Page:All Over Oregon and Washington.djvu/121

Rh or flying. Thinking to learn something of natural history, we inquire of the driver of the mail (who, by the way, is from Maine) the use of the curlew's four or five inches of bill. The Yankee response is, "I don't know, unless it is to eat out of a bottle!" That reminds us to tell him about the man who became excessively fat eating mush and milk out of a jug with a knitting-needle.

Coming to the valley of Dry Creek we behold a new phase of this country. Dry Creek has bottom-land just wide enough, by intersecting it with transverse parallel lines, to make a row of farms extending its whole length. The views we catch of this winding belt of cultivation are perfectly charming—like the effects in a picture. Tints of green, yellow, and brown, in the fields; russets and grays; white houses in the midst of orchards and gardens; the beautiful forms of native and cultivated trees grouped about the houses, or fringing the creek; cattle, sheep, and fowls, giving life to the picture; or, better still, the farmer, with his children, coming in from the hay-field on the loaded wagon. While we gaze delighted, from every side the meadow-lark trills its liquid melody, in notes of exultation peculiarly infectious; and we find ourselves wondering why we have not always preferred the country to the town.

A ride of eighteen miles brings us to the Touchet; not the Touchet as we saw it at the first crossing on the road from Wallula, but a beautiful stream, with a gravel bottom, wooded banks, picturesque bluffs, and an open, handsome valley. And here, at the crossing, is the promising new town of Waitsburg. As the history of this place may serve as a hint to future pioneers in this country, we give it as it was told to us.