher; but as for you,
+young man, you can jest go on right up the valley.' So I had to go on
+to where Corvallis now stands. There were just four or five log-cabins,
+and a little stock. I took up a claim and built me a house, and as I
+was a pretty good carpenter I got all the work I wanted.--But here
+comes Uncle Lazarus."
+
+Just then the door opened, and a quaint figure entered. Let us sketch
+him. A broad-brimmed, low-crowned, brown beaver hat (and when we say
+broad-brimmed we mean it--not a trifling article of fifteen inches or
+so across, but a real, sensible sun-and-rain shade, two feet or
+thereabout from edge to edge); an old worn blue military great-coat
+covered him; while a mass of snow-white hair and beard framed in a
+ruddy face as fresh as a winter apple, and a pair of bright blue eyes
+twinkled keenly, but with a hidden laugh in them, from under the broad
+brim.
+
+"Sit down, uncle," cried some one, and the old man came to an anchor
+with the rest of us round the stove.
+
+"Talking of old times, uncle," we said. "You came in pretty early,
+didn't you?"
+
+"Well, I guess it was in 1846," said he, in a plaintive, slow voice.
+"We came over the Plains, the old lady and I, from Illinois. We had a
+pretty good ox-team, and we got through safe."
+
+"Did you have any fighting, uncle?"
+
+"Well, no; there was too many in the company when we started, and they
+did get to quarreling, so I jest left them with one or two more--any
+day rather fight than have a fuss; so I thought we'd jest take our
+chance with the Injuns, though they was pretty bad then. We were nigh
+to six months on the road."
+
+"Which way did you come into Oregon?"
+
+"By Klamath Lake and Rogue River. The worst piece on the whole journey
+was that Rogue River canyon; you know where that is?"
+
+"Yes, uncle, came through it at a sharp run on the California stage a
+month ago."
+
+"Well, there warn't no stage then--no, nor road either. You know it is
+about eight miles long, and I calc'late you might go a quarter of a
+mile at a time on the bodies of the horses and oxen that had died
+there. No man got through without leaving some of his cattle there.
+Tell you, sir, when you once got into the place, seemed like there was
+no end to it, and you jest got to face the music; for there warn't no
+other way."
+
+"How did this country strike you when you got through?"
+
+"Well, the old lady and me jest thought lots of it. We took up our
+claims in King's Valley--you know the place--jest the nicest kind of a
+place, with lots of grass and a nice river. You had all the timber you
+wanted on the mountains close by, and jest lots of deer and elk."
+
+"Pretty lonely, though, wasn't it?"
+
+"Well, it was kinder lonely, but we had lots to do, and the time passed
+very quick. The country settled up quick, and we had all the neighbors
+we wanted."
+
+"Any trouble with Indians, uncle?"
+
+"No; the Calapooyas would thieve a bit, but fifty of them cusses would
+jest scare from five or six of us settlers with our rifles. And the
+Klick-i-tats were good Injuns, and never troubled us any. Those were
+good old times, boys." And the old man rose to go, with a sigh.
+
+[Sidenote: _CHANGED CIRCUMSTANCES._]
+
+Think of the change the old gentleman has seen--for he lives there yet!
+Now, his white farmhouse, with good barn and out-buildings, fronts on a
+well-traveled road, leading past many a neighbor's house, and to the
+church and village. The woods on the hill-sides have disappeared, and
+the ruled furrows of the wheat-fields have replaced the native grass;
+the elk and deer which found him food as well as sport have retired
+shyly away into the far-off fastnesses round Mary's Peak and in the
+"green timber," and the fleecy flocks have usurped their place. The
+thievish Calapooyas and good Klick-i-tats have lost their tribal
+connections, and their shrunken remnants have been shifted away north
+to the Indian reserve. As you stand on the hill above his house, and
+the vision ranges over the gentle outlines of King's Valley, dotted
+with farms and lined with fences, it is but the noble forms of the
+distant mountains that could identify the scene with that which he
+scanned with wayworn eye as he halted his weary oxen after his six
+months' journey from distant Illinois.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+State and county elections--The Chinese question--Chinese
+house-servants--Washermen--Laborers--A large camp-Supper--
+Chinese trading--The scissors--Cost of Chinese labor--Its
+results--Chinese treaties--Household servants--Chee and his
+mistress--"Heap debble-y in there"--The photo album--Temptation
+--A sin and its reward--Good advice on whipping--Chung and the
+crockery--Chinese New Year--Gifts--"Hoodlums"--Town police--Opium.
+
+
+In the summer of 1880 there occurred an election of Senators and
+Representatives to the State Legislature, and also to the county
+offices of clerk, sheriff, assessor, coroner, surveyor, and
+commissioners.
+
+The whole apparatus of caucuses and canvasses was put in operation, and
+the candidates nominated on both Republican and Democratic "tickets"
+perambulated the county, and addressed audiences in every precinct from
+the "stump."
+
+The Greenbackers had the courage of their opinions and put candidates
+in the field. Indeed, one of the precincts in the burned-woods country,
+of which I have already discoursed, enjoyed the proud distinction of
+casting more votes for the "Greenback" candidate than for either of the
+two great parties.
+
+I attended some of these meetings and listened to the stump-speeches
+with much interest. That which caused the current of eloquence on all
+hands to run fastest was the Chinese question. How vehemently have I
+heard denounced the yellow-faced, pig-eyed, and tailed Mongolians who
+were spreading like locusts over the face of the country, and ousting
+the poor but honest and industrious white laborer from those
+employments to which he is specially adapted--how they sucked the
+life-blood of the people in order to carry their ill-gotten gains
+across the seas; how their barbarous language and filthy social habits
+"riz the dander" of these orators, while the audience loudly applauded
+every strong stroke of the brush! At the torch-light processions which
+closed some of the evening meetings, transparencies were carried about
+by citizens staggering under their weight, which depicted Chinamen in
+various conditions of terror flying from the boot-tips of energetic
+Americans; or, on the opposite back, the poor but honest white man
+prostrate on the ground, while a fat Chinaman sat heavily on his
+breast.
+
+Such an obvious current of popular opinion set an on-looker to rub his
+eyes, and feel if he were dreaming.
+
+For, go into nearly every house inhabited by a family, in or near any
+town in the State, and you will find one or more Chinamen doing the
+house-service. Walk through the streets, and you will meet a
+blue-coated Asiatic with a big clothes-basket of clean linen on his
+shoulders. Here and there in the streets hangs a sign: "Hop Kee," "Sam
+Lin," "Lee Chung," "Ah Sin," "Washing," or "Chinese Laundry," and
+"Labor provided," or "Intelligence-Office," and through the steamy
+windows you catch a glimpse of white-shirted Chinamen, bending over
+their ironing, and a mixed gabble of strange "Ahs" and "Yahs" strikes
+the ear as you pass by.
+
+[Sidenote: _CHINESE TRADING._]
+
+I went up the Columbia River to the Dalles the other day. At the Dalles
+was a camp for the night of about five hundred Chinamen, being
+transferred by the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company from work
+higher up the river to some of the heavy rock-cutting and tunneling
+between the Dalles and the Lower Cascades. I stood and watched them at
+their suppers. Divided into messes of twelve or fifteen each, they had
+supplied themselves with beef in the town. Holes were dug in the
+ground, sticks lighted in them, and large pans set on to boil, and,
+with plenty of salt and pepper, a savory smell soon arose. Large pans
+of rice were boiling by the side, and before long each man's portion
+was ladled out into a real China basin, which he held in one hand close
+to his mouth, while the chop-sticks moved at a terrible rate in the
+fingers of the other hand. Such uncouth figures!--bronzed in tint,
+short and heavy in form, clad in thick blanket-coats, with knee-boots;
+turbans round most heads made of heavy scarlet woolen comforters, and a
+few old hats among the crowd; and a constant gabble of voices, nearly
+deafening in the aggregate. Their little tents were pitched on the
+river-bank close at hand, and a huge pile of their unmistakable baggage
+lay heaped, with their shovels and axes, on the deck of the great scow
+hard by. The town was full of them, buying or bargaining in every
+store. I marked a group of four who wanted a pair of strong scissors.
+They were asked fifty cents in a store. They examined the scissors and
+tried to cheapen them in vain, and then left. They tried four stores in
+turn, but found no better article, and the same price; then returned to
+their first love, and strove hard for a reduction in vain. Again they
+went the round; again they came back: on the fourth visit the patience
+of the Jewish gentleman behind the counter gave way, and he told them
+to take it or leave it, they should not see the scissors again. Most
+unwillingly, and after a vast amount of breathing on the blades to see
+how quickly the vapor disappeared, the half-dollar came forth and the
+scissors changed owners. They are the closest buyers in the world. The
+next morning by seven o'clock the tents were struck, the Chinamen on
+board the steamer, and in the afternoon we passed them hard at work,
+spread in a long line on the face of a terrible rock, which looked as
+if five thousand Chinamen might work at it in vain for a year to make a
+fit passage for the train.
+
+But without them how would these great works get done? Later on I
+intend describing some of the undertakings in progress in the State.
+Delay in them--still worse, the stoppage of them--would be a calamity
+indeed. After all, the Chinamen work for about eighty or ninety cents a
+day, and out of this sum the contractor has to find them food. The
+food, save the rice, is purchased in the State; the material of the
+clothes they wear is manufactured and sold in the United States; the
+tools they work with also. So that it is only the profit on their
+labor's price which goes to China; and some of that goes to pay their
+passage in the ships which transport them to and fro. And their labor
+remains--its results felt by every passenger and freighter on the
+railroads, and every Oregonian directly or indirectly interested in
+increasing the population of the State.
+
+Naturally, it is easy to have too much Chinaman. I should grieve to see
+them multiply so as to dominate the State. Excellent servants, but bad
+masters.
+
+And by all means let us have treaties with China to enable the influx
+of these Mongolians to be regulated. Already we have laws forbidding
+the employment of Chinamen on government or municipal public works. And
+I do not see that there is any economy in the working or superiority in
+the labors on such undertakings.
+
+For household service on this coast they are simply indispensable. They
+receive high wages: for a good Chinese cook you must pay from fifteen
+to twenty-five dollars a month. A laundryman and house-servant can be
+had for somewhat less. But our experience and observation lead us to
+the knowledge that two Chinese servants will do well the work of four
+English servants. Another thing is that, having learned to cook any
+special dish, you may be sure of having it always thereafter equally
+good.
+
+If they are a bother sometimes by not comprehending orders, they make
+up for it by quaint ways. An English neighbor of ours has one Chee, a
+boy of sixteen, as house-servant, and a very good cook and general
+servant she has made of him. Chee and his mistress are on the best of
+terms usually; sometimes they fall out.
+
+[Sidenote: "_HEAP DEBBLE-Y IN THERE!_"]
+
+The mistress was staying with us for a few days once, while her husband
+was out hunting in the hills, and she preferred sleeping in her own
+house. This Chee strongly disapproved, as it involved his going up to
+make the bed and clean the house, instead of having high-jinks in the
+China house down in the town. When his mistress went into the house,
+Chee pointed into her bedroom, and in a mysterious voice warned her
+thus: "Heap debble-y in there. Some time I make bed, I see four, fi'
+debble-y go under bed. Some time come catch you in night!"
+
+Another time, his master and mistress being out, Chee amused himself
+with their photograph-album. They found many of the pictures shifted,
+and one charming young lady missing. Chee stoutly denied it all, and
+swore he never saw the picture. So his "boss," Hop Kee, was appealed
+to. In the afternoon of the same day Hop Kee appeared with a second
+Chinaman. This man produced the missing photograph for identification,
+and then Hop Kee disappeared into Chee's kitchen and administered a
+hearty beating to the culprit. When Hop Kee reappeared, panting, his
+companion explained and apologized thus: "Chee heap bad boy; but he no
+steal um; he heap love um picture; he sew um up his bed."
+
+Another time Chee was pottering about in the garden when his mistress
+called him. He would not answer, so she called him again, and this was
+the conversation:
+
+"Chee, come here." "Heap tired in foot; can' walk." "Chee, come here
+directly." Chee comes and gets his orders. "Wha' for you can' talk me
+there?" "Chee, you must not answer me like that; you speak as if I were
+a dog." "Well, you allee same likee one dog!" "Chee, how dare you? I
+tell Hop Kee what you say." "I no care." But Hop Kee comes that
+afternoon and hears the sad accusation, and this is his advice: "Mrs.
+----, you heap takee some poker; you beat him. I heap much obliged.
+Chee no good; you whip um."
+
+Chee asks for his wages, and even for some in advance. "What for you
+want money, Chee?" "I want fi'teen dollar." "What for, Chee?" "I want
+buy one big watch." "How big, Chee?" "Heap big watch; he weigh ha'
+pound." And I believe it does weigh half a pound.
+
+One of our Chinamen, Chung, was a sad breaker of crockery. We bore it
+patiently in spite of the loss, for stone-ware is terribly dear here.
+But one day there was an awful smash, and we ran out to see Chung
+wringing his hands over a tray on the ground, with broken cups and
+plates all about. We said nothing; but the next day he went of his own
+accord, and at his own cost replaced the greater part.
+
+[Sidenote: _CHINESE NEW YEAR._]
+
+All the house-servants expect a holiday for a day or two at the Chinese
+new year, which occurs about the 20th of January. It is a mark of good
+breeding and condition with them to give presents at that time to every
+one in the house. A little cabinet of lacquer-work to the lady of the
+house, a fan in sandal wood or ivory, one or two flowered silk
+handkerchiefs, a pot of sweetmeats, and two or three boxes of the
+inevitable Chinese crackers for the children, make up the list.
+
+Each of the China houses in the town collects all the Chinamen that
+make it their headquarters, and prepares a magnificent supper. They
+spare no expense on this occasion; all the chickens in the neighborhood
+are slaughtered, and the sweet Chinese wine flows freely. Even a
+drunken Chinaman may be met in the street, staggering from one China
+house to another, and he will very likely be mobbed by all the
+"hoodlums" in the town, pelting and hustling him.
+
+"Hoodlums"--a fine word this to describe the vagabond, rough
+hobble-de-hoys that swarm in these Western towns; lads too big for
+school, too lazy to work, an incumbrance to their families, a nuisance
+to all their neighbors. I am told that the word originated in San
+Francisco twenty years ago. There were there gangs of these rough lads
+who hung about the wharves, ready for riot or plunder as occasion
+offered. Against them the police of the city waged a constant war.
+These Arabs had various haunts among the hovels and sheds, the piles of
+lumber and rubbish, that deface the water-side of every growing and
+unfinished city. When the police appeared, "Huddle-um!" was the
+watchword that sent every skulker to cover. But the Irish element
+pronounced the watchword with a rounder sound, and so "Hoodlum!" caught
+the ear of the passer-by, and soon was adopted as the label of the
+tribe.
+
+The police of our town is represented by the city marshal and his
+deputy, who act under the authority of the mayor and the city council.
+The "calaboose" is the lock-up for offenders; and work on the streets
+in irons is also a punishment which may be awarded by the recorder for
+offenses against the city laws and regulations. Drunkenness and
+opium-smoking are in this black list. Passers-by were edified, a few
+days ago, by the spectacle of one white man, for drunkenness, and two
+Chinamen, for opium-smoking, shoveling away at the mud, and ornamented
+with iron ball and shackles. It is strange to find that opium-smoking
+in these dens is not altogether confined to the Chinese, but some
+degraded white men are occasionally captured by the marshal in a raid
+on a China house. Such are not only punished, but scouted, and still
+they repeat the offense, proving the hold the practice gains when once
+yielded to.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+Life in the town--Sociables--Religious sects--Sabbath-schools--
+Christmas, festivities--Education, how far compulsory--Colleges--
+Student-life and education--Common schools--Teachers' institutes
+--Newspapers--Patent outsides--"The Oregonian"--Other journals--
+Charities--Paupers--Secret societies.
+
+
+Life in these country towns possesses some features strange to a
+new-comer. Every family, almost without exception, is allied with some
+church organization. The association of such families in religious
+matters gives the connecting bond they need. Not contented with
+worshiping together on Sundays, they often meet in church sociables and
+in school entertainments and concerts, for which purposes the
+church-building is very commonly used.
+
+To get up a "sociable" is a pleasant task for the matrons of the
+church. Having settled on the day, they meet and agree for how many it
+is likely they must provide. Then each lady undertakes her share,
+finding so much tea, coffee, and sugar, and so many sandwiches and
+cakes. It is a delicate compliment for outsiders also to contribute a
+cake to the common fund. Then, the evening having come, the company
+begin to meet, generally about seven o'clock, and are received by the
+ladies of the congregation. Every one is made welcome. The object of
+the "sociable," so far as money-getting is concerned, is met either by
+a small charge for refreshments as supplied, or by a charge for
+admission, making the visitor free of the room.
+
+When the tea or supper is finished, there is a fine flow of talk, as
+all tongues are loosened. Then follows music, either as solos by such
+as venture to make so public an appearance, or in duets, glees, or
+choruses provided by the church choir. Interspersed with the music are
+recitations, readings, or short lectures. The recitations are as
+commonly given by young ladies as by the other sex; and the most awful
+and tragic pieces are decidedly the favorites. A good deal of gesture
+and action is approved.
+
+Generally, a few words from the minister of the church close the
+entertainment, and the audience separate about ten o'clock, all the
+better for the "sociable."
+
+The comparatively trifling differences which serve to keep one sect
+separate from another, result in a number of small congregations and
+weak "interests"--and also, I think, react injuriously on the education
+and condition of the various ministers. And I do not see any progress
+toward obliterating differences and combining scattered forces against
+the common foes of indifference, irreligion, and vice; rather, I notice
+in the meetings or conventions attended by representatives or delegates
+from the various congregations of a special sect, and held annually in
+some central place, a disposition to insist on differences, and enforce
+the teaching of each special set of distinctive doctrines on the young.
+
+Outside of the Episcopal Church, which, of course, possesses and uses
+its own liturgy, the services of the other Christian sects are almost
+exactly similar; I except also the Roman Catholics, who are present in
+the State of Oregon in considerable numbers, and whose organization of
+archbishop, bishops, priests, and sisters is as perfect as usual. But I
+have reference to Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, North
+and South, Baptists, Evangelicals--the order of their services is about
+the same, and unless by chance you were present on some occasion for
+enforcing the special doctrines of the sect, you could not determine to
+which belonged the particular church in which you might be worshiping.
+
+The institution of the Sabbath-school is not similar to that pursued in
+England, at any rate. The church is opened at a special hour for
+Sabbath-school, and the children attend in numbers; the minister of the
+church holds a service for the special benefit of the young, but adults
+are also present. There is not the division into classes, and the
+enlisting of the efforts of teachers for those classes, which we have
+seen elsewhere.
+
+[Sidenote: _CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES._]
+
+Christmas is chiefly marked by the Christmas-trees which are so
+commonly provided; the religious significance of the day is hardly
+enforced at all. But the great Christmas-trees arranged by a
+congregation, lighted up in the church or school-room, and hung with
+presents contributed by each family for its own individual members, and
+only brought to the common tree that the joy of donor and receiver
+might be alike shared in by friends, are a pretty and a happy sight.
+
+And this is by no means confined to the towns. The various precincts of
+the county have each their headquarters at the common school-house, and
+in many of these Christmas-trees are provided; and, if the gifts are
+less in money cost than those hung round the city Christmas-trees, they
+are none the less worth if got by so many hours of country work, and
+brought over many a weary mile of muddy road, and treasured in the old
+trunk among the Sunday garments till the happy day came round, and the
+Christmas frost hung the fir-trees with their sparkling load, and
+glazed the old black logs and gray snake-fences with their glittering
+covering of ice.
+
+A common notion prevails that education here is compulsory. It is
+compulsory in the sense that facilities by way of school-houses and
+trained teachers, and superintendence by committees and clerks, are
+provided by the State, and paid for by the counties from the county
+tax. It is not compulsory in the sense that so many hours of school
+attendance can be enforced against parents or children by the public
+authority. Much is done; a strong and general interest is shown;
+expense is not spared, even where expenditure is severely felt; but
+still many children both in town and country escape the educational
+net. There is a State Superintendent of Education; there are county
+superintendents; there are many schools and teachers; and there are
+universities and colleges, with good staffs of professors, and a very
+high and wide course of studies in all. But very much remains to be
+done.
+
+There is far too much effort at variety rather than thoroughness in
+study. However hard both professors and students may labor, it can not
+be possible in a four-years' course to fill a lad, who has previously
+had but a common-school education, with a satisfactory knowledge of
+Latin, high mathematics, Euclid, history, English grammar and
+composition, chemistry, organic and inorganic, geography, geology,
+mechanics, electricity, polarization of light, and various other
+studies usually required for the master of arts honors examination in a
+British university. But this is attempted here.
+
+And, moreover, this extensive course is carried on in the State
+Agricultural College as well as in the universities of the State. It
+can hardly be said that the name of "agricultural" is earned, since
+there is nothing in the studies here engaged in to distinguish this
+from any other high-class college in the State.
+
+[Sidenote: _TEACHERS' INSTITUTES._]
+
+The course followed in the common school is open to much the same
+criticism--too much of the ornamental, too little of the thorough and
+solid, being instilled. This is hardly to be wondered at when it is
+considered that the teachers in the common schools are taken
+principally from the students of the colleges or universities, whose
+learning is of the class above described. There is a great need of a
+normal school, where teachers can be specially trained for that work;
+as it is now, a young fellow is ready to "teach school" for a year or
+two for want of, or on his way to, his intended niche in life.
+
+The scale of payments at the schools is moderate enough, but a large
+item of expense is in the school-books: they are dear, their use is
+compulsory, they have to be purchased by the scholars, and they are
+frequently changed by the Board of Education.
+
+One great means by which it is sought at once to instruct, amuse, and
+infuse the school-teachers with common ideas and sympathies is by
+"teachers' institutes." In each county a time is fixed by the State
+Superintendent of Education, and for two or three days all, or as many
+as can be got together of the teachers in the county, are gathered in
+some central town, and for two or three days have constant meetings.
+This occurs annually.
+
+The most experienced teachers give illustrations of their favorite
+methods of instruction in the various subjects, and free discussion on
+these matters follows.
+
+The days are devoted to this practical work, and in the evenings some
+more general entertainment is provided in the shape of music, lectures,
+or readings, and these are thrown open to the public. At one of these
+the lecturer, who was one of the professors at the Monmouth College,
+descanted on the high general standard of educational attainments in
+this Willamette Valley. He pointed out, in proof, that whereas through
+the United States the population supported one newspaper to each eight
+hundred, in this valley the proportion was one to three hundred or
+thereabout.
+
+[Sidenote: _NEWSPAPERS._]
+
+I found on inquiry that the figures were about correct. And the fact
+is, that it is only in the newspapers that the country people find
+nearly all their literature, and that barely a farmer can be found who
+does not regularly take three or more papers, and this makes the
+continued lives of these papers possible. A town of a thousand or
+twelve hundred inhabitants will support two or even three papers. How
+is it done? Examine one of these papers and you will find the outside
+pages better printed than the inside, and filled with a special sort of
+romantic stories, and short bits of general information; extracts from
+magazines and from Eastern or English newspapers. The inside pages have
+the true local color. Here you will see the leader, devoted to the
+topics of the time and place; descanting on the railroad news of the
+day; expressing the editor's opinions on the rates of freight or
+passage, or on the advantages his town offers for establishing new
+industries; or criticising the recent appointment of postmaster. Then
+the correspondence from various outlying towns or villages, written
+very often by the schoolmaster, and abounding in literary allusions and
+quotations. And then comes the amazing feature of the paper--a column
+or two are devoted to "locals." This is the style: "Beautiful weather.
+New York sirup at Thompson's. The spring plowing is nearly done. Use
+the celebrated XL flour, the best in the market. Mrs. ---- has been in
+----, attending to the woman-suffrage question, the past week. Our
+thanks are due to two fair ladies for bouquets of spring flowers, the
+first of the season. Our young friend Pete M---- called on us
+yesterday; good boy Pete. Judge Henry was at Salem the past week. Miss
+Addie Bines is visiting friends in town. Did you see that bonnet at the
+Presbyterian church on Sunday? The accidental pistol-shot the sheriff
+got is pretty bad. The rates of board at the Cosmopolitan Hotel are
+five dollars a week; three meals for a dollar. The Odd-Fellows will
+give a ball on the 25th. Our vociferous friend Sam N---- is starting
+for Puget Sound." And so on.
+
+I observe and I hear that these locals are by far the best-read portion
+of the paper. A variety of items of scraps from the neighborhood, and
+advertisements, the longest of which relate to patent medicines of all
+sorts, fill up these two inner pages of the paper. The secret of cheap
+production lies in obtaining the paper, with the two outside pages
+ready printed, from an office in Portland, which supplies in this way
+twenty or thirty of these little newspapers. Thus the cost to the
+editor is reduced to the getting-up of the two inner pages, and, as
+will be seen, not a very high level of brain-power is needed.
+
+"The Oregonian" is the only journal in the State giving the latest
+telegrams. Naturally it is published in Portland, and devoted mainly to
+the interests of that city. It is connected with the Associated Press,
+and possesses the practical monopoly of the supply of news, properly so
+called. Professing to be Republican in politics, it assumes the liberty
+of advocating doctrines and supporting candidates for office in direct
+violation of the acknowledged principles of the party and the wishes of
+the party managers. With a parade of fairness, and willingness to admit
+to its columns views and communications opposing the ideas it may be
+advocating at the time, it takes care to color matters in such form as
+to pervert or weaken all opposing or criticising matter. It is bitterly
+hostile to every movement in the Willamette Valley tending toward
+independence of Portland's money power and influence. While professing
+to desire the development of the State, it reads that to mean solely
+the aggrandizement of Portland. It enjoys a happy facility of
+conversion, and will unblushingly advocate to-day the adoption of
+measures it denounced last week. Unreliable in everything except its
+telegraphic news, and oftentimes seeking to color them by suggestive
+head-notes and capital announcements, it is a calamity to the State
+that its chief journal should be at once the most unpopular at home and
+the most misleading abroad.
+
+Of course, "The Oregonian" is not the only journal professing to be of
+and for the State at large. Several are published at Portland claiming
+the character of general State interest. Such are the "Willamette
+Farmer," a journal chiefly devoted to the farming interest, and with
+which "The Oregonian" is very frequently at war; "The New Northwest,"
+edited by Mrs. Duniway, a lady enthusiast in favor of woman's rights
+and woman's suffrage, but making up with a good deal of ability a paper
+containing much of general interest; the "Pacific Christian Advocate,"
+a religious paper; and also a number of other papers, Democratic and
+Republican, of no special note.
+
+Salem, Albany, and Harrisburg possess newspapers above the average of
+ability and circulation.
+
+I thought there was a good deal of wisdom in the letter of a
+correspondent of mine in one of the Eastern States, who concluded a
+letter of general inquiry as to the State of Oregon with a request that
+I would send him a bundle of local newspapers, "by which," said he, "I
+can judge better of the present conditions of life in Oregon than by
+the answers of any one special correspondent."
+
+There are very few poor people in Oregon--so poor, that is, as to need
+charitable help. Such are taken charge of by the county court, and from
+the county funds such an allowance is made in the case of families as
+shall keep them from absolute want. In the case of single persons they
+are given into the care of such families as are willing to receive them
+in return for a moderate sum, say three or four dollars a week.
+
+[Sidenote: _SECRET SOCIETIES._]
+
+The various societies and orders, namely, the Freemasons, the
+Foresters, the Odd-Fellows, the Order of United Workmen, the Good
+Templars, and others, have a large number of adherents in Oregon. I
+believe the Freemasons number upward of seven thousand brethren; the
+present Grand Master is the Secretary of State, and a very efficient
+head he makes. The Freemasons and other orders take charge of the needy
+brethren with their proverbial charity, and thus relieve to a great
+extent the public funds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+Industries other than farming--Iron-ores--Coal--Coos Bay mines--
+Seattle mines--Other deposits--Lead and copper--Limestone--Marbles
+--Gold, where found and worked--Silver, where found and worked--Gold
+in sea-sand--Timber--Its area and distribution--Spars--Lumber--Size
+of trees--Hard woods--Cost of production and sale of lumber--Tanneries
+--Woolen-mills--Flax-works--Invitation to Irish--Salmon--Statistics
+of the trade--Methods--Varieties of salmon--When and where caught--
+Salmon-poisoning of dogs--Indians fishing--Traps--Salmon-smoking.
+
+
+It must not be inferred, from the prominence given in these pages to
+the farming and stock-raising interests of Oregon, that openings can
+not be found in many directions for new and rising industries.
+
+Oregon is as rich in minerals as in lands for wheat-growing and
+cattle-raising. In the north of the State, about six miles from
+Portland, at a place called Oswego, on the Willamette, very rich
+deposits of brown hematite iron-ore have been discovered, and have for
+a few years been worked. The pig-iron produced at these smelting-works
+is now used in a foundry close at hand, to which a rolling-mill is just
+added. The iron is of the very best Scotch-iron quality, and commands
+equivalent prices at home and also in San Francisco.
+
+At many other points large deposits of iron-ore are waiting for
+development. It is reported from Columbia, Tillamook, Marion,
+Clackamas, Linn, Polk, Jackson, and Coos Counties. In the Cascade
+Mountains it has been found in many directions, but as yet has not been
+properly prospected.
+
+Coal abounds. The Coos Bay mines have been opened and worked for some
+years, and they keep quite a fleet of schooners plying between the
+mines and San Francisco. Other beds have been found on the Umpqua; and
+coal is reported from many points in the Coast Range. So far as my own
+knowledge goes, these mountain discoveries are of no very great value,
+from the want of continuity and uniformity of level, though it is but
+little more than the outcrop which has been tested in most places. A
+different report is given of a recent discovery in Polk County, in this
+valley, where a thick vein of stone-coal in the basin has been found.
+The coal I have seen in the hills is anthracite, nearly allied to
+lignite. The favorable feature is the outcrop at so many points in a
+northeast and southwest line of what seems to be the same vein.
+
+Recently there has been a very energetic effort made to develop the
+coal-mines located in the Seattle district of Washington Territory. The
+presiding genius is Mr. Henry Villard, now so widely known in
+connection with the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. The present
+output of these mines is about one hundred thousand tons per annum; but
+under the new arrangements it is expected that this will be raised to
+seven hundred and fifty thousand tons, so as to supply not only the San
+Francisco market, but also to deliver the coal at a moderate price at
+the various points, both on the Columbia and Willamette Rivers, reached
+by the steamboats of the above-mentioned company. Three large
+steam-colliers are to be used for the ocean transport of the coal.
+Although this enterprise belongs to Washington Territory, I have
+thought it deserving of mention here, as being likely to have an
+important bearing on the development of Oregon.
+
+[Sidenote: _MINERALS._]
+
+Lead and copper have been discovered in abundance in Jackson,
+Josephine, and Douglas Counties, on Cow Creek, a tributary of the
+Umpqua River, and also on the Santiam among the Cascades.
+
+Limestone, sandstone--both brown and gray--and marble quarries have
+been opened at various points in the State.
+
+Gold is found in paying quantities at many points in Southern Oregon,
+and also in the gold-bearing black sand of the sea-beach, all along the
+southern and central portions of the State. The finely comminuted
+condition in which the gold occurs in the black sand has been a serious
+obstacle in the way of its profitable working; but the combined
+chemical and mechanical processes recently adopted bid fair to prove
+thoroughly successful. The Governor of the State estimated the product
+of Oregon in gold and silver in the year 1876 at not less than two
+million dollars.
+
+The gold-mines of Baker County, and the gold and silver mines in Grant
+County in Eastern Oregon, have also recently been more fully developed,
+and with great success.
+
+With the inflow of foreign capital, now begun in earnest, those best
+qualified to judge predict for Oregon a very high place among the gold
+and silver producing States of the Union.
+
+The mineral district in Grant and Baker Counties will be shortly
+rendered accessible and profitable by the expected completion, both of
+the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company's line and of that of the
+Oregon Pacific, having eastward connections at Boise City in Idaho,
+some fifty miles eastward of the eastern boundary of Oregon.
+
+The timber of Oregon is of world-wide fame. It will take many years to
+exhaust the districts even now accessible to river, railroad, or
+harbor; and the opening up of the various portions of the State to be
+traversed by the railroads either now or shortly to be put in hand will
+bring to market the timber from hundreds of square miles of woodland
+yet untouched.
+
+The following general statement is chiefly extracted from the "Report
+of the Government Commissioner of Agriculture" for the year 1875:
+
+Baker County has a timber area of five hundred square miles,
+principally pine and fir. Benton County has a belt of timber-land of
+one eighth of a mile wide by forty-five miles in length, lying along
+the Willamette River, and another belt in the Coast Mountains of
+twenty-five by thirty miles.
+
+This timber is principally pine and fir; there are also large
+quantities of splendid spruce; alder and white-oak, laurel and maple
+are also found. Alder grows from twenty-four to thirty inches in
+diameter, and is worth for cabinet-making purposes from thirty to forty
+dollars a thousand feet at the factory. There is a belt principally of
+spruce timber, a mile wide and how many miles long I can not say,
+heading northward from Depot Slough, a stream running into Yaquina Bay,
+many of the trees being eight and nine feet in diameter, and two
+hundred and fifty feet high.
+
+I have seen a hundred and thirty pines cut for ships' spars on one
+homestead near Yaquina Bay, not one of which snapped in the felling,
+and which ran from eighty to one hundred and twenty feet in the clear,
+without a branch, and about as straight and level as a ruler. And this
+lot were cut from but a very few acres of the wood, and where it was
+easy to convey them to the tidal stream which floated them to the
+harbor. It was a pretty sight to watch the team of five or six yokes of
+oxen hauling the long, white spars from the wooded knoll on which they
+grew--the red and white colors of the oxen and the voices of the
+teamsters and lumbermen lending life and cheerfulness to the somber
+forest.
+
+[Sidenote: _TIMBER._]
+
+Clackamas is one of the best timbered counties in the Willamette
+Valley, fully one half of its area being in heavy timber. Pine, fir,
+spruce, white cedar, white oak, maple, and ash are found. About two
+thirds of the area of Curry County is covered with forests of yellow,
+red, and white fir, sugar-pine, white cedar, spruce, white and other
+oaks, and madrono. The timber-lands of Douglas are principally covered
+with the different varieties of evergreens and oaks. There are
+thousands of acres which would yield from three to six hundred cords to
+the acre not yet taken up. Not over one third of the area of Lane
+County is woodland. This embraces the different varieties common to the
+Pacific coast.
+
+The timber-land of Linn, occupying half its area, is comprised in three
+belts of dense forest, half of which is red fir. Within the last
+twenty-four years thousands of acres of woodland have grown up from
+seed, and are now covered with trees from forty to eighty feet high,
+with a diameter of from ten inches to two feet. There have been made
+from one acre of fir-timber six thousand rails ten feet long by at
+least four inches thick.
+
+Multnomah has a large area of timber-land, mostly yellow and red fir.
+
+Three fourths of the area of Tillamook is in timber, and half of this
+is fir and hemlock. The forests of Umatilla are confined to the
+mountains, where they are very dense, and to the belts along the
+streams. Wasco has immense forests in the mountains, many of them as
+yet inaccessible. The general result is, that Oregon has in all
+15,407,528 acres of woodlands out of a total area of 60,975,360 acres.
+The timber on the average is worth now about four dollars per thousand
+cubic feet at the saw-mill in the log, and costs when sawed into inch
+lumber about eight dollars the thousand feet of such lumber. The price
+of the lumber to the consumer varies from nine to fourteen dollars per
+thousand feet, according to the demand. Much of the fir and spruce
+timber will cut into six or seven logs of sixteen feet in length, the
+tree being six feet in diameter two feet from the ground.
+
+From one cut out of a fallen fir on my own land we split one hundred
+and thirty-two rails of fully four inches diameter, and from several
+trees over six hundred rails each have been split.
+
+A good deal of unauthorized timber-cutting goes on upon the Government
+land not yet taken up. When the logger is honest, he buys the right to
+cut from the owner of the land, paying "stumpage" of about fifty cents
+a tree. I have known many acres to provide over fifty of these big
+trees, thus returning a good price for the timber, and leaving rich and
+partly cleared land for pasturing purposes in the hands of the owner.
+
+One of the industries that needs to be established in many parts of the
+State is tanning. Hides are plentiful, and of excellent quality; bark,
+both of oak and of hemlock, is easily procurable, and the water-power
+is abundant almost everywhere. At present the leather used is chiefly
+imported from California; it has been hastily tanned, and is of poor
+quality. The drawback to this business is that it absorbs capital
+before it begins to yield profit; but, the machine once having begun to
+revolve, the returns are steady, the risks few, the results permanent,
+and the profits very considerable.
+
+[Sidenote: _WOOLEN-MILLS._]
+
+The woolen manufacture in Oregon has already taken good hold. Oregon
+goods are well known in California, and in Philadelphia and New York
+also. They received well-deserved praise at the Centennial Exhibition
+of 1876. There are three woolen-factories in the State: one at Oregon
+City, one at Brownsville, and one at Ashland, in the south of the
+State. Their blankets and tweeds are admirable for thickness, solidity,
+and softness of texture. The Oregon City mills employ a good many
+Chinamen; they work well and economically. There is every probability
+of a fourth factory being at once established in or near Albany; and
+the more the better, considering the ample water-power, and the
+abundance and excellence of fleeces.
+
+Taking into account the quality of the flax grown in the State and the
+indefinite power of expansion of the product, seeing that the very edge
+of the flax-land has hardly yet been touched, while many thousand acres
+are specially fit for the crop, and considering, also, that linen in
+its various forms is unnaturally dear on the Pacific coast, it seems a
+pity that one or more linen-factories should not be established. The
+present disturbed state of Ireland has, we know, prepared many of its
+inhabitants for emigration, and among them are many trained in the
+growth, the preparation, and the manufacture of flax. Any persons
+familiar with this industry could not do better than transfer
+themselves, their capital, their machinery, and their staff of workers,
+to this free land; here they will find a hearty welcome, a fine
+climate, the very best of raw material, a market at their doors,
+unlimited opening for expansion of their business, and a habitation
+free alike from turbulence, riot, and oppression.
+
+No book attempting to deal, in however general terms, with the
+industrial development of Oregon, can pass the business in canned
+salmon without notice.
+
+The growth of the business has been marvelous. The following table
+shows the canning of the Columbia River salmon during the ten years
+ending with 1880:
+
+  Year.             Cases.     Year.         Cases.
+
+  1871              35,000     1876         429,000
+  1872              44,000     1877         393,000
+  1873             103,000     1878         412,924
+  1874             244,000     1879         440,000
+  1875             291,000     1880         540,000
+
+Each case contains four dozen tins of one pound each, or two dozen of
+two pounds.
+
+The total output of the Pacific coast for 1880 is estimated at 680,000
+cases.
+
+[Sidenote: _SALMON._]
+
+Besides the Columbia River, which is the main source of supply, other
+Oregon rivers are laid under tribute. The Rogue River, the Alsea,
+Umpqua, Coquille, Nehalem, Siletz, and Yaquina Rivers are all
+salmon-yielding streams. The system followed is generally known. The
+proprietor erects his cannery on the edge of the river, generally on
+piles driven into the mud. The cannery consists of a large warehouse
+for laying out the fresh salmon as soon as caught. Next comes a
+building fitted with large knives for cutting up the salmon into the
+proper length for canning, and boilers in which the cans or tins are
+boiled. Then come the packing and storing houses. That the undertaking
+need be on a large scale may be judged from the fact that they may have
+to deal with three or four thousand salmon at a time, as the produce of
+one night's take, and these salmon averaging twenty-five pounds in
+weight.
+
+The canneries make their own tins, one man, by the aid of ingenious
+machinery, putting together fifteen hundred tins in a day.
+
+The boats and nets belong to the cannery. The fishermen are paid by the
+fish they bring in: one third belongs to the cannery in right of boat
+and nets; the other two thirds are bought from the fishermen at fifty
+cents a fish.
+
+The importance to Oregon of the trade is shown by the proceeds for the
+year ending August 1, 1879, from the 412,924 cases exported being
+$1,863,069.
+
+The tin for the salmon, and also for the canned beef which is prepared
+in several of the canneries, is all imported. The imports for 1879
+amounted to 54,520 boxes, costing from $8 to $9 a box.
+
+The number of salmon ascending some of these streams to spawn is almost
+incredible.
+
+Both the Siletz and the Yaquina Rivers yield two kinds: one a heavy,
+thick-shouldered, red-tinged, hooknosed fellow, which is never eaten by
+white men when it has passed up out of tidal waters; the other a slim,
+graceful, bright-scaled fish, known as the silver salmon. Of this last
+there are two runs in the year: one in April and May, the other in
+October and November.
+
+The heavy, red salmon runs in the fall of the year, from August to
+November, and the heads of all the streams, even to the little brooks
+among the mountains, are filled with ugly, dark, yellow-and-white
+spotted fish pushing their way upward, until I have seen five huge fish
+in a tiny pool too shallow to cover their back-fins. Some get back to
+the ocean with the autumn floods; the majority are left dying, or dead,
+on the gravel or along the edges of the streams. Here they are deadly
+poison to dogs, and to wolves also. It is almost impossible to keep
+dogs of mature age in the coast district; sooner or later they are
+almost sure to get "salmoned," and to die.
+
+The only way is to allow the puppies free run at the salmon: two out of
+three will die; the survivor, having passed the ordeal, will be
+salmon-proof and live to his full age.
+
+The symptoms of salmon-poisoning are refusal of food, staring coat,
+running at the eyes, dry and feverish nose, absolute stoppage of
+digestion, followed by death in about three days after the first
+appearance of poisoning.
+
+All sorts of remedies have been unsuccessfully tried. A young dog may
+battle through, if dosed with Epsom salts as soon as his state is
+observed; for an old dog, I can find nothing of avail. Castor-oil,
+large doses of mustard, shot in quantities forced down the throat,
+calomel, aloes, blackberry-tea--all of these I have heard of, but have
+not the slightest faith in any one.
+
+Therefore, any new-comers into the coast country bringing valuable dogs
+with them will have to keep them tied up, or else may expect to lose
+them, as I have unfortunately experienced.
+
+[Sidenote: _INDIAN SALMON-TRAPS._]
+
+The repugnance of the white man to the dark and spotted salmon is not
+shared by the Indians. They had a salmon-camp on Big Elk, the chief
+tributary of the Yaquina, last year, which I went to see. The river
+runs between steep hills, covered with the usual brush, and with a
+narrow trail cut through along the edge of the water. The tide runs up
+for about four miles above the junction with the Yaquina, and there, in
+a wide pool into which the little river fell over a ridge of rocks,
+hardly to be called a fall, the Indians had their dam and traps. Just
+below the fall they had planted a row of willow and hazel stakes in the
+bed of the stream close together and tied with withes. In the center
+was an opening--a little lane of stakes leading into a pocket some six
+feet wide. The Indian women sat out on the rock by the side of the
+pocket with dip-nets and ladled out the salmon, which had been beguiled
+by their instinct of pushing always up the stream into entering the
+fatal inclosure.
+
+The Indian _tyhees_ or shelters were on the bank close by--miserable
+hovels made of boughs, and some old boards they had carried up--and
+hung round with torn and dirty blankets to keep in the smoke. Poles
+were set across and across, and from these hung the sides and bellies
+of the salmon, while a little fire of damp wood and grass was kept
+constantly replenished in the middle of the floor, by a
+wretched-looking crone who squatted close by.
+
+[Illustration: Newport Pier, 1879.]
+
+When we got there, a younger woman was opening and splitting the salmon
+just caught, pressing the eggs into a great osier basket, where they
+looked exactly like a pile of red currants. She gave us a handful of
+eggs for trout-bait; as every one knows, the most deadly and poaching
+lure for that fish. And we found the benefit of them that same evening
+at Elk City, four miles below, where the salmon-trout crowd almost in
+shoals to be caught.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+Eastern Oregon--Going "east of the mountains"--Its attractions--
+Encroaching sheep--First experiments in agriculture and planting
+--General description of Eastern Oregon--Boundaries--Alkaline
+plains--Their productions--The valleys--Powder River Valley--
+Description--The Snake River and its tributaries--The Malheur
+Valley--Harney Lake Valley--Its size--Productions--Wild grasses
+--Hay-making--The winters in Eastern Oregon--Wagon-roads--Prineville
+--Silver Creek--Grindstone Creek Valley--Crooked River--Settlers'
+descriptions and experiences--Ascent of the Cascades going west--
+Eastern Oregon towns--Baker City--Prineville--Warnings to settlers
+--Growing wheat for the railroads to carry.
+
+
+While Western Oregon and the Willamette Valley in particular have been
+settled up, the valleys, plains, and hill-sides of Eastern Oregon are
+only just now beginning to attract population.
+
+But the reports of that country have spread far and wide through the
+valley, and half the young men are burning to try their fortunes "east
+of the mountains." When a youngster has been brought up in a wide
+valley, the eastern sky-line of which has been marked out, from his
+very infancy, by a line of rugged hills, over which the snow-peaks
+tower; when he has been used to see the mountains stand out clear and
+majestic, rosy in the glow of the setting sun, and then putting on
+their winter garments of purity, and shining cold in the clear
+moonlight of the winter nights; when he has watched them disappear as
+the mists of the autumn rains filled the valley, to be hidden for weeks
+from his gaze, and then suddenly revealed as the drying and vigorous
+west wind dispelled the veil which the warm south wind had only served
+to thicken--I can sympathize with the longing felt, even if
+unexpressed, to climb this barrier and find if there be in verity a
+Canaan beyond.
+
+And then, until lately at all events, to the young and bold there was a
+strong attraction in the life on horseback, in the gallop after the
+straggling cattle over those rolling plains; in the bachelor life of
+freedom, where home was just where night found him, and where his
+comrades had made their fire and picketed their horses; and, though
+last not least, where the wealthy stockmen had started from the exact
+point where he stood, their capital good health, readiness to rough it,
+and a determination to get on.
+
+But a few years ago this was what life east of the mountains meant.
+Then men found that sheep paid better than cattle; and the
+sheep-herder, with his band of merinos, took possession of the rocky
+hill-sides, on which the thick bunch-grass was already beginning to
+fail to hold its first vigor and abundance, and his peaceful but not
+unresisted invasion pushed the cattle-men farther into the wilderness.
+
+The loathing and contempt of the stockmen for these encroaching sheep!
+Some of them actually encouraged, and refused to permit the slaughter
+of, the prairie-wolves, which did not molest the cattle, but waged war
+on the flocks. But the tide would not be turned back, and mile after
+mile the sheep pushed on.
+
+The bunch-grass which the cattle lived on, and which only overstocking
+injured, gave way before the sheep; for these eat out the hearts of the
+young grass, and their range grew wider as the feed became more sparse.
+
+And then the farmer followed the sheep-herder, and the eaten pastures
+were turned up by the plow. True, the soil was alkaline in many places,
+and rocky and stony to an extent strange to the eyes of the valley
+farmer, who hardly ever sees a stone. But there were streams on many a
+hill-side which only needed a little work to be turned on to and to
+irrigate the soil below; and many a valley was explored, whose level
+land gave promise of numberless farms.
+
+Even if the land were bare and desolate-looking to a degree, and the
+farmhouse stood naked and unattractive, yet it was found that apples
+and pears would grow, and even that peaches would ripen well in a
+hotter and drier summer climate than is found elsewhere in Oregon.
+
+And when the results of the first experiments were disclosed, and it
+was found that wheat yielded thirty, forty, and even fifty bushels to
+the acre on these very lands, the tide turned.
+
+[Sidenote: _EASTERN OREGON._]
+
+Men who had decried Eastern Oregon as a desert, fit only to pasture a
+few cattle and scattering bands of sheep, suddenly changed their tone,
+and nothing was heard from them but advice to leave the worn-out lands
+of the Willamette Valley, and go to this, which was the coming country.
+
+And advantage was at once taken of this state of things to prepare the
+public mind for, and then to take up vast sums of money to provide,
+railroad and increased steamboat accommodation to bring the products of
+these eastern plains within reach of Portland and the seaboard.
+
+What is this country like? The Columbia bounds the north, the Snake
+River the east of Oregon--the one running east and west, the other
+north and south. Nearly midway between the Cascade Mountains and the
+Snake River, the Blue Mountains run, roughly speaking, north and south.
+This range is much less elevated than the Cascades, but very wide, and
+rises gradually from far-reaching foot-hills about the center of the
+State.
+
+Between the Blue Mountains and the Cascades lies a great stretch of
+open, rolling country--bare, rocky hills, not a tree and hardly a bush
+to be seen; until lately covered with bunch-grass and some sage-brush.
+This is some of the country to which the change of purpose applies
+which I have just described.
+
+The prevailing color of the country is a reddish-brown, except when in
+spring a tinge of living green spreads with the growing grass.
+
+Near the Cascade Mountains are wide tracts covered with fine volcanic
+lava-dust. Where there is moisture to be found, this soil supports a
+good growth of grass, and the pine timber stretches to its edge. But
+joining it come the bare alkaline plains. Their natural vegetation is
+the bunch-grass and the sage-brush (_Artemisia_).
+
+The chief constituents in the alkaline formation are chlorides of
+sodium and potassium--demanding irrigation as the remedy for the excess
+of alkali, while beet-root is recommended as a first crop to absorb the
+surplus salt. Excellent crops are raised in the Ochico Valley, on this
+land; and there is no doubt that a very large portion of the tracts now
+being abandoned by the cattle- and sheep-herder will prove of enormous
+productiveness in wheat.
+
+East of the Blue Mountains is found, among others, the Powder River
+Valley. This is in the western part of Baker County and partly in Union
+County. On the north and east a steep hill-side separates it from the
+Grand Ronde Valley; on the south and west rises the spur of the Blue
+Mountain range. The valley is about twenty-four miles long by twelve
+wide, thus covering two hundred and ninety square miles.
+
+The lands in this valley may be taken as a type of similar valleys in
+Eastern Oregon. They may be divided into three classes. First, the
+bottom-lands pure and simple. These consist of alluvial soil of
+abundant depth and richness; the only question an intending settler
+need ask is whether they are subject to inundation from the overflow of
+the river, which invariably is found running through the whole length.
+Above the bottom-lands, and far exceeding them in extent, are the
+foothills, yielding in this instance fully one hundred and eighty
+square miles of excellent grain-producing lands, and adapted in all
+respects to farming purposes. And above these again rise the hills for
+pasturage, and only useful for grain-growing where facilities for
+irrigation can be found. The character of bareness does not apply to
+these hill-sides; the alkaline soil does not extend to them, and a
+richer vegetation, in which other native grasses and spreading plants
+come to the aid of the predominating bunch-grass, affords food to sheep
+and cattle all the summer through.
+
+[Sidenote: _SNAKE RIVER AND ITS TRIBUTARIES._]
+
+All the tributaries of the Snake River from the Oregon side run through
+a country of a somewhat similar character, and each of these streams is
+the source of life and vegetation. Among these other valleys may be
+named the Lower Powder River, Eagle Creek, Pine Creek, Upper Burnt
+River, Upper and Lower Willow Creek, and the Malheur. This last
+requires separate mention. It runs through the boundaries of the
+Malheur Indian reservation, now shortly to be thrown open to
+settlement, and offering about three million acres of fertile and
+desirable land.
+
+The Malheur River runs from the Harney Lake Valley to the Snake. This
+last-named valley is about sixty miles long by twenty wide; and this
+area of twelve hundred square miles is mainly covered with a growth of
+grass so tall that a man riding through it on horseback in August can
+tie the heads of the wild-rye together over his head, or, to use
+another illustration, sufficiently high and dense to hide completely a
+horseman who diverges from the road or track. With the wild-rye are
+mixed bunch-grass, blue-joint, and quantities of the wild-pea vine. And
+the country north and south of it, though bare, is not barren and
+mountainous; but in the spring and summer, before the grass is up to
+its full height, a man can ride and even drive his wagon, day in and
+day out, until he gets out of the boundaries of Oregon.
+
+The preparations which the settlers make for the winter consist mainly
+in cutting and storing for hay the natural grasses of the country. Fort
+Harney, which has been until lately a post held by two companies, has
+stabling for four hundred horses. Five years ago the troops got cut and
+stacked from the surrounding country nine hundred tons of choice hay.
+
+Neither in this valley are the winters very severe. Until railroad
+communications are provided, the sparse settlers have to abandon
+themselves to isolation from the outside world, because the snow lies
+deep on the plateaus and ridges which extend between them and the
+haunts of civilized man. But within the limits of the valleys the
+inhabitants enjoy life in winter. The snow does not lie long or deep;
+and from so many sources that I am forced to credit it comes the
+information that no one accustomed to American winter in any of the
+Middle States need have any apprehension in coming to live in any of
+the valleys I have named.
+
+Turning westward from the Snake River and traversing the Malheur Valley
+and the Harney Lake Valley, the traveler may follow one of the military
+wagon-roads--that one whose fortunes in the violent and scandalous
+attempts on the title to its granted lands I have before referred to.
+
+From Camp Harney to Prineville, the principal town in the southern
+portion of Wasco County, the distance is about one hundred and
+forty-five miles. For between thirty and forty miles the road runs
+through Silver Creek Valley, or along land watered by its affluent
+streams. The description I have given of valleys in Eastern Oregon
+applies to this. The country on either side of the road consists of
+rolling hills, covered with bunch-grass and sage-brush, and
+occasionally sparse juniper. Settlement in this valley is very recent.
+But thirteen families had taken up their residence there previous to
+and during the fall of 1880, and several more are going in this spring.
+
+[Sidenote: _GRINDSTONE CREEK VALLEY._]
+
+Then Grindstone Creek Valley is reached. This is one of the head-waters
+of Crooked River. A perfect network of creeks and streams is passed
+before the main Crooked River is reached, and each stream and creek
+brings fertility to the land on either side of it and through which it
+runs.
+
+A farmer named Moppin has the credit of growing the first grain on
+Grindstone Creek; and there, in the harvest of 1880, he raised six
+hundred bushels of fine oats on nine acres of land, and grew one
+hundred and fifty bushels of potatoes on less than two thirds of an
+acre; several of the potatoes weighed two pounds and upward.
+
+Then, following down the course of the Crooked River Valley, we pass
+through a country which is described in the following terms by a
+settler of eleven years' experience:
+
+"This Crooked River Valley is about seventy-five miles long, and
+extends almost due east and west. It is a beautiful valley, with little
+or no timber in it, with the exception of willows along the river. The
+average width of the river is about one hundred feet. Now comes the
+stock country on the south of this river, and along its entire length
+is one line of hills and plateaus, thickly covered with bunch-grass of
+the best quality. Every few miles comes in a creek from the highlands
+back on either side. On these streams, from head to mouth, with but few
+exceptions, are good farming-lands.
+
+"At this time there are hundreds of thousands of acres of good land
+lying idle, waiting for the industrious farmer to fence and plow and
+raise grain on. But what is the use? There is no market for the grain
+except in limited quantities, as we have no facilities for shipping to
+the outside world. The consequence is, that if a man does not have
+money enough to go into the stock-business, he won't come here at all.
+The one great trouble is to get our supplies. Within a year after the
+completion of a railroad to this locality the people over in your
+section will be surprised at the vast amount of grain received from
+here. As it is now, we have to drive our fat cattle from one to two
+hundred miles in the winter to find a market, and by the time we get
+them there they are poor. Give us a railroad, and we can ship our fat
+stock five hundred miles to market, and afford to sell cheaper than
+those who live in your (Willamette) valley. We do not have to feed at
+all. We mark and brand a calf, turn him out on the range, and, when he
+is four years old, sell him for twenty dollars cash--net profit about
+seventeen dollars. Does that pay? Give us facilities for getting to a
+better market, and it will pay better."
+
+Passing still eastward after leaving Prineville along this Crooked
+River Valley, and then to its junction with the Des Chutes River, the
+country retains its fertile and promising character.
+
+[Sidenote: _A FARMER'S OPINION._]
+
+A farmer of twenty years' experience in Oregon, and who is a thoroughly
+reliable man, writes thus: "I have known this country well for several
+years. This fall (1880) I have taken a journey through it right along
+east, traveling slowly and with a view to settling. What my opinion is
+you may judge when I tell you that I have made up my mind to settle in
+the Crooked River Valley, where I shall go with my family in the
+spring.
+
+"I know no part of Oregon that pleases me better. You have the best of
+land for wheat, oats, and potatoes. You can get a good garden, and grow
+all the vegetables you want. You have unlimited range for your stock,
+where they will get fat on the natural grasses, and where you can put
+up all the hay you want. Cattle, horses, and sheep do equally well out
+there. You are going into a healthy climate, away from all fever and
+ague or any other sickness of that nature; and you are going to a place
+where the land is bound to be worth four times its present value when
+the Oregon Pacific Railroad is opened."
+
+Beginning the ascent of the Cascades, you pass through and over some
+twenty miles of rough lava country, interspersed with strips of
+scattering timber-land, and then come to Fish Lake and Clear Lake, the
+paradise of the fisherman, the hunter, and the berry-gatherer and
+botanist.
+
+Before I leave the description of Eastern Oregon, let me quote from one
+more letter from a settler of last year out in the Prineville country:
+"I am located on a ranch on Camp Creek, and eight miles below the
+famous 'soap-holes' (silver-mines). We can raise almost anything out
+here, unless it is a mortgage. We have all the potatoes, turnips,
+onions, carrots, and beets we want; all were raised on our ranch, and,
+by-the-way, they were immense. I pulled one turnip that measured
+thirty-four and a half inches in circumference, and quite a number ran
+as high as thirty inches. Early-rose potatoes do remarkably well here.
+I have in about five acres of rye, and will sow about twenty acres of
+wheat and oats in the spring."
+
+I should add that the towns in Eastern Oregon, away from the Columbia,
+are beginning to assume considerable importance.
+
+Baker City was described in December, 1880, as having about one
+thousand inhabitants, while the amount of business transacted would
+average fully $450,000. There were then six substantial fire-proof
+business structures, and two large school-buildings, namely, "St.
+Joseph's" and "The Sisters of the Holy Names." The former is said to be
+a large four-story structure, in brick and stone, of the pure Gothic
+style of the fourteenth century, with accommodations for about one
+hundred and fifty boarding and day scholars; it is managed by a Roman
+Catholic priest named De Roo.
+
+Prineville is a very lively and bustling place, with about the same
+number of inhabitants. It is growing fast, several fine buildings
+having been recently erected, among them a convenient and substantial
+church. There are three large general stores, supplied with heavy
+stocks of goods; from this, as a distributing center, the stockmen and
+ranchers for fifty miles and more in every direction fetch the
+necessaries of life. In the summertime ten or a dozen heavily-loaded
+wagons may be seen any day starting out along this road (which was
+called no road!) for their distant homes.
+
+[Sidenote: _WARNINGS TO SETTLERS._]
+
+It must not be assumed that all Eastern Oregon could be divided off
+into farms of the character of these choicer pieces which such men as I
+have referred to have chosen and settled on. There is many a rough,
+stony hill-side, where the sparse vegetation struggles for life in the
+crannies of the rocks. There is many a stretch of sandy, alkaline
+plain, where the dingy sage-brush grows, with here and there a tuft of
+bunch-grass; there is many a gully where the thirsty steer would look
+in vain for water, even in a dirt-hole, to quench his thirst.
+
+But all this is fully consistent with the fertility and attractiveness
+of the valleys and slopes I have described. For, remember, we are
+dealing with fifty thousand square miles of country, on which, if the
+existing farms were marked on a large scale-map, they would be hardly
+noticeable in the vast expanse of land waiting for settlement and
+population.
+
+But he would be a short-sighted man who should think of farming in
+Eastern Oregon, as it now is, save in a few accessible spots, where
+proximity to a road will provide a market at his door for the produce
+he has raised. In Northeastern Oregon, where the great crops of wheat
+are beginning to be grown, the farmer is at the mercy of the
+Transportation Company, which hitherto has sucked the oyster and left
+the farmer the shell. For what profit can there be in growing wheat at
+thirty and thirty-five cents a bushel, that same wheat being worth one
+hundred cents in Portland, and the difference being absorbed in freight
+and charges?
+
+And yet, so great is the charm of novelty, so prone are a large number
+of the emigrants to this State to try a new place, that land up there
+fetches from five to fifteen dollars an acre, just about the same price
+for which they could buy a farm in the valley foot-hills, where wheat
+was worth seventy-five cents against the thirty-five, and where
+churches, schools, post-offices, and telegraphs are already provided.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+Southern Oregon--Its boundaries--The western counties--Population--Ports
+--Rogue River--Coos Bay--Coal--Lumber--Practicable railroad routes--The
+harbor--Shifting and blowing sands--A quoted description--Cost of
+transportation--Harbor improvements--Their progress and results--The
+Umpqua--Douglas County--Jackson County--The lake-country--Linkville
+--Water-powers--Indian reservations--The great mountains--Southeastern
+Oregon--General description--Industries.
+
+
+Southern Oregon is defined generally as bounded on the west by the
+Pacific, and starting from its western boundary is bounded on the north
+by the Calapooya Mountains, shutting in the Umpqua Valley, and then
+running eastward, taking in the lake country. In this division are
+included the western counties of Douglas, Coos, Curry, Josephine,
+Jackson, Lake, and the southern half of Grant and Baker. A great
+portion of the last-named counties is yet unsurveyed.
+
+The western counties already possess, according to the census of 1880,
+a population of 29,081 souls.
+
+The portions of Grant and Baker Counties properly belonging to Southern
+Oregon have only about two thousand people, the reason being that this
+country is truly inaccessible, being so far distant from the seaboard,
+and hardly traversed by a road.
+
+Southern Oregon possesses several rivers and their attendant seaports.
+The most southerly is the Rogue River, which has a course of about one
+hundred miles, running through a very fertile but secluded valley. The
+bar at the entrance is shifting, and the channel very variable; but it
+is entered by both small steamers and by the coasting schooners which
+ply along the coast, with San Francisco as their port of delivery.
+
+Coos Bay, some sixty miles to the north of the Rogue River, needs a
+fuller description, as it is the headquarters of the coal and lumber
+business of Southern Oregon. Detailed reports of the coal-basin give
+not less than seventy-five thousand acres of coal-bearing land,
+estimated to produce from the one vein at present worked not less than
+four hundred and fifty million tons of coal. As many as six workable
+seams are, however, known to exist, including one which has been
+prospected to eleven feet in thickness. Five coal-mines have been
+opened, which are capable of producing about two thousand tons of coal
+daily. The working of these mines is of an inexpensive character, much
+of the mineral being accessible from adits or galleries delivering
+their produce on the hill-sides.
+
+The lumber shipped at Coos Bay is yielded by four large steam
+saw-mills, with an aggregate capacity of about one hundred and fifteen
+thousand feet per day.
+
+There are also four ship-yards, from which between forty and fifty
+vessels have been launched, even up to two thousand tons burden.
+
+The value of coal and lumber exported from Coos Bay was upward of
+$445,000 in the year 1877, according to the statistics collected by a
+committee of residents, when application was about to be made to
+Congress for an appropriation for the improvement of the harbor. It was
+then reported that a railroad was found to be practicable from Coos Bay
+along the Coquille Valley across the Coast Mountains. Such a line would
+then pass through the Umpqua Valley to Roseburg, with a practicable
+extension up the North Fork of the Umpqua River and through the Cascade
+Mountains into Eastern Oregon.
+
+[Sidenote: _SHIFTING AND BLOWING SANDS._]
+
+It was ascertained that the chief difficulty in improving the entrance
+to the port lay in the enormous quantity of movable and shifting sand,
+driven along the coast southward by the prevalent summer northwest
+winds, and then returned by the winter southwest gales.
+
+So violent is this action that it is thus described: "Large tracts to
+the north of Coos Bay and along the rock separating its lower part from
+the sea, where once stood farms and pine-forests, are now buried to the
+tops of the highest trees. Immense quantities of this wind-borne sand
+are constantly going into the bay, and by its swift currents are
+carried out to form the bar, or be deposited in the bight to the east
+and north of the cape."
+
+Let me quote a short description of this section of the country, on
+which before many years the tide of immigration must roll in. The
+writer is the Hon. B. Hermann, who is doing all in his power to draw
+public attention to his district:
+
+"Ten-mile and Camas Valleys, being respectively ten and fifteen to
+twenty-five miles from the terminus of the Oregon and California
+Railroad at Roseburg, are without any other outlet. The cost of teaming
+to this point, added to the present exorbitant rates of railway
+freights, discourages the farmers of those sections in the cultivation
+of the soil. And yet some of the best and most extensive wheat-fields
+of the country are within those circuits, while a vast area is left
+annually to grow brush and weeds, and to remain of comparatively little
+value, which should otherwise contribute to the harvest of thousands of
+bushels of the finest grain.
+
+"From Camas Valley, and along the Middle Fork of the Coquille River,
+until its junction with the main stream is reached, a distance of
+twenty-eight miles by survey, three fourths of the route is without
+even a wagon-road communication, travel being by trail, with ox and
+sled, saddle and pack horse. And yet there is found a goodly
+population, having substantial improvements, some very good farms in
+cultivation, with flouring-mills for the local accommodation.
+
+"The land is very fertile, and capable of growing the usual cereals and
+esculents to perfection, but, owing to the great difficulty of
+transporting the productions to market, a very small portion only is
+cultivated, and much remains vacant, subject to homestead and
+preemption....
+
+"From the junction with the main river, and following the latter to
+near Beaver Slough, or Coquille City, the point of diversion of the
+route toward Coos Bay, an enterprising community is found, owning
+bottom-lands of rich alluvial soil, a great portion of which is now
+being cleared of timber, annually placed under cultivation, and large
+crops of grain garnered. This same remark applies to all the remaining
+portion of the main Coquille Valley, a distance of forty miles or more
+to the sea, and also along the North and South Forks, as well as the
+smaller tributaries. For a distance of seventy-five miles inland the
+Coquille Valley is capable of extensive agricultural development.
+Already this distance is closely peopled, all lands on the main stream
+settled, and improvements slowly made. Much grain is now grown here, a
+large proportion manufactured into flour by the various mills for home
+consumption and shipment to Coos Bay, while a considerable quantity of
+the grain is exported to San Francisco through the mouth of the river.
+
+[Sidenote: _COST OF TRANSPORTATION._]
+
+"Owing, however, to the condition of the Coquille entrance, only small
+ships venture in, and even they are often delayed in the river for
+months at a time, with the shippers' cargo on board....
+
+"Thus the hopeful people of this extensive and unrivaled valley for its
+soil, its productions, its coals, timber, and other abundant natural
+resources, are virtually left without an exit to the markets of the
+world....
+
+"The cost on each bushel of wheat for transportation to Portland from
+any point in the Umpqua Valley is twenty-three cents, to say nothing of
+the added expense of one hundred and ten miles to Astoria, thence by
+sea to San Francisco and elsewhere. From Roseburg to San Francisco by
+way of Portland and Astoria is about eight hundred and seventy-five
+miles, and from Roseburg to San Francisco by the way of Coos Bay is
+only four hundred and sixty-five miles.
+
+"Mr. James Dillard, as we are credibly informed, produced last year on
+his farm in Douglas County about six thousand bushels of grain. To have
+transported this only to Portland on its way to market would have cost
+him $1,380. The saving in transportation to Coos Bay by eighty-five
+miles of narrow-gauge road would be to this one farmer on one year's
+crop $780."
+
+No wonder that in this district, as in all others in the State, the
+transportation question should be the burning one of the day.
+
+The Coos Bay people succeeded in gaining the ear of Congress, and two
+years ago an appropriation of $60,000 was made for the improvement of
+the harbor.
+
+The problem was a very difficult one for the engineers to solve, from
+the conditions above stated of the driven and shifting sand. It would
+not have been strange if the works first planned had needed alterations
+as they progressed.
+
+But the success of the breakwater constructed by the United States
+engineers from cheap material, available on the spot, has been
+sufficiently marked to encourage the requests for further
+appropriations until the plans are executed in their entirety, and the
+opening of the harbor carried still farther out to sea.
+
+It is reported now (in the spring of 1881) that the north sand-spit is
+being cut through by the current in the direction indicated by the
+lines of the breakwater, and that deeper and more constant water is
+found than heretofore--a good augury of success for similar works where
+the obstructions are not so shifting as sand alone, and where they are
+free from the influence of the sand tracts to the north, whence so much
+of the obstruction to Coos Bay entrance came. And this is our happy
+case at Yaquina.
+
+The Umpqua River is the largest river that, rising in the Cascades, and
+draining a large and fertile valley in its course, flows directly into
+the Pacific, after cutting its channel through the Coast Range. There
+is a wide and very shifting bar at its mouth, through which the usual
+channel gives twelve or thirteen feet at low water. The river is
+navigable for all vessels which can cross the bar as far as Gardner
+City, five miles from the mouth, while smaller vessels can get as far
+as Scottsburg, twenty-five miles up.
+
+Douglas County, now possessing a population of 9,596, is capable of
+sustaining a vastly increased number. It lies almost surrounded by
+mountains, but with a good outlet to the north along the valley lands
+through which the Oregon and California Railroad runs. It is well
+watered throughout by the Umpqua and its tributaries, while the
+northern portion of the county forms the head of the great Willamette,
+the aggregate of many creeks and streams having here their rise.
+
+The climate of Jackson County is a good deal warmer than its mere
+geographical relations to the counties on the north and east of it
+would account for. Indian corn is a staple crop, and peaches and vines
+flourish exceedingly. The sun seems to have more power; and I have a
+vivid remembrance of heat and dust along its roads.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE LAKE COUNTRY._]
+
+Lake County is well named. Huge depressions in the land are filled with
+the Upper and Lower Klamath Lakes, the latter crossing the California
+boundary-line.
+
+North of the Upper Klamath Lake, again, some twenty miles, is the
+Klamath Marsh, doubtless not long since another lake--now, in summer,
+the feeding-ground for cattle, in winter the home of innumerable flocks
+of migratory birds. Between the Upper and Lower Klamath Lakes runs a
+rapid water-course. The town of Linkville stands on its banks. I am
+told that there is water-power enough here to drive as many mills as
+are found at Lowell, Massachusetts. At Linkville is the land-office for
+Southern Oregon.
+
+It has been proposed to run the California extension of the Oregon and
+California Railroad through the gap between Upper and Lower Klamath
+Lakes. Should that long-talked-of project ever be realized, the
+manufacturing facilities of this splendid water-power will no longer be
+suffered to lie dead.
+
+Passing eastward, the great Klamath Indian reservation is reached--a
+tract I only know by hearsay as a land of hills and streams, of gullies
+and water-courses, of lava-beds and barrenness intermixed with quiet
+vales and dells of wondrous beauty--a land where Indian superstitions
+cluster thickly. The Indians are few and scattered, and this country,
+no doubt, ere long will be thrown open to the white traveler and
+hunter, to be quickly followed by the herdsman and the settler.
+
+The great snowy pyramids of the Southern Cascades stand on guard. Mount
+Scott (8,500 feet), Mount Pitt (9,250), and Mount Thielsen (9,250) are
+placed there, thirty miles apart, forbidding passage between the warm
+valleys of Jackson County and the open plains east of the mountains.
+
+But here, too, the hardy pioneers have found their way. I have talked
+with several men who are herding sheep and cattle on these plains. The
+merino thrives here even better than in Northeastern Oregon, and many
+thousand pounds of wool are raised. They describe the country as one of
+open plain and rocky hillside, of scarce water and abundant sage-brush;
+resembling in general features the tract fifty miles to the north, but,
+alas! containing scarcely any of the creeks \and streams which give
+life and fertility to Middle Oregon.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE IDAHO BOUNDARY._]
+
+Eastward again of Stein's Mountains you strike the head-waters of the
+Owyhee, an important tributary of the Snake, and at once recur the
+common features of fertility and consequent settlement. And thus the
+Idaho boundary is reached.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+The towns--Approach to Oregon--The steamers--The Columbia entrance--
+Astoria--Its situation, industries, development--Salmon--Shipping--
+Loading and discharging cargo--Up the Columbia and Willamette to
+Portland--Portland, West and East--Population--Public buildings--
+United States District Court--The judge--Public Library--The Bishop
+schools--Hospital--Churches--Stores--Chinese quarter--Banks--
+Industries--The city's prosperity--Its causes--Its probable future
+--The Oregon Railway and Navigation Company--Shipping abuses and
+exactions--Railroad termini--Up the Columbia--The Dalles--Up
+the Willamette--Oregon City, its history--The falls--Salem--Its
+position and development--Capitol buildings--Flour-mills--Oil-mills
+--Buena Vista potteries--Albany--Its water-power--Flour-mills--Values
+of land--Corvallis--The line of the Oregon Pacific Railroad--Eugene,
+its university and professors--Roseburg--The West-side Railroad to
+Portland--Development of the country--Prosperity--Counties of Oregon
+--Their population--Taxable property--Average possessions--In the
+Willamette Valley--In Eastern Oregon--In Eastern Oregon tributary
+to Columbia and Snake Rivers.
+
+
+Having said so much about the country, something needs to be said about
+the towns. All persons reaching Oregon, save those few who choose to
+face the three nights and two days of staging that divide Redding (the
+northern terminus of the California and Oregon Railroad) from Roseburg
+(the southern terminus of the Oregon and California Railroad), enter
+Oregon by ship from San Francisco. And here, in passing, a word of
+praise for the really beautiful and commodious steamers which have now
+replaced the Ajax and the other monsters which disgraced the traffic
+they were furnished for, as well as their owners. No better boats ply
+on any waters than the State of California, the Columbia, and the
+Oregon. The first two are new ships, with electric lights, and all
+other appliances to match. All are safe and speedy. The State of
+California belongs to the Pacific Coast Steamship Company, the others
+to the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company.
+
+The approach to Oregon is forbidding and stern. There is nothing
+attractive in the sandy coast, in the muddy water, in the broken but
+not romantic scenery, where the water is encroaching on the land, and
+shifting its position and attack from time to time. Here and there
+along the edge are strewed, or stand in various attitudes of death, the
+skeletons of the pine-trees, which look like the relics of battle, the
+perishing remains of the beaten defenders of the coast; and, once over
+the bar, that terror to sea-worn travelers, the approach to Astoria can
+hardly be called beautiful.
+
+[Sidenote: _ASTORIA._]
+
+But the city of Astoria itself has claims to beauty of position. It
+lies within the course of the Columbia; though here the estuary is so
+wide as to give the idea of a lake. Jutting out into the bay above the
+town rises a little promontory, crowned with firs; and between the eye
+rests on the unfamiliar outlines of a large cannery, the buildings of
+gray wood, based on piles sunk into the mud of the bay, and the long,
+shingled roofs catching the rays of the departing sun.
+
+The city consists of a mass of wooden structures low down by the
+water's edge--wharves and docks and repairing-yards in front, and a
+long line of stores and saloons and business-houses behind, broken by
+the more imposing custom-house, post-office, and churches. On the
+slopes of the high hills rising from near the water's edge are the
+scattered white houses of the inhabitants, while the sky-line of the
+hills is broken through by the cutting by which many tons of stone and
+sand are being piled into the bay. The city proper mainly stands on
+piles, the water gurgling and lapping round the barnacles, which
+cluster thick; the enterprise of the people is fast filling in
+underneath from the hills behind.
+
+There are large and substantial docks of the Oregon Railway and
+Navigation Company and others adjoining, where are generally lying two
+or three large ships or barks, going out or returning from their long
+and weary voyage.
+
+The atmosphere of the place in the salmon-season is fishy, huge stacks
+of boxed salmon filling the wharves. The principal street is fringed
+with saloons, mainly looking for custom to the fishermen and seamen.
+
+There is a large lumber-mill, which makes the air resonant with the
+shriek of the great saws; and a boot-and-shoe factory has been recently
+established. Other industries exist; but it is as a seaport that
+Astoria justifies its existence and the foresight of its founders.
+
+Clatsop County has 7,200 inhabitants, of which, I suppose, Astoria
+claims a third. There is an air of business and life about the place,
+and there will be, so far as I can see, even though means should be
+found of ending the present practice of all large ships going to sea
+from Portland being towed to Astoria, and followed by scows and barges,
+there to complete their loading for their outward voyage. A similar
+necessity exists for incoming ships to stay at Astoria to discharge a
+large portion of their cargo before facing the shallows and mud-banks
+of the Willamette on the way to Portland as their port of discharge.
+
+[Sidenote: _PORTLAND._]
+
+The voyage up the Columbia for a hundred miles, and up the Willamette
+for twelve, to Portland, has many charms. First, the grand stream of
+the mighty Columbia, telling in its size and volume of the three
+thousand miles some of its waters have come from their far-off sources
+among distant mountains; then the banks, rising generally sheer from
+the water's edge, crowned with rich and varied vegetation, and here and
+there the rugged rocks breaking through, to give clearness and strength
+to outline; and then on either side the more distant hills, clothed
+with the dark fir-timber to their summits, and behind the mountains
+proper, with Mount Hood and Mount Saint Helen's showing their snowy
+heads. Here and there in a niche or angle under the bank lie huddled
+close the buildings of a cannery, the blue smoke rising from the
+central chimney, and the white boats tied to the piling which juts out
+into the deep water of the river.
+
+You are hardly conscious of leaving the Columbia for the Willamette. It
+looks as if it were an island in mid-stream behind and to the south of
+which you are about to pass; but soon you find that the supposed island
+is the opposite bank of the Willamette, and, passing beacons and marks,
+set to define the channel with the accuracy that is absolutely needed
+(since a sheer to the east or west of only a yard or two would leave
+you fast in a mud-bank for hours), you come in sight of Portland.
+
+I ought to have noticed that here and there along the banks coming up,
+almost on the river's level and exposed to inundation at each high
+water, you pass dairy-farms, consisting of a shanty, or tumble-down
+house, and a few acres of rank and muddy pasture, where ague seems to
+sit brooding on the branches of the trees, whose trunks and limbs yet
+bear the traces of last season's flood.
+
+But now for the juvenile but audacious Portland, who describes herself
+as "the commercial metropolis of the Northwest." One considerable
+suburb, called East Portland, stands on the east bank of the
+Willamette; but the main part of the town is on the west bank, and now
+nearly fills all the level land between the river and the hills behind,
+which seem to be pushing at and resenting the intrusion of the streets
+along their sides. Extensions are taking place along the northern end,
+where a considerable stretch of low-lying land is yet available along
+the banks of the river, and also to some extent at the farther or
+southern end of the city. The building westward is mounting the
+hill-sides, already dotted with the somewhat pretentious wooden houses
+of the more prosperous towns-people.
+
+To one who has seen real cities it is but a little place; but some of
+its twenty-one or twenty-two thousand inhabitants raise claims to
+greatness and even supremacy that make it difficult to suppress a
+smile. In thirty-five years the place has grown from a collection of
+log-huts, set down as if by chance, to its present dimensions, and, no
+doubt, could go on growing as fast as Oregon developed, could the same
+conditions last. The city consists of near a dozen streets running
+parallel with the Willamette, and about twenty-three at right angles.
+Front Street and First Street contain some brick buildings, remarkable
+for so very young a place: the former backs on the Willamette, and on
+it front the warehouses and wharves, against the backs of which the
+ships are moored; the latter contains nearly all the city's stores and
+shops of any consequence.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE PUBLIC LIBRARY._]
+
+The United States District and Circuit Courts sit at Portland. The
+former is and has been for several years presided over by the Hon.
+Matthew P. Deady. This gentleman's name will be long associated with
+the jurisprudence of Oregon, having been one of the original compilers
+of the Code, and reporter of the decisions of the Supreme Court of the
+State, until, promoted to the bench of the United States Court, he has
+taken a high place as a conscientious and able judge. To him also
+Portland mainly owes that which I consider the chief ornament and pride
+of the city, rather than the ambitious but faulty structures in wood,
+stone, and iron on which most of the citizens glorify themselves--I
+mean the Public Library. This institution has its headquarters in
+spacious rooms over Messrs. Ladd & Tilton's Bank; the shelves are
+filled with upward of ten thousand well-selected books, and the process
+of addition is going on under the same careful oversight. Here every
+evening are groups of readers, and it must be a source of constant
+satisfaction to the judge to have been the means of organizing and
+continuing the successful working of an institution which is effecting
+silent but untold good.
+
+Portland is also the residence of Bishop Morris, of the Episcopal
+Church. He has resided there for twelve years past; and to him the city
+is indebted for the St. Vincent's Hospital, where accidents are treated
+at all times, and which is open for receiving besides a certain number
+of sick persons. The bishop has also founded and kept going the Bishop
+Scott Grammar-School. This is a high-school for boys. Last year it had
+fifty-nine pupils and five teachers, and a sound and solid education is
+there given. St. Helen's Hall, the best girls' school in the State, was
+also founded by him. There were here one hundred and sixty pupils and
+twelve teachers last year. Other churches exert themselves to occupy
+and hold prominent positions in the city: notably the Roman Catholics,
+whose archbishop, Seghers, resides in Portland, and who have erected a
+large red-brick cathedral. It is as yet unfinished, but a further
+effort by the Roman Catholics in the diocese is about to be made to
+complete and furnish it.
+
+There is a fair theatre in the city; it is occupied now and again by a
+traveling troupe from San Francisco, generally consisting of a star,
+and his or her supports of a more or less wooden consistency.
+
+The building of the Mechanics' Fair, which is used for balls and
+concerts, one or two Masonic and societies' halls, the rooms of the
+several fire companies, and those of the Young Men's Christian
+Association, complete the list. There are a good many expensive stores
+of all kinds, and all seem prosperous.
+
+The Chinese quarter is, of course, not so large and picturesque as in
+San Francisco, but it is equally well marked: a complete range of
+Chinese stores, with doctors' shops and theatre, the usual lanterns
+hung out over the doors, and the common display of curious edibles.
+There are several substantial Chinese firms and business-houses; one of
+their chief sources of revenue is the bringing over and hiring out the
+large numbers of Chinese laborers required for the railway works now in
+progress. The census disclosed nineteen hundred Chinamen as residents
+of Multnomah County; I suppose eighteen hundred of them were found in
+Portland.
+
+[Sidenote: _BANKS AND MANUFACTORIES._]
+
+Four banks do a large general business, and there is also a
+savings-bank. A mortgage company, having its headquarters in Scotland,
+at Dundee, takes up cheap money in Scotland, and lends it out to great
+advantage in Oregon, at the rates prevalent here, with results
+satisfactory to its manager, Mr. William Reid, as well as to its
+stockholders.
+
+There are two iron-works, a large sash and door factory, a brewery, and
+a twine and rope factory, but beyond these scarcely any manufacturing
+industry.
+
+The prosperity of the city, which has been very great during the last
+few years, is solely attributable to its character of toll-gate.
+Situated at the extreme northern boundary of the State, in a position
+which was not unsuitable when Oregon and Washington Territory were
+bound together, it is perfectly anomalous to suppose that the capital
+city of Oregon should have been there placed by deliberate intention.
+As matters now stand, it is the only port in Oregon, save Astoria, to
+which the large grain-ships can come, and at which the deep-draught
+ocean-going steamers can take in and discharge their cargoes; and, very
+naturally, its business-men seek to perpetuate that state of affairs,
+regardless of the growing interest of the great country which now pays
+tribute to their little town. It is not easy to forget how more than
+one of its leading citizens, when applied to to add their signatures to
+a petition to Congress in aid of the removal of the reef partially
+obstructing Yaquina Bay, replied, "Every dollar you get is so much
+taken directly from our pockets."
+
+A further adventitious help that Portland got was by being made the
+headquarters of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, which brought to
+its wharves the produce of the Columbia River traffic as well as that
+of the Willamette. It might be natural to bring to and to leave at
+Portland wharves the wheat of Western Oregon, but there seems little
+sense in bringing grain down the Columbia, and then up the Willamette,
+to be deposited in Portland, thence to be transferred partly in ships,
+partly in barges and river-steamers, to Astoria, where alone the
+loading of the ships could be completed.
+
+The present style of the Portland and Astoria newspapers is to make
+very light of the Columbia bar. In fact, they boldly state that to
+hardly any port is so good an approach vouchsafed as to Portland; they
+instance London and Philadelphia, Glasgow and New Orleans, as parallel
+instances in position; and "The Oregonian" is never weary of singing
+the praises of their Tom Tiddler's ground of a city.
+
+But it has not always been so with them. "The Astorian" stated, on the
+30th of January, 1880, that there were thirty vessels off the bar,
+unable to enter. The same paper, on the 23d of March, 1880, published
+this item of news: "Pilots on the bar all agree that, unless some
+measures are adopted for permanent improvement of the channel, it will
+not be longer considered safe for vessels to enter or cross out with
+more than eighteen feet draught of water." "The Astorian" in the same
+issue also informed us that "Captain Flavel has been making personal
+inspections of bar-soundings, ... and is himself fully satisfied that
+it is only a question of very brief time, so rapid and broadcast is the
+shoaling process, when it will be impossible for deep vessels to cross;
+the North Channel, along Sand Island from the head, is filling up as
+fast as does the South Channel"; while "The Oregonian" told us as
+recently as December, 1880, that "the Gatherer, with railroad-iron for
+the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, was compelled to lighter four
+times between Baker's Bay and Kalama, at heavy expense. The Chandos,
+sailing from this port within the past two weeks, lightered thirteen
+hundred tons. The A. M. Simpson lightered eleven hundred tons; and the
+last departure, the Edwin Reed, getting off on a winter rain-flood,
+scraped over the shoals with all but two hundred and eighty tons of her
+load, the lightest lighterage of a wooden vessel for many months. The
+report has gone forth that to reach Portland a ship must be dragged up
+a hundred miles or more of river over four bad bars, and at the
+shipping season lighterage at enormous cost is necessary. Naturally
+enough, we now have no large ships."
+
+[Sidenote: _SHIPPING ABUSES AND EXACTIONS._]
+
+The abuses of the present system of shipping are many and great, and
+all on the principle of making hay while the sun shines. Hear a
+shipmaster who published his experiences in October last:
+
+"On the fourth day we got two tugs and crossed the outer bar and
+anchored in Baker's Bay, where the ship had to be lightened to twenty
+feet and six inches draught before she could cross the inner bar and
+reach Astoria. This lighterage cost two dollars per ton, and had to be
+paid by the ship. As four other ships arrived about that time which
+required lightering also before they could proceed farther, we were
+detained at Baker's Bay for nine days, having the expense of a full
+crew on board all that time. The distance from outside of the outer bar
+to Astoria is about fourteen miles, for which the towage is $500,
+pilotage $192, and that was in the middle of a beautiful day, ship also
+using her own canvas and hawser. I believe this charge is almost equal
+to salvage. The pilots are hired by the owner of the tugs, who collects
+the pilotage, paying the pilots $100 a month for their services.... As
+the pilots have no boat of their own, they are obliged to go in the
+tugs, which are all owned by one man. I was just fourteen days from the
+time I anchored off the bar till I reached the dock where I was to
+discharge cargo, and for towage and pilotage alone from the bar to the
+dock, paid $1,009."
+
+Portland is the Oregon headquarters of the Oregon Railway and
+Navigation Company, a corporation formed by the fertile genius of Mr.
+Henry Villard in June, 1879, by the amalgamation of the Oregon
+Steamship Company, owning the ocean-going steamers between San
+Francisco and Portland, and the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, owning
+the river-boats plying on the Columbia and Willamette. Here are the
+termini of the East and West Side Railroads (originally formed by Mr.
+Ben Holladay, a name very familiar to Oregon ears), but until this
+spring of 1881 owned and worked by the committee of European
+bondholders, into whose hands the lines in question fell by virtue of
+the securities they held. And in Portland also are the head offices in
+Oregon of the Scotch system of narrow-gauge railroads, now being
+constructed by means of Scotch capital attracted to the State by the
+successful working of the land-mortgage company referred to above.
+
+It will be seen, therefore, that there are abundant reasons for
+predicting that a large portion of the business of Oregon will center
+in Portland, for many years to come, at any rate. The more cause that
+Portland men should welcome the development of the other portions of
+the State, with which in the future profitable business is certain to
+arise, as new industries are started, existing interests widen and
+strengthen themselves, and new centers of population and business find
+their places in the growing State. Time will show whether the sanguine
+hopes of the Portland people that their city will hold the virtual
+monopoly of the trade of the Northwest are well founded or not. There
+can, in my mind, be little doubt that she will have a very formidable
+rival in the city on Puget Sound which will spring up, as by magic,
+when the Northern Pacific Railroad there receives and discharges
+passengers and freight. It will be an evil day for Portland when the
+wharves at Tacoma find the grain-ships alongside, and the cars pouring
+in the grain of Eastern Oregon and Washington Territory. And some
+little effect on her tolls will be produced when Yaquina Bay is opened,
+and the cars of the Oregon Pacific are there delivering the freight of
+Middle and Southern Oregon.
+
+Portlanders rely on what they call the concentration of capital to pull
+them through. They have yet to learn the sensitiveness of the movements
+of their divinity--how prone she is to follow the current of trade to
+its points of receipt and delivery. And should that day ever dawn, when
+figures show her "supremacy" to have departed, not one single sigh will
+escape these valley counties, which Portland has levied tribute on, and
+done her best to keep in bondage till the end of time.
+
+[Sidenote: _UP THE COLUMBIA RIVER._]
+
+Passing eastward from Portland up the Columbia, in one of the large and
+comfortable boats of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, a day's
+journey brings you to the Dalles. I have already mentioned how rapidly
+this town is growing, as the point of distribution for the greater
+portion of Northeastern Oregon, and the point of reception for vast
+quantities of grain, wool, hides, and other productions of that
+pastoral and agricultural country.
+
+Taking a Willamette River boat, notice in passing the Oswego
+Iron-Works, seven miles from Portland, and then the village of
+Milwaukee, with large and well-appointed nurseries, whence many of the
+orchards of the State have been supplied.
+
+The steamer will then stop at the wharf of Oregon City, just below the
+great falls of the Willamette. Notice the magnificent river throwing
+itself over the rocky ridge which shows one or two black points of rock
+amid the foam of the falls. See the lofty hills on either side, clad
+with vegetation to their very tops, while the little town is crowded on
+the narrow strip down by the river on the eastern side. What a
+water-power is yet running to waste, though lumber-mills, flour-mills,
+and woolen-mills take their tribute as it passes!
+
+On the west side are the locks. Here the steamer crosses the river from
+the city, and you get a pretty view of this, one of the earliest
+settled towns in the State. It dates from the Hudson Bay Company's
+rule, and the oldest inhabitant can tell you story after story of the
+early days, when the meetings were held here which virtually determined
+the allegiance of the infant State.
+
+Iron-ore has been prospected in plenty in these hills above the town,
+but waits for development.
+
+[Illustration: The Columbia Point below the Dalles.]
+
+[Sidenote: _SALEM._]
+
+Passing up the river, the next important place we meet is Salem, the
+capital of the State. The State Capitol stands on elevated ground about
+a mile back from the river, with a large, green space in front, planted
+with ornamental trees and shrubs. The scene from the great windows at
+the back is really grand, Mount Jefferson being in full view, and the
+line of the Cascades in ridge after ridge displayed in all their
+beauty. Fronting the Capitol buildings at the other side of the Park
+are the Court-House and offices of Marion County, also a substantial
+and handsome pile. On the southern side of the Capitol stand the
+buildings of the Willamette University.
+
+The town of Salem is now growing. It has the advantage of a splendid
+water-power, called Mill Creek, which is turned to good account before
+it reaches the Willamette just below the city. On it are placed the
+Pioneer Oil-Mills, where linseed-oil and linseed-cake are produced, of
+excellent quality and moderate price; also a large building now used
+both as an implement-factory and as a flour-mill; this has lately
+changed hands, and it is too soon yet to speak of its success. Below
+this are placed the "Salem Flour-Mills" of Kinney Brothers & Co. Their
+brand is recognized and approved in all the markets of the world--as it
+ought to be, if the best of wheat turned into the best of flour, and
+its sale honestly and intelligently carried out, can command success.
+The mills are fine buildings, fitted with the most modern and powerful
+machinery, and stand just on the edge of the Willamette, with a dock
+where the river-steamers can deliver wheat and receive flour. I believe
+that this last fall of 1881 they converted 600,000 bushels of wheat
+into flour. A switch from the Oregon and California Railroad runs from
+the main line to the mills on the other side, and is proving an immense
+convenience to the city generally as well as to the mills.
+
+The steamboat pauses on its upward journey at Buena Vista, to take in
+and deliver freight for the pottery there, already extensive, and which
+by the excellence of its productions demonstrates that it only needs
+further capital and enlarged business relations to do an important
+share of the trade of the coast. The glaze on the ware is very good,
+made from a mineral earth found in the bank of the Willamette at
+Corvallis.
+
+After passing the mouth of the Santiam, the most considerable tributary
+of the Willamette, we stop at Albany. This is one of the best situated
+and most progressive towns in the State. Although with a little less
+than two thousand inhabitants at present, it has all the enterprise and
+"go" of a town in Europe of five times that number. There are here also
+three large flour-mills, the brands of some of which are known and
+prized in Liverpool, to which port cargoes are frequently sent.
+
+Albany has a lumber-mill, foundry, twine-mill, and scutching-mill,
+fruit-drying works, sash and door factory, and soon will have
+woolen-mills also. The making of the place is the water-power of the
+Santiam River, brought in a canal for thirteen miles through the level
+prairie-land, but rushing through the town and supplying the mills and
+factories with a flow and force of water sufficient for double as many
+works as at present use it. The town is supplied with water for
+domestic purposes from the same source, of clearness and purity that it
+is hard to equal.
+
+Albany has three newspapers, six churches, a very good collegiate
+school, and excellent common schools. It is a principal station on the
+Oregon and California Railroad, and also an important station on the
+Oregon Pacific, now so rapidly building, and its point of crossing the
+Oregon and California, and a junction for the branch line to Lebanon,
+away there under the slopes of the Cascades. Land in the neighborhood
+of the town, and indeed throughout the level portions of Linn County,
+ranging over an area of nearly twenty miles each way, is worth from
+twenty-five to sixty dollars an acre--the last sale I heard of, of one
+hundred and thirty-two acres, about five miles from the town, being at
+thirty-nine dollars an acre.
+
+[Sidenote: _CORVALLIS AND EUGENE CITY._]
+
+The next town we come to is our own Corvallis, appropriately named as
+the heart of the valley. It is indeed fitly placed as the valley
+starting-point seaward of the Oregon Pacific Railroad, being on the
+direct line east and west between Yaquina Bay, the Mount Jefferson Pass
+through the Cascades, Prineville, in Eastern Oregon, Harney Lake and
+Valley, the Malheur River and Valley, and Boise City--the meeting-place
+in the near future of divers transcontinental lines.
+
+Corvallis has been too fully described in these pages to need further
+reference here. The commencement of energetic construction of the
+Oregon Pacific and the assurance of its early completion have given an
+increased business-life to the place which impresses the visitor
+strongly with the idea of rapid future growth.
+
+Continuing in our steamboat to the head of the Willamette navigation,
+we pass the little towns of Peoria and Harrisburg, and at last reach
+Eugene City. This, which is the chief town of Lane County, is blessed
+with a university, presided over by excellent professors, one of whom,
+Professor Condon, has a name and fame as a geologist far beyond the
+limits of his county and also of the State. I trust the time will soon
+come when the liberality of the Legislature of Oregon will provide the
+funds necessary to enable Professor Condon to complete and publish the
+systematic geology and mineralogy of Oregon, the materials for which
+are already to a large extent in his possession, the result of years of
+careful study and journeyings over the State.
+
+Eugene City is a lively, pleasant little town, but has not yet attained
+any manufacturing or industrial development like some of the other
+towns in Oregon. This is to come.
+
+Leaving the river for the railroad, we journey up to Roseburg, the
+capital of Douglas County, and the southern terminus of the Oregon and
+California line. No town can be more prettily placed, really at the
+head of the great valley country, with the vast mountain-forms behind
+frowning on the traveler who dares attempt to thread their passes. As I
+have said, the Douglas County people trust to get a railroad outlet
+from Roseburg down to Coos. I hope they will succeed, and so open to
+ocean-transit the productions of a vast and fertile country.
+
+Turning north again as far as Corvallis, we may there take the
+West-side Railroad and journey along the western side of the Willamette
+Valley and River.
+
+The towns of Independence, Dallas, Sheridan, Amity, Lafayette,
+McMinnville, Forest Grove, and Hillsboro' lie in the district between
+Corvallis and Portland. Each and all are thriving, but I can do no more
+than mention them, though I fear so short a reference will be
+considered scant courtesy to the active, pushing people who are
+laboring with such success at the development of Polk, Yam Hill, and
+Washington Counties. The land is almost uniformly good; large
+quantities are being yearly grubbed and put under the plow, and several
+of my recently arrived English friends prefer the undulating land and
+gentle slopes of this side of the valley to any other part of Oregon,
+and have proved their preference by their actions. Land in these
+counties varies from ten to twenty-five dollars an acre in price.
+
+[Sidenote: _COUNTIES: POPULATION, ETC._]
+
+I think I will close this somewhat tedious chapter by setting out the
+counties of Oregon, their population, and the statement of their
+taxable property, furnished by the Secretary of State:
+
+    COUNTIES.        Population.    Taxable property
+                                        of 1880.
+
+  Baker                4,615            $931,139
+  Benton               6,403           1,766,282
+  Clackamas            9,260           1,886,916
+  Clatsop              7,222           1,136,099
+  Columbia             2,042             305,283
+  Coos                 4,834             832,335
+  Curry                1,208             219,333
+  Douglas              9,596           2,248,985
+  Grant                4,303           1,088,097
+  Jackson              8,154           1,449,623
+  Josephine            2,485             253,594
+  Lake                 2,804             708,517
+  Lane                 9,411           3,078,756
+  Linn                12,675           4,334,479
+  Marion              14,576           3,983,170
+  Multnomah           25,204          11,511,058
+  Polk                 6,601           1,751,211
+  Tillamook              970              92,912
+  Umatilla             9,607           2,094,723
+  Union                6,650           1,265,603
+  Wasco               11,120           2,870,645
+  Washington           7,082           2,137,630
+  Yam Hill             7,945           2,547,833
+                     ------           ---------
+  Total of the State 174,767         $48,494,223
+    Increase over 1879                 2,071,406
+
+The proportion of taxable property held by each man, woman, and child
+in Oregon is therefore $277.47.
+
+The population of the valley counties, properly so called, is
+83,549--this leaves Portland and Multnomah County entirely out. The
+taxable property of these valley counties is $23,735,262.
+
+The population of the whole of Eastern Oregon east of the Cascades is
+but 39,099. The value of its taxable property is only $8,958,724.
+
+The population of that part of Eastern and Northeastern Oregon which is
+in any sense tributary to the Columbia or Snake Rivers is 28,180. The
+value of their taxable property is $6,256,547.
+
+The average taxable property of the population of the valley counties
+is $282.68; that of the population of Eastern Oregon, $228.96.
+
+[Illustration: The Columbia Cascades Landing (Looking up stream).]
+
+These figures will be seen to have an important hearing on the subject
+of the next chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+The transportation question--Its importance--Present legal position--
+Oregon Railway and Navigation Committee's general report--That company
+--Its ocean-going steamers--Their traffic and earnings--Its river-boats
+--Their traffic and earnings--Its railroads in existence--Their traffic
+and earnings--Its new railroads in construction and in prospect--Their
+probable influence--The Northern Pacific--Terminus on Puget Sound--Its
+prospects--The East and West Side Railroads--"Bearing" traffic and
+earnings--How to get "control"--Lands owned by the Oregon Railway and
+Navigation Company--Monopoly--How threatened--The narrow-gauge railroads
+--Their terminus and working--Efforts to consolidate monopoly--The
+"blind pool"--Resistance--The Oregon Pacific--Its causes, possessions,
+and prospects--Land grant and its enemies--The traffic of the valley--
+Yaquina Bay--Its improvement--The farmers take it in hand--Contrast
+and comparisons--The two presidents--Probable effects of competition
+--Tactics in opposition--The Yaquina improvements--Description of
+works--The prospects for competition and the farmers' gains.
+
+
+From all that has gone before, the deduction is plain that on the
+solution of the transportation question in the interests of the fixed
+and industrious population of the State depends absolutely the growth
+and prosperity of Oregon. Nature has done her part.
+
+The words of Messrs. George M. Pullman, of Chicago, and William
+Endicott, Jr., of Boston, in their report of August 1, 1880, to the
+stockholders of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, will be
+echoed by every man who is now or has been in Oregon with eyes to see.
+They wrote as follows:
+
+"Our observations afforded, in the first place, ample confirmation of
+all we had previously heard and read of the propitious climate, great
+attractions of scenery, and wonderful agricultural resources of Western
+and Eastern Oregon, and Eastern Washington Territory. We believe that
+in these respects those regions are not surpassed, if equaled, by any
+other portion of the United States. It can, indeed, be safely said that
+nowhere else in this country do rich soil and mild climate combine to
+the same degree in insuring such extraordinary results of almost every
+agricultural pursuit as regards quantity, quality, and regularity of
+yield.... The striking evidence of past and present growth which we
+found everywhere, forced at the same time the irresistible conclusion
+upon us that we were beholding but the beginning of the sure and rapid
+progress in population, productiveness, and prosperity which will be
+witnessed in the immediate future within the vast stretch of country
+watered by the great river Columbia and its numerous tributaries."
+
+The reader of this book will, I think, admit that the facts herein
+detailed go far to justify the conclusions summed up in these few but
+carefully chosen words.
+
+How does this transportation question now stand, and what (if any)
+matters are in progress or contemplation to affect it?
+
+In the first place, the companies are all free to manage their own
+business in their own way; they charge what they like, favor what
+persons and places they choose, and load on others burdens heavy to be
+borne.
+
+I have before indicated what was the purpose of the bill introduced in
+the Legislature of 1880, to prevent discrimination by common carriers.
+"The Oregonian" commented on the loss of the measure in these terms:
+"We present to-day the report of the (hostile) Senate committee on this
+bill. The report shows why the proposed measure was both an unjust and
+an impracticable one. It should be apparent to every one that railways
+never can be operated in this way. The confusion and disorder would be
+endless; besides, every railroad which is undertaken and constructed as
+an actual business enterprise is entitled to make fair earnings.
+Instead of being annoyed by straw railroads got up for speculative
+purposes, it ought to have protection from such annoyance."
+
+[Sidenote: _OREGON RAILWAY AND NAVIGATION CO._]
+
+In further illustration of the working of the present system, I would
+instance the fact that from Corvallis to Portland for about a year the
+freight on wheat by the river steamboats of the Oregon Railway and
+Navigation Company has been one dollar a ton, and of this fifty cents
+had to be paid for passing the locks at Oregon City; the rate
+immediately previous to this was three dollars and a half. This
+ridiculously low rate was put on in order to destroy the traffic of the
+East and West Side Railroads, and is in strong contrast with the rate
+from Corvallis to Junction City, some twenty miles up the river, where
+no such reasons existed, and which stood through this period at about
+tenfold the one-dollar rate.
+
+No sooner did the President of the Oregon Railway and Navigation
+Company think he had secured "control" of the two railroads, than steps
+were prepared to quadruple the previous rate. The question of "control"
+stood adjourned, and the one-dollar rate was confirmed. But, having
+seen reason to think his acquisition secure, the rates from Portland to
+Corvallis (ninety-seven miles by railroad), both by railroads and
+steamboats, have just now (April, 1881) been raised to six dollars per
+ton--a rate equal to that charged in the infancy of the business,
+twenty years ago.
+
+The lion's share of the carrying business of the State is in the hands
+of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, and with them are closely
+identified the hopes of the city of Portland. This company owns two of
+the steamers plying between Portland and San Francisco--the Oregon and
+the Columbia. With these two steamers, or with the George W. Elder as
+the predecessor of the Columbia, they carried from the 1st of July,
+1879, to the 30th of June, 1880, 17,333 passengers, and 101,661 tons of
+freight. The gross receipts were $636,888; the net profits, $286,459.
+As we know from the published circular of Mr. Villard, the president,
+that the cost of the Columbia was $400,000, and the Oregon is a smaller
+and decidedly less expensive ship, the proportion of net earnings of
+the vessels in question to their total cost will be seen to be about
+enough to pay ten per cent. per annum on their cost, and to buy the
+vessels out and out in three years and a half. The fare from Portland
+to San Francisco, even while these earnings were being made, stood at
+twenty dollars the first-class passenger. News has just arrived that
+these fares are to be raised to thirty dollars a head. If the same rate
+of expense is maintained as during last year, the earnings at the
+higher figure now put on will be increased by about $100,000, and
+enough will be realized to pay for the fleet in about two years and a
+half.
+
+With twenty-five steamboats (stern-wheelers) navigating the Columbia
+and Willamette Rivers, and twelve barges and two scows (several of the
+boats being old, and laid up in ordinary much of the time, reducing
+thus materially the fleet in real service), the company earned
+$1,992,836 gross, and $1,101,766 net profit. If $50,000 is deducted for
+the earnings of the barges, it will be seen that the average net
+earnings of the twenty-five river-steamers are positively $44,070 each.
+The fleet could be replaced for less than the sum of the net profit of
+one year. Like Oliver, "asking for more," they are positively raising
+these freights also!
+
+[Sidenote: _RAILROAD ALONG THE COLUMBIA._]
+
+The railroad possessions of the company for the year in question
+consisted of but forty-eight miles, and of these the line from Walla
+Walla to Wallula on the upper Columbia, a distance of about thirty
+miles, was the longest; the other two being short strips of portage
+railroad round the Cascades or rapids on the Columbia. The passengers
+carried were 12,588; the tons of freight, 72,149; and the net profits,
+$269,004, or $5,604 a mile.
+
+The company is engaged in constructing a line of railroad along the
+south bank of the Columbia; the portion from Celilo (the upper end of
+the rapids, at the lower end of which the town of the Dalles is
+situated) to Wallula, just over the Washington Territory border, a
+distance of one hundred and fifteen miles, is just completed. The line
+is being extended to the city of Portland, the works between the Dalles
+and the western end of the pass through the Cascade Mountains being of
+the most severe and expensive character. At least two tunnels and mile
+after mile of blasting and cutting through solid rock, where the
+mountains tower perpendicular above, would inspire dismay in the soul
+of any ordinary railroad-man.
+
+But the word has gone forth that the road has to follow what is
+facetiously called the pass of the Columbia through the Cascades, and
+doubtless it will be done. Several thousand Chinamen are at work;
+steam-drills are busy perforating the rocks; scows have to be moored
+alongside in the river (there not being even room for the track between
+mountain and water), while the perpendicular faces of the cliffs are
+being tormented and torn. And thus about seventy miles of construction
+of this nature have to be got through. When completed, of course, the
+result will be at once to transfer nearly all of as many of the 117,000
+passengers as traveled in the company's boats on the Columbia, to the
+cars; and a vast quantity of the freight must follow the same route.
+
+[Illustration: Columbia, above the Lower Cascade.]
+
+But another factor is intended shortly to come into play. The Northern
+Pacific Railroad is vigorously at work, and in a year or two will
+compete with the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company for the
+Washington Territory and extreme Eastern Oregon trade. The passengers
+and freight intrusted to the Northern Pacific line will be carried from
+Wallula, the Columbia River point above referred to, to Tacoma, on
+Puget Sound. By this route a saving of one hundred and fifty-one miles
+in actual distance will be effected, and the traffic will reach the
+deep and still waters of Puget Sound, far away from the troubles and
+stickings of the Willamette and Columbia mouths, and the delays,
+dangers, and expenses of the Columbia bar. It is true that before this
+result is gained the line must cross the Cascade Mountains, but it is
+well known that a pass at less than thirty-four hundred feet exists,
+and the engineers have no doubt whatever that this piece of road will
+keep pace with the rest to the port.
+
+[Sidenote: _HOW TO GET "CONTROL."_]
+
+Mark now another feature in the case. The East and West Side Railroads
+on either side of the Willamette River compete with the boats of the
+Oregon Railway and Navigation Company for the trade of the Willamette
+Valley. The railroads naturally divert the passenger traffic almost
+entirely, and carry a large quantity of freight. They would carry more
+and earn a fair profit for their owners, the German and English
+bondholders, but, instead of a fair competition, the Oregon Railway and
+Navigation Company, as I have said, put down the freights from
+Corvallis downward to Portland on grain to one dollar per ton--of
+course, an impossible rate for either river or railroad to profit by.
+
+Why is this? Because what Mr. Villard calls the "control" of these
+railroads is vitally necessary to the future continuance of the Oregon
+Railway and Navigation Company's stocks in their exalted dividends and
+consequent enormous market value. Therefore, it is sought now to
+destroy the earning powers of these railroads, to force the owners into
+succumbing to the "policy of control."
+
+One more step. The Oregon Railway and Navigation Company owns
+practically no land--that is to say, it is interested speculatively in
+the rise of value in property in Portland by having invested a large
+sum (I believe $199,000) in the purchase of 484 acres of land in and
+near the city. But, outside this and its railroad-track, the company
+owns altogether about 3,055 acres of land in scattered pieces, only
+about 850 acres of which lie in Oregon; the rest in Washington
+Territory, and a bit or two in Idaho. We will not omit to mention its
+wharves at the various stopping-places of the boats, as they represent
+the expenditure of a considerable sum. Once again: if anything at all
+is clear, it is that the inflated value of this company's securities
+depends solely on the continuance of their monopoly. I have shown that
+on the Columbia River this is threatened by the Northern Pacific, and
+also by themselves in effect, by the substitution of the costly
+railroad line for the inexpensive boats, and the consequent devotion of
+both investments, namely, that in the boats and that in the railroad,
+to the same traffic, which the competition of the Northern Pacific is
+certain to reduce in gross volume.
+
+Now turn to the Willamette Valley traffic, and scrutinize the position
+there. Not only is there the existing competition of the railroads,
+which is fatal, so long as it is genuine, to the earning of large
+profits from the north and south traffic of the valley, both in
+passengers and goods, but here come in two competitors more.
+
+The Scotch narrow-gauge system also centers everything in Portland, and
+has succeeded, after a hard fight with the city authorities, in
+securing a large tract of land for depot or terminal purposes. It had
+the audacity to claim a right of way right through the tract purchased
+by the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, and, under the law of
+eminent domain as it exists in Oregon, it would have got it, ay, and
+used it, too, with but scant regard for the feelings of the high and
+mighty corporation which had marked it for their own. But a working
+arrangement was with much difficulty made, by which the Scotch line
+runs, free of charge, alongside the other, right through its land, to
+the terminus of the narrow-gauge.
+
+This Scotch line has put boats on the Willamette also. They ply between
+Ray's Landing, about seventeen miles up the Willamette, and Portland.
+The narrow-gauge also has an East-side and a West-side line through the
+Willamette Valley. The East-side line runs north and south a short
+distance from the foothills of the Cascades, and has now got as far as
+Brownsville, about one hundred and twenty miles from Portland. Their
+West-side line runs through the rich farming country in Polk County by
+Dallas to Sheridan, and a junction with the Western Oregon broad-gauge
+near by. This is also an ambitious company, who are pushing surveys
+across the Cascade Range.
+
+The narrow-gauge system is yet by no means complete, but, when it is,
+it will become at once a very dangerous rival both to the East and West
+Side roads, and also to the boats of the Oregon Railway and Navigation
+Company on the Willamette.
+
+So seriously did Mr. Villard feel the impending danger that it is no
+secret in Oregon that a confidential agent was dispatched by him to
+Scotland, to endeavor to put the Scotch investors out of conceit with
+their property, and, failing that, he attempted to secure some of their
+stock, so as to gain a footing inside their camp. But there also he
+failed.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "BLIND POOL."_]
+
+Shortly before these pages were written, occurred the episode of what
+is known in financial circles in America as "the blind pool." Mr.
+Villard caused it to be known among his circle of followers that he
+desired the use of eight million dollars. According to statements made
+on his authority, he not only secured it, but in all fifteen millions
+were offered him. Quietly and secretly he used the eight millions in
+buying up stock of the Northern Pacific Railroad in the New York
+market, nor did he show his hand until he had thus secured twenty-seven
+millions par value of the stock of that road. When his great gun was
+thus loaded, he discharged it full at the head of Mr. Billings, the
+president of the Northern Pacific, and those directors who had loyally
+cooperated with him in the reorganization of the company and the
+redemption of its securities from the chaos into which they had fallen
+following the Jay Cooke failure. And the invader boldly claimed that he
+had secured the "control" of that company too, and proposed to oust the
+president, to install a representative of the "blind pool."
+
+But an unexpected check was met. It seems that part of the
+reconstituted stock of the company, amounting to eighteen million
+dollars, was as yet in the treasury of the company, but was the
+property of divers persons who had cooperated in or assented to the
+reconstruction. This being issued, as Mr. Billings and his friends
+claim, in fulfillment of engagements long since entered into, displaced
+the center of gravity, and caused it to incline heavily toward the
+Billings section. A vociferous outcry was of course heard; the courts
+were appealed to; and the result of what promises to be a long and
+costly litigation remains to be seen.
+
+Even without the entrance on the field of the new forces I am about to
+describe, the position of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company
+appears to be a very perilous one.
+
+Under the chieftainship of Mr. Villard, who was no novice at the art of
+playing with railroad companies as counters in the game of
+"beggar-my-neighbor," a vast amount of Eastern capital was taken up by
+the aid of the enormous profits earned by the previously existing
+Oregon Steamship and Oregon Steam Navigation Company. Then followed
+naturally an era of really delusive prosperity, while the expenditure
+of this capital in substituting the new lamps of costly railroads for
+the magical old lamps of stern-wheel steamboats was going on.
+
+But, in order to secure this capital, it was necessary to publish to
+the world the enormous profits the earlier companies were making. The
+effects were twofold and immediate. One was to open the eyes of the
+farmers of Oregon to the fact that they were paying for the transport
+to market of their crops sums utterly disproportionate to the cost and
+risk of the services rendered. And thus it was certain that ere long
+measures would be taken in the Legislature of Oregon, similar in
+purport to those adopted in other States, to check and curb the power
+of discrimination, which was the engine used to force the traffic on to
+the boats and trains of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. The
+measure to that end introduced in the session of the Legislature of
+1880 was, it is true, defeated by the strenuous efforts of the company,
+aided by their Portland friends. But that success was dearly bought,
+and the process was so patent as to awaken the farmers, with whom the
+real power dwells, in a fashion that will soon be felt.
+
+[Sidenote: _YAQUINA BAY._]
+
+The other result, equally inevitable, was to call into active life
+plans, long in preparation, for constructing an east and west line
+across the State, relying on Yaquina Bay as the outport, and on the
+trade of the Willamette Valley as the mainstay of the road.
+
+But the enterprise had other features to recommend it. The Willamette
+Valley and Coast Railroad Company had been originated four or five
+years back by the farmers of the valley to construct a railroad between
+Corvallis and Yaquina Bay. It had obtained a charter from the
+Legislature giving it authority to extend its line across the State to
+the eastern boundary, at a point directly _en route_ to Boise City,
+Idaho.
+
+This had been long ago marked out as the probable limit where
+connection either with a branch from the Union Pacific Railroad, or
+with some other road pushing westward to the ocean, might be made.
+
+The Willamette Valley and Coast Railroad received in its charter from
+the State immunity from taxation for twenty years, and also a grant of
+all the rich tide and overflowed lands in Benton County, amounting to
+probably upward of one hundred thousand acres.
+
+Not content with this, the framer of this scheme had obtained the right
+of purchase, on the basis of value of land in Eastern Oregon ten years
+ago, of the grant of lands in aid of the construction of the Willamette
+Valley and Cascade Mountains Military Wagon-road, amounting to eight
+hundred and fifty thousand acres. A sketch of the history of this road
+has been given before in these pages, and of the character of the
+country through which it runs.
+
+The vital force of the Oregon Pacific Company, which was formed and
+brought before the world in the autumn of 1880 to complete and operate
+the Willamette Valley and Coast Railroad, lay in the advantage of
+position in its central line, cutting Oregon in half, and thereby
+attracting traffic to it from both sides, and also in the solid backing
+of about nine hundred and fifty thousand acres of land, stretching
+across the State from east to west, and which was certain to rise
+four-fold at least in value by the construction of the railroad through
+it.
+
+The first hundred and thirty miles of the road pass through Benton and
+Linn Counties, which together produce about one half, and, with the
+adjoining counties of Polk and Marion on the north and the county of
+Lane on the south, fully three quarters of the wheat-crop of Oregon.
+
+It was estimated by a committee formed in these counties, who
+investigated the subject thoroughly, that not less than one hundred and
+eighty thousand tons of grain, and other freight to the amount of fifty
+thousand tons or more, would seek an outlet over this road, from these
+valley counties, on the basis of the crop of 1878. The subsequent
+increase in acreage under crops would give not less than three hundred
+thousand acres instead of two hundred and fifty thousand, at a very
+moderate estimate. The inward freight may be taken at one half of the
+outward bound, thus giving four hundred and fourteen thousand tons
+which the new road would be called on to transport.
+
+These figures raised the ire of the Oregon Railway and Navigation
+Company and of some of its Portland friends, and their abuse called
+forth a reinvestigation of the whole subject, which resulted in
+thorough confirmation of the estimates.
+
+[Sidenote: _OREGON PACIFIC RAILROAD._]
+
+The Oregon Pacific proposed, as soon as open for business, to lower the
+seven dollars a ton, the previous average charge of the other company
+on valley freight to San Francisco, to three dollars and a half, and
+the twenty-four dollars for first-class passengers and fourteen dollars
+for emigrant passengers to one half of those figures. And it showed a
+very large probable dividend on its capital, on those reduced figures.
+The reasonableness of this will be seen by reference to the enormous
+earnings of the other company.
+
+The whole question turned, of course, on the practicability of so
+improving the entrance to Yaquina Bay that heavy-laden ships of deep
+draught could enter to deliver and receive cargo.
+
+The valley farmers and traders, to the number of thirty-four hundred,
+petitioned Congress to appropriate $240,000 for these works. Strenuous
+efforts in support of this petition at Washington, in the session of
+1880, sufficed to overcome the opposition of the Oregon Railway and
+Navigation Company, and the prayer was granted in principle, but only
+in extent to $40,000, after the fashion in such cases.
+
+But the careful surveys and investigations of the United States
+engineers, which were at once undertaken, justified the hopes of the
+people and of those interested in the railroad, and very early in 1881
+the works for the improvement were begun.
+
+Application was made to Congress in the winter session of 1880-'81 to
+appropriate $200,000 more for the works; but only $10,000 were granted,
+although the Legislature of Oregon had, in their session of 1880, by
+formal resolution, unanimously supported the application for $200,000.
+
+But the farmers of the valley counties were at last roused to vigorous
+action, and, under the presidency of the Linn County Grange and its
+officers, are raising a large fund by subscription, to continue without
+interruption the harbor-works until additional appropriations are made
+by Congress. The subscription will not only serve to keep the
+harbor-works in vigorous progress, but demonstrates the subscribers'
+conviction of the success of the efforts made for the completion of the
+Oregon Pacific Railroad, and their active and personal interest in such
+success.
+
+[Sidenote: _PROBABLE EFFECTS OF COMPETITION._]
+
+And now the full force of the figures given in the last chapter is
+seen. So far as the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company depends on
+Oregon for its support, it must come from counties the population of
+which is but 28,180, and the value of their taxable property, in 1880,
+only $6,256,547; the proportion of property for each inhabitant being
+$228.96, or nearly twenty per cent. below the average for the State.
+
+The Oregon Pacific will draw its present support from the valley
+counties, with a population of 83,549, and taxable property of
+$23,735,262, each about four-fold greater. Their average property is
+$282.68 per head, or about two per cent. above the rate for the whole
+State.
+
+If it be argued that the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company bases
+its hopes for maintaining its high dividends on its enlarged capital;
+on the development of Eastern Oregon in population and productions,
+which is in rapid progress--I reply that the same considerations apply
+with vastly increased force to the district served by the Oregon
+Pacific. The latter relies not only on the fertile lands on the western
+side of the Cascades, unequaled in the whole United States for
+attractiveness to immigrants of the better class, but it also asserts
+its undoubted claim to profit from the settlement of the broad stretch
+of country, also in Eastern Oregon, through which its line runs in its
+eastward course.
+
+If stress is laid on the advantage of the established position of
+Portland for the headquarters of the one road, the scale kicks the beam
+when the one hundred and ten miles of towage and pilotage, the probable
+delays in the rivers, the certain dangers and difficulties of the
+Columbia bar, are weighed against the saving of two hundred and
+twenty-one miles in actual distance, and the short course of but three
+miles from the ocean to the wharves at Yaquina.
+
+[Sidenote: _TACTICS IN OPPOSITION._]
+
+If Mr. Villard has displayed his cleverness in laying hold of
+established profits and turning them to the enormous gain of himself
+and of those friends of his who have followed his lead, I can here do
+but partial justice to the foresight and energy of Colonel T. Egenton
+Hogg, whose clear judgment realized the necessity and the many
+advantages of the Yaquina route ten years ago, who has fought through
+unnumbered difficulties and a bitter and envenomed opposition toward
+its attainment, and who has secured in so doing the hearty support of
+the backbone and sinew of Oregon life, which trust to the Oregon
+Pacific to set free the commerce of the State.
+
+Let it not be supposed that the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company
+is foredoomed to failure, or to immediately explode and go out like a
+rocket. According to my ideas, it may have a moderately prosperous
+future, bringing down to Portland a certain quantity of freight and
+passengers from the upper country, and an increasing quantity as that
+country develops. But to suppose that on its enlarged capital it will
+be allowed to go on earning dividends at the same preposterous rate as
+heretofore its boats have made for it, is to insult the common-sense
+alike of the Oregon farmer and of the capitalist looking now more
+eagerly than ever for profitable and safe investment.
+
+One other point deserves attention. The Oregon Railway and Navigation
+Company owns practically no land (except its building-land speculation
+in Portland); therefore, when these competing lines come into play, and
+traffic rates are consequently reduced over all the State, its
+dividend-producing power is gone.
+
+The other lines can follow it down and down in any war of rates so far
+as the Oregon Railway and Navigation lines see fit to venture. Such
+tactics would be absolute madness in California, as by its new
+Constitution rates once lowered can not be raised again. But suppose
+the war of rates is begun in Oregon. The Northern Pacific, when
+completed according to law, will save one hundred and fifty-one miles
+in distance, and deliver freight and passengers at deep water on Puget
+Sound. The narrow-gauge roads and boats together can carry more cheaply
+than the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. The valley standard-gauge
+railroads and the Oregon Pacific share with the Northern Pacific this
+tremendous advantage, that every dollar they lose on transportation
+is only invested at enormous profit in the rise and value of their
+lands. It is the cost of transportation that keeps down value on
+their lands; lower this, and land rises at once.
+
+Nor is it to be supposed for an instant that the same tactics by which
+it has been attempted to prevent, hamper, or delay the building of the
+Oregon Pacific Railroad will long succeed.
+
+Shortly after the prospectus of that railroad was issued, there
+appeared in "The Oregonian," of Portland, three columns of abuse over
+the signature of "Examiner." The writer described himself as a citizen
+of Oregon, anxious to avoid delusion and disaster to the Eastern
+public.
+
+The whole was telegraphed or mailed long in advance back to New York,
+and appeared in a garbled and still more contemptible form as a
+circular, professing to be reprinted from "The Oregonian," as if from
+the editor's chair of that paper. New York was flooded with the copies.
+Fortunately, it was easy enough to repel the attack, since the chief
+points were that the Eastern Oregon lands were worthless, and the
+statements of the Willamette Valley trade exaggerated. And on both
+points ample, even overwhelming, evidence was at hand.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE CASCADE MOUNTAINS ROAD._]
+
+Then, by what hidden influences it is of course impossible to say, the
+Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Schurz, was set in motion on the
+allegation that the Cascade Mountains road had never been made, and
+that consequently the United States had been imposed upon fourteen
+years ago when Congress granted the lands to the State of Oregon, and
+that State defrauded in turn ten years ago when, on certificates of due
+completion satisfactory to the then officials of the State, the lands
+were duly confirmed to the wagon-road company.
+
+Thereupon, without inquiry as to the facts from the State officials of
+Oregon, or from the road company or their representatives, who had all
+the evidence in their possession--without one word of notice to any of
+the parties concerned--a man named Prosser, then residing at Seattle,
+and occupied in repressing unwarranted timber-cutting on Government
+lands in that neighborhood, was dispatched to professedly examine into
+the condition of things. His journey; the narrative of his duplicity;
+of his inducing the president of the road company, in the innocence of
+his heart, to fit him out and to lend him all the money for his
+expenses; of his return and interviews with the citizens of Albany; of
+his subsequent report that no road existed where upward of five
+thousand wagons and innumerable droves of cattle and of passengers on
+foot and horseback had passed without accident for ten years; of his
+allegations of the trivial cost of the works, met by the evidence of
+the outlay of about $100,000 on the construction and repairs of the
+road; of the storm of indignation which swept through Linn County, and
+found expression wherever the facts were known--all these things form
+an amusing chapter in the history of this transaction.
+
+The Congressional committee, to whom the matter was referred, reported,
+as might be expected, that Congress had no jurisdiction; that, so far
+as they could see, the present owners, being innocent purchasers, had
+good title to the lands; and that, if there were to be any attempt made
+to disturb them, it must be a judicial and not a legislative matter.
+
+Meanwhile an action of ejectment had been brought by the purchasers
+from the road company of the land grant, in the United States District
+Court at Portland, against a squatter on the land, whose letters of old
+date to the Commissioner of the Land-Office had been made the pretext
+for the course taken by the Secretary of the Interior. Every
+opportunity was given for raising in court the question of no road; but
+the defendant dared not accept the challenge, and Judge Deady rendered
+judgment for the owners of the land grant, and so settled the question
+for good and all, so far as I can see. His judgment was masterly and
+exhaustive, and I should think would convince any candid mind.
+
+Thus ends this act in the drama, with the position of the Oregon
+Pacific confirmed at every point, and the Oregon Railway and Navigation
+Company with a very pretty quarrel on their hands with the Northern
+Pacific, and an impending competition, at which the farmers of the
+State rejoice.
+
+And so the transportation question in Oregon is in a fair way to be
+settled in a manner consonant with justice and honesty, so that produce
+will be charged only what is commensurate in fair measure with the cost
+and risk of the service rendered, and not in the opposite direction of
+what the producer can bear.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE YAQUINA IMPROVEMENTS._]
+
+Before I close this subject, let me describe very shortly the principle
+and method of the harbor improvement at Yaquina.
+
+The problem is this: In the harbor is a sheet of tidal water running up
+more than twenty miles inland, and in the bay or harbor proper
+expanding into a width of about three miles. To the tidal water has to
+be added that brought down by the Yaquina River and its tributaries in
+a course of fifty miles or thereabout. The deep-water channel to the
+ocean through which this inflow and outflow are repeated twice every
+twenty-four hours is deep and narrow, and the current very swift. Thus,
+this channel of a quarter of a mile wide between the headlands on
+either side of the mouth does not vary appreciably in width or depth,
+and requires no attention.
+
+Just where the mouth opens to the ocean is the reef, of soft sandstone
+rock, rising in intervals of separate rocks to within ten or eleven
+feet of low-water mark--that is to say, each of the three channels
+through the reef, north, middle, and south, gives this depth of water.
+But here the water, which has kept clear and deep the channel of a
+quarter of a mile wide or thereabout, expands to a width of about two
+miles. Consequently, the current is not sufficiently strong in any one
+of the three channels to prevent the piling of the sand against the
+rock outside and in, in a gentle rise from the forty-feet depth outside
+to the height of the rocky reef, and similarly from the thirty feet
+inside the reef.
+
+The engineers propose, by a jetty from the south beach to a group of
+rocks forming the south side of the middle channel, to extend the
+narrow deep channel inside, and the consequent force of concentrated
+tidal and river water, up to the rocky reef itself. They judge that the
+tidal force is ample to scour away clean all the sand deposited both in
+and outside the reef. They propose, then, to blast away the rock itself
+from the middle channel, which, as the obstruction is both soft and
+narrow, will be neither a difficult nor costly operation, and they
+intend thus to open to the commerce of the world the calm and deep
+waters of the harbor, which will suffice to receive all the fleet of
+vessels trading to this coast.
+
+The construction of the jetty is proceeding rapidly by means of large
+mattresses of brushwood sunk in the destined position, loaded with rock
+and attracting and retaining the sand, and covered in, when the needed
+breadth and height are gained, with larger rocks brought down from a
+quarry of hard stone about eight miles up the harbor.
+
+No one who, like the present writer, has often tried to stem the tidal
+current sweeping out to sea, can doubt the force and velocity it will
+bring to bear; and no one familiar with Yaquina doubts the anticipated
+success of the improvement. Once gained, it will be permanent, and then
+half an hour will suffice to tug the arriving vessel from the deep
+waters of the Pacific to her station alongside her wharf, and the same
+time will dispatch her, fully loaded, on her voyage.
+
+To sum up this matter: At present a very large portion of the profits
+of farming and of other industries in Oregon goes into the pockets of
+the transportation company. The rates of freight bear no proportion to
+the benefits obtained, but are fixed simply on the principle of sitting
+down to pencil out a list to see how much the farmers can possibly pay.
+If this state of things were to be indefinitely perpetuated, the
+outlook would be dreary. That a radical change is impending is to me
+clear. The country is too rich in productive powers, the citizens are
+too fully awake to the needs of their position, the knowledge of what
+Oregon is and what she wants is too widely spread, and the president of
+the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company has trumpeted forth the
+enormous profits of his corporation too loudly, for the failure of the
+efforts now in progress to introduce competition in the carrying-trade.
+So that I, for one, am at rest as to the result. Oregon will take her
+own part in the general movement, now current throughout the United
+States, to regulate, if not to curtail, the powers of the corporations.
+
+But I have confidence in the steady and peaceful character of her
+population not to carry this matter here to extremes, which might
+unduly burden associated capital, and check the flow of its full
+current to our State.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+Emigration to Oregon--Who should not come--Free advice and no fees--
+English emigrants--Farmers--Haste to be rich--Quoted experiences--Cost
+and ways of coming--Sea-routes--Railroads--Baggage--What not to bring
+--What not to forget--Heavy property--The Custom-house--San Francisco
+hotels--Conclusion.
+
+
+The question most often asked and most difficult to answer is, "Do you
+advise me to come out to Oregon?" It is easy to say who should not
+come. We want no waifs and strays of civilization, enervated with
+excesses, or depressed with failure; men who can find no niche for
+themselves, who have neither the habit, the disposition, nor the
+education for work. We want none of those youngsters who have tried
+this, have failed in that, until their friends say in disgust, "Oh,
+ship them to Oregon, and let them take their chances!" We desire no
+younger sons of English or Eastern parents without energy or capital to
+start them. High birth, aristocratic connections, we value not at all,
+unless they carry with them the sense of responsibility to honored
+forefathers--the determination that the stigma of failure shall not
+stain a proud name. Nor do we desire those young men whose first
+thought is, "How shall we amuse ourselves?" and whose first aim is the
+cricket, or base-ball, or lawn-tennis ground, and whose chief luggage
+is bat, fishing-rod, and shot-gun.
+
+And, on the other hand, we do not want those who, having qualified
+themselves, as they suppose, for life in Oregon by six months or a year
+with some scientific farmer, consider that they know everything,
+despise instruction, neglect advice, are wiser than their elders, and
+then throw up in disgust as soon as they find that they have sunk their
+money, that their theories will not work, and that they must here as
+elsewhere begin at the beginning.
+
+Nor do we propose (and we are certain it is in no way necessary) to
+charge new-comers an initiation fee of two hundred and fifty dollars,
+or any other sum, for the privilege of joining our society in Oregon,
+and profiting by our experience.
+
+And, as I began by saying, the English who have come here have
+established no colony, in the usual sense, set up no separate society,
+and claim no common corporate life.
+
+[Sidenote: _WHO SHOULD COME._]
+
+Society we have, association we have, common amusements and pursuits we
+have, but in all these we invite our American neighbors to take their
+part, and see no reason to regret our course.
+
+True it is that the costume of knickerbockers and gaiters and
+heather-suit and pot-hat is a very common object in our town, and that
+we meet in considerable force at the Episcopal church on Sunday to join
+in the familiar service. But we adhere to our original plan that the
+newcomer shall settle where he pleases in these counties, shall have
+the best advice we can bestow in the choice of land, the purchase of
+stock and implements, and of the other necessaries for a farmer's start
+in life; and shall have this free of charge. We offer the right hand of
+friendship; we will do our part to keep up association and kindly
+relations of all kinds.
+
+But we are more anxious that Oregon should be built up by the gradual
+incoming of men of serious purpose, possessed of moderate capital, who
+shall disperse over the face of the country as they would at home, and
+strengthen the State by the force of attraction each will exercise over
+the friends and acquaintances he has left behind, than we are to create
+here a bit of interjected foreign life.
+
+Therefore let the farmer, above all, tried and worried at home by
+fickle seasons, heavy rent, burdensome tithe and taxes, labor-troubles,
+low prices, and gradually fading capital--let him bring his wife and
+children and come. His few hundred pounds will make a good many
+dollars, and he will be amazed to find himself _owning_ productive
+land for about the sum he would have paid for two years' rent at home.
+
+If his means do not permit him to pay down the whole purchase price, he
+is one of the very few who can be safely advised to begin to some
+extent in debt; for, remember, land in Oregon is expected to pay for
+itself from its own productions in five years' time.
+
+Even if the new-comer has had no previous practical experience, that
+need not of itself deter him. One of our best farmers told me the other
+day that when he began he did not know which end of a plow went first!
+But in such case the wisest thing is either to hire himself out to work
+for an Oregonian farmer for, at any rate, a few months, or, if he takes
+an opportunity of buying land for himself, let him reverse the
+operation and hire an Oregonian to work for him for a time.
+
+I read a short article in the "Portland Evening Telegram," the other
+day, which seemed to me very much in point; so I shall quote it:
+
+"Seven years ago two men, dissatisfied with the sluggishness with which
+their fortunes grew in Portland, determined to better their condition.
+
+"The wonderful resources of the Willamette Valley as an agricultural
+country attracted one of them to Washington County, where he purchased
+a farm, and stocked it with teams and farming implements, and started
+on his road to independence and wealth.
+
+"He told his neighbors, who had been in the farming business for years,
+that he proposed to show them how to succeed.
+
+"He was industrious; he studied the books on farming, and pursued his
+occupation on scientific principles, joined the Grangers, became an
+active member of farmers' clubs, was bitter in his denunciation of
+monopolies.
+
+"Disliking the looks of the old-fashioned worm-fence, he divided his
+fields by building nice plank partitions, and even asked permission of
+an old fogy neighbor to build the whole of a partition fence of plank,
+that the old one might not offend his fastidious taste. Here was
+mistake number one. The rail-fence answered the purpose well enough,
+and he ought to have avoided the expense of the costlier one at least
+until a new one was necessary. He was from Indiana, and thought corn a
+good crop to grow; so he prepared ten acres of his best land and
+planted them to corn: the squirrels came and took it all up; he
+replanted, and again the squirrels took the seed before it sprouted; he
+planted it once more, and succeeded in getting a small crop of poor
+corn which did not mature, and it profited him nothing.
+
+[Sidenote: _QUOTED EXPERIENCES._]
+
+"This was another blunder, as any man who had made any inquiry ought to
+have known that the raising of corn in this valley was never a paying
+business. A small patch for roasting-ears for family use is all any
+wise farmer will ever attempt to raise.
+
+"Again, our progressive farmer had been so impressed with the idea that
+the climate of Oregon was an exceedingly mild one, that he thought his
+apples and potatoes were in no danger of freezing; so he put his apples
+upstairs, and left his potatoes uncovered. Consequently, they were all
+frozen and lost.
+
+"This was an inexcusable blunder, for any man who would look at a map
+and see that he was located above the forty-fifth degree of latitude,
+should have known that any winter was liable to be cold enough to
+freeze unprotected fruits and vegetables.
+
+"Our friend became discouraged, and gave more attention to wheat, but
+found that he could not raise that commodity for less than seventy-five
+cents a bushel, although other farmers have asserted that the cost did
+not exceed fifty cents.
+
+"With his experience of seven years' farming in Oregon, he is perfectly
+satisfied that it will not pay, and hence he is back in Portland,
+intending to stay. The corn, apple, and potato business fixed him as
+far as farming is concerned, though he ought to have known that his
+course in regard to them would have resulted just as it did.
+
+"Our second young man did not like the slowness of farming as a means
+of getting rich, so he put his money in sheep, and took up a ranch in
+Wasco County.
+
+"For a few years he was encouraged: as the grass grew, his stock
+increased; the winters were mild, and wool brought a good price.
+
+"He raised some feed, and for three years had no use for it, as the
+sheep made their own living off the range.
+
+"He thought when the cold snap set in last winter that he had enough
+feed to last through any winter that could reasonably be expected. But
+the cold winds continued to blow, the snow fell and froze, and
+continued to fall and freeze.
+
+"Two months passed; his feed was exhausted, and his sheep began to die.
+Out of 4,300 head 3,000 died, and though a neighbor who started in with
+about the same number had only six head left, our young friend thought
+his own condition bad enough, and so concluded to quit the business and
+come back to Portland. He says a man can take a thousand head of sheep,
+build sheds, provide food, and have a sure thing to clear a few hundred
+dollars every year, but he did not want that kind of a sure thing.
+
+"He made the mistake of him who 'makes haste to be rich,' and hence he
+retires from the contest on that line no better off than when he
+started in.
+
+"Both these men are now in Portland, and each is hopelessly disgusted
+with the attempt he has made.
+
+"One thinks that farming in Oregon will never pay, though there are
+hundreds of farmers all over the State who started with less than he
+did, and are now well situated and independent.
+
+"The other thinks the whole of Eastern Oregon, so called, a failure,
+though he virtually admits that his lack of providence, and his desire
+to make a large sum of money in a short time, were the causes of his
+losses."
+
+Since we have been in Oregon we have seen several cases like these
+examples. Let the intending emigrant weigh this well--that farming in
+the Willamette Valley is not the road to large fortune, though it is to
+comfort and prosperity.
+
+[Sidenote: _COST AND WAYS OF COMING._]
+
+Let no young man, brought up in a comfortable Eastern home, come to
+Oregon to farm, unless he can be assured that at the end of a year or
+two's probation and apprenticeship he can have provided for him some
+small sum of money, enough for a start on his own land. The life of the
+agricultural laborer in almost every farmer's family here is a very
+hard and uncomfortable one; the lodging is rough, the living, though
+plentiful, is often coarse, the hours of labor very long, and the
+employments on the farm miscellaneous indeed.
+
+The better thing is for two friends or relatives to come together; they
+may separate for their apprenticeship, but their purchase may easily be
+made together; and, indeed, out here two are better than one.
+
+And now for some hints as to the ways of coming, and what should and
+should not be brought.
+
+For the English emigrant there is a large choice. He may come by any of
+the New York lines, and thence across the continent to San Francisco,
+and on by steamer to Portland. If he comes first class throughout, he
+will find the expense nearly L60 sterling, or about $300. By choosing
+the cheaper cabin on the steamer, and reconciling himself to doing
+without the comforts of the Pullman car, and economizing in meals on
+the journey across by providing himself with a provision-basket, to be
+replenished at intervals, he may save about L15, or $75. The time is
+short; three weeks will bring him from Liverpool to Oregon, unless he
+delays needlessly in New York, Chicago, or San Francisco.
+
+In New York let him beware of cabs or carriages. He is likely to be
+charged five dollars for a ride he will get in London for one shilling.
+The proper course is for him, after his baggage has passed the
+custom-house, to intrust it to a transfer agent, who will have it
+conveyed to the hotel, and the emigrant can take the elevated railway
+or get a tram-car ride for a few cents. The same course should be
+followed on leaving the hotel for the railway terminus to come West.
+
+So far as I know, he can make no mistake in following his fancy in
+choosing his route.
+
+The Erie or the New York Central will carry him to Chicago, by way of
+Buffalo and Niagara; and, if any pause on the journey at all is made,
+let the opportunity be seized of seeing the most glorious of
+waterfalls, the remembrance of which will never die.
+
+The Baltimore and Ohio passes through Maryland and West Virginia, and
+the Pennsylvania Railroad through New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and each
+shows him some of the finest scenery on the Atlantic slope.
+
+From Chicago he will have a choice again. There is no difference in
+cost, time, or comfort between the Chicago and Northwestern, the
+Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy, and the Chicago and Rock Island. I
+have traveled by all three; perhaps the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy
+runs through the most interesting scenery.
+
+Up to Omaha the first-class traveler is allowed one hundred and fifty
+pounds of baggage free, and so far it will be properly handled and
+cared for by the baggage-men.
+
+[Sidenote: _BAGGAGE-SMASHING._]
+
+At Omaha things change for the worse. Only one hundred pounds of
+baggage is allowed by the Union Pacific and Central Pacific roads; and
+on all excess the rate to San Francisco is fifteen cents a pound. And,
+if the traveler has any regard for his possessions, let him see to it
+that they are closely packed in the very strongest and roughest trunks
+that he can procure. Oh, those baggage-smashers at Omaha! When we
+crossed last I stood by to see a baggage-car brought up alongside the
+stone platform, piled with trunks and other baggage to the roof, the
+doors thrown open, and the contents literally tumbled out pell-mell.
+Trunks were smashed open, locks broken, straps burst, contents ruined.
+And the baggage-men seemed to take a horrid pleasure in tilting heavy
+trunks on to their corners, and so bundling them across at a rapid rate
+to the other car; dislocation of the strongest joints was the result.
+
+If the passenger be incautious enough to burden himself with needless
+weight from Omaha, he should dispatch it to San Francisco by
+freight-train addressed to his hotel; the rates are thus so moderated
+that he will not have the chagrin of paying to the railroad companies
+about as much as most of his baggage is worth.
+
+Another route from England is by Southampton and Panama to San
+Francisco. The charge for a first-class passage is L50, and the
+traveler will not be bothered about his baggage save on the Isthmus
+Railway. He _may_ lose no time in catching the Pacific mail-steamer on
+the Pacific side, but he is more likely to have three or four days to
+wait at Panama, in a town where there is nothing to see or do, and
+where he will be charged not less than three dollars a day at the
+hotel. The lovely scenery and gorgeous vegetation of the tropics will
+be a pleasant picture in memory, whatever draw-backs the five weeks
+occupied on this route may discover.
+
+San Francisco is the city of comfortable and moderately charging
+hotels. The most expensive are the Palace and the Baldwin. The Lick
+House and the Russ House are comfortable and more moderate; and the
+International is cheap but comfortable.
+
+From San Francisco to Portland the steamers Oregon, Columbia, or State
+of California, sail every five days, and are each safe, speedy, and
+excellent boats. The cost of the journey is twenty dollars, and the
+time usually three days or more, including a detention of some hours at
+Astoria. As soon as the Yaquina route is opened, it is expected that
+this time will be reduced by one half.
+
+And now, what should the emigrant bring to Oregon? So far as household
+furniture and fittings are concerned, the best and cheapest way is to
+send them by Royal Mail from Southampton by way of Panama. The freight
+was L4 10_s._ per ton of forty cubic feet. I do not know if any change
+has been made.
+
+It is wise for any family to bring bedding (but not beds), knives and
+forks and electro-plate, books, pictures, and the little ornaments and
+trifles which go so far to transfer the home feeling to whatever room
+they may at once furnish and adorn. And do not forget the crockery. It
+is foolish to bring furniture, pianos, or such heavy and cumbersome
+property. All these used articles will come in duty free. If they are
+sent to San Francisco direct from England, they will have to be
+examined at the custom-house there.
+
+The traveler will find it a great waste of time and temper to pass his
+goods through the custom-house himself. There are many respectable
+agents, whose trifling fee is well spent in getting their services for
+this work.
+
+As for clothes. New clothes will be charged with a duty of sixty per
+cent. of their value, and cause trouble also. Worn clothes and boots
+come in duty free. The strongest and most durable woolen garments are
+those best adapted for the Oregon climate. English ankle-boots are
+treasures not to be obtained for love or money in Oregon. The
+field-boot, of porpoise-skin, will be infinitely valuable in our muddy
+winters; but such are too hot for summer wear. English saddlery should
+all be left at home.
+
+If the emigrant is the happy owner of a good breech-loader, let him
+bring it, with as many of Eley's green cases as he can pack. Ammunition
+is expensive here. English rifles are a nuisance. The Winchester,
+Sharp, or Ballard, I think superior to any sporting rifles we have--as
+much so as the American shot-guns are inferior to the English makers'.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: _ATTRACTIONS WHICH OREGON OFFERS._]
+
+Let us see, then, in a few words, why we expect that immigrants will
+continue to arrive. What are the attractions which Oregon offers?
+
+ 1. A healthy and temperate climate, whether residence in the Willamette
+Valley or in Southern or Eastern Oregon is chosen.
+
+ 2. A fertile and not exhausted soil, adapted to the continuous raising
+of all cereals, to the growth of the best kinds of pasture, and to the
+ripening of all temperate fruits in profusion and excellence.
+
+ 3. A climate and range unusually suited to cattle, sheep, and horses of
+the best breeds.
+
+ 4. The ocean boundary on the west, giving free access to shipping for
+the cheap transport of all productions.
+
+ 5. Mineral wealth of almost every description, most of which is yet
+unworked.
+
+ 6. Industrial openings of many kinds, with special facilities by way of
+abundant water-power.
+
+ 7. Beautiful scenery, whatever portion of the State may be selected by
+the new-comer.
+
+ 8. Sport and pastime in moderation, with a notable absence of dangerous
+animals, and reptiles, and noxious insects.
+
+ 9. A modern and liberal Constitution, affording special advantages and
+securities to foreigners and aliens.
+
+10. A quiet and orderly population, ready to welcome strangers.
+
+11. Good facilities for education, remarkable in so young a country.
+
+12. A railroad and river system of transportation, only now in process
+of development, and which is certain to effect a great rise in the
+value of lands.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now my work is done. I have endeavored to give, in as concise and
+short a form as I could contrive, a faithful picture of life as it is
+in Oregon to-day. I have extenuated nothing, nor set down aught in
+malice.
+
+If, in reviewing what I have written, I feel conscious of a special
+weakness, it is that I have brought too strongly into view the
+difficulties the immigrant will have to encounter; for I feel sure that
+no one, on full knowledge, will accuse me of drawing in too fair and
+flattering colors the attractions of our beautiful State.
+
+May Oregon flourish by receiving constant additions to her vigorous and
+industrious people, whose efforts, in scarcely any other place in the
+wide world so certain of a due return, may make her waste places plain,
+and cause her wildernesses to rejoice and blossom as the rose!
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+Since the foregoing pages were finished, a period of six months has
+passed. Nothing has transpired which should affect the opinions formed
+and expressed by the author in favor of the attractions which Oregon
+offers to the energetic and industrious. The past half-year has been
+one of successful development for the State as a whole. A bountiful
+harvest, which has been vouchsafed to Oregon while many Eastern States
+and many European countries have had to mourn because of drought or
+excessive rain and consequent scarcity, has again proved how highly
+favored by position and climate is this Western nook. And now, in the
+early days of October, we have had a week's rain to soften the clods
+and prepare the ground for tillage, but the sun of the Indian summer is
+shining with soft brilliancy, and we look for crisp nights and
+mornings, and lovely days, for from six to ten weeks to come.
+
+During the six months, Eastern capital has been prodigally turned into
+Oregon and Washington Territory by Mr. H. Villard and his associates.
+New lines of railway designed as feeders to the Columbia River route
+are being pushed to completion regardless of cost, while the
+trunk-line, along the side of the Columbia River, is being still urged
+forward by the united forces of over three thousand Chinamen and all
+the white laborers that can be picked up. Time alone will show how far
+a line, which winds and twists along the banks of the mighty Columbia
+in devious curves, overhung by mountain-sides loaded with loose rocks
+at the mercy of every winter's storms, can be trusted to carry the
+enormous traffic predicated for it; and, granted that this slender reed
+has the necessary strength, at what kind of port is the hoped-for mass
+of grain for export to be delivered? The following article appeared in
+the "Daily Oregonian," of Portland, on the 10th of this last September.
+The newspaper in question claims to be the leading journal of the
+State, and is in fact the only one publishing full daily telegraphic
+dispatches. It is also the organ of the Villard interest, and it may be
+taken that it is not likely to overstate the disadvantages attaching to
+the city of its publication:
+
+    "THE COST OF NEGLECT."
+
+    "The water in the rivers between Portland and the ocean is at about
+    the usual September stage, but, owing to the absence of any means
+    whatever of dredging the bars, the depth at the three or four shoal
+    places is less than in former seasons. Steamers drawing seventeen
+    or even seventeen and a half feet come up by plowing through a few
+    inches of mud at certain points, but ships have not the force to go
+    through, nor, in many instances, the iron bottoms to stand the rub.
+    It is not safe to load a vessel which must pass down the river more
+    than sixteen feet. The result is, that grain-ships can only be
+    partly loaded here, and must take a large proportion of their
+    cargoes down the river. The American ship Palmyra went down
+    Thursday with 900 tons of a total wheat cargo of 2,200. The bulk of
+    her load--1,300 tons--must be carried down by barges and taken in
+    at Baker's Bay. The Zamora, now taking wheat here, can only be half
+    loaded at her Portland dock. Lighterage costs $1.25 per short ton,
+    or six cents per cental. Thus the Palmyra must pay $1,625 extra
+    because the river is not properly dredged. The average of
+    lighterage this season will be about three cents per cental on all
+    wheat that goes out of the Columbia River."
+
+It is not far from the fact that, although from sixty to sixty-five
+shillings is a well-paying freight for ships from Portland to the
+United Kingdom, and although abundance of sailing-ships are available
+from the substitution of steamers in so many parts of the world, yet
+the actual freight charged has ranged from eighty to eighty-five
+shillings, this resulting from a combination of causes, of which the
+charges for pilotage, towage, and lighterage are among the chief.
+
+Of course, all these charges come out of the pocket of the producer,
+and, unless some radical change can be effected, there is no apparent
+reason why these sums should not be cumulated to such a height as to
+place the valley farmer on the level of his Eastern Oregon and Eastern
+Washington Territory neighbor, who does not realize for his wheat much
+over thirty-five cents a bushel on an average market price of
+seventy-five cents.
+
+Nor would there be much hope of a reduction in the inland
+transportation charges, were matters to progress as they have been
+doing during the past six months. Everything pointed toward the
+centralization of the control of every railroad and steamboat line in
+this State and the adjacent Territory in the hands of the Oregon
+Railway and Navigation Company, presided over by Mr. Villard. The
+narrow-gauge system of railroads in this valley, owned and operated by
+the Scotch company, with headquarters at Dundee, was six months back
+the sole hope of the valley farmers as an honest competitor with its
+huge rival. But a few months ago announcement was made that Mr. Villard
+had secured the Scotch company, by a series of astute operations in
+Scotland; and now, under the ninety-nine years' lease which he
+obtained, the narrow-gauge company has ceased its independent
+existence, and its traffic is being assimilated as to rates with that
+of its former competitor, while it is so conducted as to stifle its
+growth as a separate organization, and throw all its vitality into the
+other roads.
+
+But the anticipations, expressed in the earlier pages of this book, of
+an active rivalry to the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, through
+the Oregon Pacific Railroad and its outlet at Yaquina Bay, are being
+realized as rapidly as men and money can do it.
+
+Early in July last the news came through the wires that the financial
+battle had been won by Colonel Hogg, and that construction was to be
+pushed forward immediately. Short as the time is, much has been done,
+and more is being done. Engineering parties were organized and fitted
+out, and their work is nearly complete in all its parts. A good line of
+easy grades is located through from Corvallis to Yaquina Bay,
+presenting no extraordinary difficulties of construction. On this, as I
+write, a large force of both white and Chinese labor is employed, with
+the full expectation that the line will be surveyed, built, equipped,
+and running within four or five months from the time the first spadeful
+of earth was dug. Difficulties in starting a great enterprise like the
+Oregon Pacific Railroad, of course, abound, but so far have been
+successfully met. Meanwhile the goodwill of the valley farmers has been
+maintained throughout, and the new road will open with abundance of
+customers. Therefore, all interested in the undertaking are well
+satisfied with the prospect of having to operate a line which shall
+save the valley farmers two hundred and twenty-one miles in actual
+distance, and save them half the present charges for transportation
+between the valley and San Francisco, and which gives also an early
+prospect of ocean-going ships loading direct from an Oregon port, with
+wharves within three miles from the ocean, for the European or Eastern
+market.
+
+It does not seem, then, an unreasonable augury that the day of
+exorbitant freights, excessive pilotage and towage charges, half-cargo
+lighterage, and also of traffic discrimination, will have passed away
+for ever, so far as Oregon is concerned, when the Oregon Pacific is
+opened. And I think every reader of this book will admit that it is a
+matter of just pride to see projects formed years back, and adhered to
+through much evil speaking, slander, and belittling, come to their full
+strength and fulfillment.
+
+The last time I visited Yaquina Bay was during the closing days of
+September. The afternoon sun shone on the little dancing waves as we
+rowed across from Newport to the South Beach, where the harbor-works
+are going on. A heavy equinoctial storm had raged for two days before,
+and it would have been no surprise had the incomplete works suffered.
+But we found the men busily employed in piling large blocks of rock on
+the mattresses made of large, long bundles of brushwood, secured with
+cords, and deposited carefully in the line of the breakwater. Many of
+the hands were Indians, who were working very intelligently and quickly
+under the direction of our old friend Kit Abbey. No damage whatever had
+been done, but, on the contrary, the storm had piled the sand in even
+layers, five or six feet deep, on each side of the breakwater,
+solidifying and strengthening the work. Already the channel nearest to
+the beach, which had robbed the main channel of some of the tidal
+water, had been permanently closed. And the increase of the tidal
+in-and-out flow thus caused had proved to the satisfaction of the
+United States engineer officer in charge the correctness of the theory
+on which the works were designed. So that all tends in the one
+direction of opening this harbor, on which so many hopes are fixed, to
+ocean-going ships of deep draught.
+
+Fortunately, the facts are being daily ascertained, tabulated, and
+certified by the independent authority of the United States engineers;
+they have minute surveys of the channel, and the changes operated by
+the new breakwater will be observed and recorded. Thus, as soon as the
+time comes to invite the shipping sailing to the Northwest coast to
+enter the port, there will be no further room for question as to depth
+of water and ease of access; but the facts will be so patent and plain
+to the world, that no one need be longer blinded by the persistent
+misrepresentations of interested parties.
+
+[Illustration: Entrance to Yaquina Bay (Looking seaward)]
+
+The effect of the opening of the Oregon Pacific Railroad, which in two,
+or at most three years from now, will meet at or near Boise City,
+Idaho, the lines rapidly pushing westward to that point, will be
+manifold:
+
+First, it will open the new port at Yaquina to commerce, and so give
+the Willamette Valley its independent outlet, unaffected by
+terror-dealing bars, winter ice, and exorbitant charges. Second, it
+will in its eastward progress open up to settlement a broad belt of
+fertile and well-watered country, at present well-nigh untenanted.
+Third, it will operate as a check to the pretensions of the Oregon
+Railway and Navigation Company to entire monopoly of the transportation
+of the State, and its boasted consequent ability to fix fares and
+freights at its own sweet will.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+TWO YEARS IN OREGON.
+
+
+By WALLIS NASH, author of "Oregon There and Back in 1877."
+_Second edition._ With Illustrations. 12mo, cloth, $1.50.
+
+The following are a few out of a very large number of press notices:
+
+    _From the New York Sun._
+
+    "Under the title of 'Two Years in Oregon,' by Wallis Nash, we have
+    an authentic and exhaustive guide-book, written for the benefit of
+    those persons who intend to settle there. There is nothing in this
+    volume to recall the superficial observations of the ordinary
+    tourist; yet, although the author has confined himself to
+    collecting information of real value to the emigrant, he has set it
+    forth in a distinct, unpretentious, and attractive way."
+
+    _From the Springfield Republican._
+
+    "For the best picture of Oregon as it is to-day, we are indebted to
+    an Englishman. 'Two Years in Oregon' is the title of the book,
+    written by Wallis Nash, and published by D. Appleton & Co., of New
+    York. Mr. Nash conducted a colony of his countrymen some time since
+    to the neighborhood of Corvallis, a thriving town a hundred or more
+    miles south of Portland. He did not attempt to set up a New
+    Jerusalem of his own after the example of unlucky Tom Hughes in the
+    Rugby venture, but mingled all his interests with the settlers
+    already on the ground, and good success has evidently attended his
+    efforts. Mr. Nash has made a thorough study of the State and its
+    resources. He has considerable literary skill, and while his book
+    contains the practical facts and statistics needful to the posting
+    of the would-be immigrant, it has besides enough racy descriptive
+    writing to make it attractive to the general reader. Oregon has two
+    distinct climates. The Cascade Range, cutting the State in halves,
+    is the dividing line. On the Pacific side of the mountains, where
+    most of the settlements are located, there are milder winters,
+    cooler summers, and a heavier rain-fall than upon the plains
+    stretching to the eastward of the range. There, too, are the heavy
+    forests for which the State is noted. Wheat is the staple crop of
+    the Oregon farmers, and last year there was a surplus of over one
+    hundred thousand tons sent to market. Sheep husbandry is
+    considerably followed, and the climate appears admirably adapted to
+    the profitable raising of all kinds of livestock, while all the
+    fruits and vegetables of the temperate zone yield remarkably. With
+    better transportation facilities, a mixed agriculture is likely to
+    be pursued in the future. The State has suffered much at the hands
+    of transportation monopolists. The Villard combination have so far
+    had almost complete control of the railways and waterways, and the
+    rates charged have been enormous. A Portland merchant's freight
+    bill on some goods shipped recently from New York, showed that one
+    third of the whole amount was charged for the water-carriage of
+    seven hundred miles from San Francisco. The company's railroad
+    charges are still heavier. According to a new schedule of reduced
+    rates from Portland to Walla Walla, two hundred and seventy miles,
+    twenty-four cents is the rate for a bushel of wheat, against two to
+    four cents a bushel for greater distances on Eastern roads. Mr.
+    Nash devotes a chapter to the iniquities of the Villard monopoly
+    which bears so heavily upon the farming community. There is
+    prospect, however, that the burden may be lightened when the
+    railway now building eastward from Yaquina Bay to a connection
+    through Southwestern Idaho with the Union Pacific is completed."
+
+    _From the Portland Standard_ (_Oregon_).
+
+    "Mr. Nash's experiences and observations as set forth in this book
+    are correct representations of Oregon life. His opinions are not
+    biased and warped by long residence, so as to give everything a
+    color beyond the truth in favor of the beauties and facilities of
+    the State for persons desiring homes, and which would be found to
+    be untrue by strangers seeking farms and residences, and
+    consequently bring disappointment to them after the trouble and
+    expense of going there. Mr. Nash represents the State as it is, and
+    his book is calculated to do far more good as an advertising medium
+    for bringing immigration within her boundaries than the many
+    pamphlets issued by immigration bureaus, painting in high colors
+    beyond the truth the many advantages which Oregon presents. This
+    book should be widely circulated and read. It will attract
+    immigration and capital to the State with an impetus not heretofore
+    felt."
+
+    _From the Corvallis Gazette_ (_Oregon_).
+
+    This journal gives a large number of commendatory extracts, and
+    concludes its notice as follows: "Many others are equally
+    complimentary, and we are glad that Oregon, and especially the
+    Willamette Valley, are being so well advertised. We understand the
+    book is having a large sale."
+
+    _From the Albany Register_ (_Oregon_).
+
+    "'Two Years in Oregon,' by Wallis Nash, is the title of a very neat
+    work just issued from the press of the Appletons, New York. It is
+    the impressions made and the experience gained by the writer after
+    a two years' residence in Oregon, written in a most entertaining
+    and attractive style. It will be read everywhere with pleasure, as
+    it is a most faithful description of things and scenes as the
+    writer beheld them. The picture, to our mind, is nowhere overdrawn.
+    Portland is faithfully pictured, and 'The Oregonian' so faithfully
+    portrayed that its poor editor will never forgive the writer."
+
+    _From the Philadelphia Press._
+
+    "Mr. Nash's book describes the State in the most practical manner.
+    It describes the scenery, the society, the legislative
+    peculiarities, the economical advantages and disadvantages, the
+    state of the industries, the transportation question, and all the
+    various points which a possible emigrant might wish to know before
+    he took the decisive step. It is written in a pleasant, vivacious
+    style, and can be read with much profit by any one who takes an
+    interest in our own great West."
+
+    _From the Sheffield and Rotherham Independent_ (_England_).
+
+    "Mr. Nash's 'Two Years in Oregon' is one of the most charming books
+    we have lately come across. He is a shrewd and careful observer,
+    and writes with grace and ease. The illustrations, also, of the
+    book are more than ordinarily clever. Mr. Nash evidently feels a
+    warm interest in Oregon, and his book will go a long way to attract
+    public interest in that direction. Few men can tell a story better,
+    or enable readers to realize more vividly the appearance of a
+    country and people they have never seen. The emigrant, the
+    politician, the student of men and manners, the naturalist and the
+    political economist, will all enjoy this book, which we hope will
+    soon be followed by a fresh work from its author's pen."
+
+    _From the University Press._
+
+    "This book has for its author an Englishman who visited Oregon in
+    1877, and who then traveled 'its length and breadth.' He moved his
+    family there in 1879. He now sends out this interesting and
+    instructive volume in answer to the many letters received by him
+    asking for information. He is an easy, simple, unostentatious
+    writer. We believe, as he says, that he has endeavored to give 'a
+    faithful picture of life as it is in Oregon to-day.' He has good
+    descriptive powers, and has enlivened his book with several amusing
+    incidents."
+
+    _From the Chicago Times._
+
+    "This book is the work of a man who has lived two years in the
+    State, with an observant eye, an apparently judicial and impartial
+    mind, and a ready and fluent pen. It embraces pretty much
+    everything in the way of information about the region which any
+    emigrant would like to know on pretty much all of its natural,
+    social, and political features. It is, indeed, almost a guide-book
+    to the region, but is one quite out of the usual sort, enlivened
+    with a great fund of personal and local anecdote and incident,
+    which serves to make it very interesting reading. It offers to the
+    public a more complete compendium of information about one of the
+    most interesting, at least, of American localities, than can
+    elsewhere be found in the same space; and as one of the chief final
+    centers around which American civilization promises to reach its
+    ultimate development, everything connected with it is of interest,
+    not only to Americans, but to people abroad also."
+
+    _From the New York Evening Mail and Express._
+
+    "It would be impossible in a brief notice to state even the
+    substance of this book, which is packed with information of all
+    sorts, information procured and conned by himself, which neglects
+    nothing that a would-be emigrant ought to inquire into, which is
+    close in observation, terse in deduction, good-tempered,
+    warm-hearted, hard-headed, and, what is more than all this,
+    thoroughly amusing."
+
+    _From the Utica Observer._
+
+    "A book like this is especially timely. The author, Wallis Nash, is
+    an English settler in the great Willamette Valley, and discourses
+    of his adopted home with the tone of an avowed advocate of its soil
+    and climate. He combats with his own observations and the official
+    weather reports the wide-spread belief that Oregon is a land of
+    perpetual rains, and presents altogether the most comprehensive
+    sketch of the existing industries and possible development of the
+    State which has yet been published."
+
+    _From the Chicago Inter-Ocean._
+
+    "Mr. Nash narrates his own experiences, and gives a detailed
+    account of the agricultural, business, and social resources of the
+    State in an obviously impartial manner."
+
+    _From the Chicago Journal._
+
+    "In the year 1877 the author of this volume visited Oregon,
+    traveled through its length and breadth, and, on returning to his
+    home in England, published a book giving a short account of his
+    journey, and recommending the country as a desirable one in which
+    to settle. A few months afterward he left England at the head of a
+    party of twenty-six persons, and, upon arriving in Oregon, settled
+    at Corvallis, a pleasant little village on the banks of the
+    Willamette River. After a continuous residence of two years in that
+    far Western State, Mr. Nash again gives the result of his
+    experience, as a guide to the emigrant who may intend to make
+    Oregon his future home. He presents in a favorable view the
+    agricultural and business prospects of the country; the social and
+    political life of the people, and while he does not claim that a
+    competence can be secured without persevering industry, he
+    maintains that the inducements offered to the enterprising and
+    energetic are such that in a few years the emigrant of moderate
+    means and some experience will be able to acquire a home and
+    pecuniary independence. The book contains a vast amount of
+    information useful to the emigrant, and it is written in a
+    pleasant, chatty style. The descriptions of the varied scenery, the
+    character sketches of the settlers, and the laughable incidents
+    recounted, give an additional pleasure to the volume, which is
+    enriched by several illustrations of Oregon scenery."
+
+    _From the St. Paul Pioneer Press_ (_Minnesota_).
+
+    "Any thorough description of Oregon, its resources, and the people
+    who settle in it, must win many eager and interested readers. But,
+    to do full justice to Mr. Nash, he has taken but little advantage
+    of this fact. His book, which he modestly styles 'a guide-book to
+    Oregon for the intending emigrant,' is far more than this. It is a
+    pains-taking description of the natural features of a great Pacific
+    State; of its soil, climate, and productive qualities; of its past
+    development and future promise; of its leading industries and its
+    adaptation to others; in short, of all that a man who has lived in
+    Oregon with his eyes open might be expected to find out, and all
+    about which one who has not lived there might be expected to wish
+    information. There are in existence very few works which tell in
+    such short compass as much about any State east of the Rocky
+    Mountains. There are very many points in this hand-book which it
+    would be interesting to present in detail, but nothing less than a
+    careful reading will suffice. The story told by the writer about
+    the outrageous swindling out of their land grant of the men who
+    constructed, at great sacrifice, the greatest wagon highway in
+    Oregon, deserves investigation. If Mr. Nash is correct, the farmers
+    of Oregon have no reason to love Mr. Villard or his transportation
+    company. The greatest drawback to the settling up of the State is
+    the iron grip and remorseless extortions of the railways. This book
+    is from beginning to end thoroughly readable. It furnishes more
+    information than whole folios of statistics, or any number of
+    glowing descriptions by hasty, prejudiced, and uninformed
+    correspondents."
+
+    _From the Chicago Evening Herald._
+
+    "Mr. Nash's data were gathered during a two years' residence, and
+    are so well digested and so thoroughly re-enforced by the practical
+    and personal experiences of the writer and his friends, that the
+    most captious critic can not reasonably pick many flaws therein.
+    Mr. Nash is evidently not only a close observer, but an eminently
+    practical man, and in describing the advantages and disadvantages
+    of Oregon, keeps constantly in view the information which other
+    practical men, seeking a location, would be likely to need and
+    appreciate. A great many chatty and amusing pages are devoted to
+    anecdotes of early and later life in Oregon, and to the fortunes
+    and misfortunes of those who sought first to subdue the virgin soil
+    of that State. Some of the concluding chapters of the book are
+    devoted to a very intelligent discussion of the existing
+    transportation problems in Oregon. All in all, the work is not only
+    readable, but has an intrinsic value which those who wish to know
+    all about the _terra incognita_ of which it treats will thoroughly
+    appreciate."
+
+    _From the Janesville Gazette._
+
+    "The book contains a vast amount of information useful to the
+    emigrant, and it is written in a pleasant, chatty style. The
+    descriptions of the varied scenery, the character sketches of the
+    settlers, and the laughable incidents recounted, give an additional
+    pleasure to the volume, which is enriched by several illustrations
+    of Oregon scenery."
+
+    _From the Detroit Evening News._
+
+    "Mr. Nash has just written for the benefit of his old friends and
+    neighbors in England a little book relating his observations and
+    experiences during his first two years of frontier life. It
+    contains much interesting information about Oregon and its people,
+    and coming from a disinterested source will be especially
+    acceptable to those contemplating removal to that State."
+
+    _From the Columbus Dispatch_ (_Wisconsin_).
+
+    "It is a compendium of information, and will be an addition to any
+    library."
+
+    _From the Boston Journal._
+
+    "Mr. Nash writes especially for the benefit of emigrants and
+    intending settlers, but the book will have an interest for all
+    readers who like to trace the developments of social and political
+    institutions in a swiftly growing State. The author writes with
+    enthusiasm, but frankly and sometimes critically; and he has
+    collected a good deal of valuable information, which, together with
+    the results of his own experience, he presents in an animated and
+    pleasant manner."
+
+    _From the Christian at Work._
+
+    "It is a capital book."
+
+    _From the Ann Arbor Chronicle._
+
+    "To read the book is like making a trip to Oregon without the
+    tediousness and expense of the journey."
+
+    _From the Milwaukee Sentinel._
+
+    "The reader instinctively feels that here is a careful, temperate
+    guide, who can be absolutely trusted."
+
+    _From the Springfield Union_ _(Massachusetts_).
+
+    "A valuable book."
+
+    _From the New York World._
+
+    "It is a description of the country and of life in Oregon that is
+    worth reading by anybody who may for any reason be interested in
+    the subject."
+
+    _From the Cincinnati Commercial._
+
+    "A fascinating book."
+
+    _From the San Jose Mercury_ (_California_).
+
+    "A highly interesting and instructive volume, marked by fairness of
+    statement and honesty of opinion."
+
+    _From the Omaha Republican_ (_Nebraska_).
+
+    "Mr. Nash has written a most interesting volume. His powers of
+    description are simply magnificent, and, with such an expansive
+    theme before him, he has wrought out a book that will no doubt have
+    ready sale, and do a great measure of good in placing the
+    advantages of Oregon most entertainingly before a large and choice
+    number of readers."
+
+    _From the Philadelphia North American_.
+
+    "It is a very good report which Mr. Nash has to make of the State,
+    and of the people by whom it is inhabited; and as he tells his tale
+    in the plain, straightforward way of a man who is relating facts,
+    and nothing but facts, and who simply desires to make known the
+    truth, it can not fail to make a favorable impression."
+
+Cordial commendatory notices of the work have appeared also in the
+following journals:
+
+    Albany (Oregon) Herald.
+    Benton (Oregon) Leader.
+    State Rights Democrat (Albany, Oregon).
+    San Francisco Argonaut.
+    San Francisco Chronicle.
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+    Montreal Daily Star.
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+    Boston Commonwealth.
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+    Brooklyn Times.
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+    Boston Journal.
+    Providence Press.
+
+
+_For sale by all booksellers; or sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of
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