Page:All Over Oregon and Washington.djvu/104

98 it be summer, there are patches of color on the sere-looking, grassy heights; rosy clarkia, blue lupine, and golden sunflower. We hear the voices of multitudes of meadow-larks; and see a few prairie-hens stooping their long necks shyly among the bunch-grass; or discover at long intervals a cabin, or a flat-boat, or a band of Indian ponies feeding.

We have leisure to study the peculiarities of this region: A great river, with a fertile country on either side of it, extending for hundreds of miles back, and having an annual "rise" as regular as that of the Nile. But this overflow does not affect the lands bordering upon it, because they are too high. What then? Is the country unproductive? No. It is a dry, but not a rainless country. Rain falls at intervals from September to June. Light snows cover the ground a portion of the winter season. The soil is of a mellow quality that does not bake with drought.

The first explorers of these high plains gave it as their opinion that trees would not grow below an elevation of two thousand feet, and that the lands adjoining the Columbia were only fit for grazing. This opinion, either borrowed from the early explorers, or suggested by the absence of trees in a wild state, was also held by the first settlers; not only with regard to trees, but to all kinds of grain as well. There certainly could have been no more unpromising ground for the planting out of trees than that at Dalles. Yet, after four years of experiments, the streets of Dalles are lined with thrifty young shade-trees, and its gardens filled with fruit-bearing trees. Experiments with wheat have shown that it is not the bottom-lands alone which will produce crops, but the hills and ridges back from the rivers.