Page:All Over Oregon and Washington.djvu/144

138 those bodies of water out of which no streams flow are all more or less alkaline, from receiving the drainage of the alkaline soil about them, and not discharging any portion of it.

Wasco County, extending from the northern to the southern boundary of Oregon, along the base of the Cascade Range, and having a breadth of more than sixty miles, comprises almost every variety of surface and soil belonging to all the other counties. Its southern portion, like the southern portion of Grant County, is a lake country. A chain of volcanic high-lands, commencing at Diamond Peak of the Cascade Range, runs north-easterly, joining on to the Blue Mountains, and separating this lake-region from the valleys of the Des Chutes, Crooked, and John Day rivers, which flow toward the north; making of this south-western portion of Eastern Oregon an isolated, as it is a peculiar country.

Lying near the base of the Cascades, and south of the ridge just mentioned, is the Klamath Marsh, a wet, grassy basin, out of which flows Williamson's River, a stream of considerable size, into Great Klamath Lake, a few miles farther south. Near the head of this lake is situated Fort Klamath, a military post, located here during the disturbances with the Snake and Klamath Indians in 1863. On the eastern shore of this lake is located the reservation of the Klamath, Modoc, and Snake Indians. It occupies a tract about fifty miles square, including the marsh and the connecting river. The general appearance of the country which the reservation embraces is sterile and volcanic. In shape it is rolling, covered with a fine growth of yellow and sugar pine, with some cedars, firs, and on the streams, cottonwood, poplar, and willow. The best part of the