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124 The amount of mortgages recorded against property in Multnomah County is $3,626,730; Benton, $202,438; Clackamas, $423,076; Marion, $939,403, and Polk, $294,164.

Southern division of Western Oregon is separated from the Wallamet Valley by a range of low mountains known as the Calapooyas. Crossing this divide, we enter the Umpqua Valley, or series of valleys, constituting Douglas County, named after Stephen A. Douglas, and extending from the Cascade Range, in the direction of the Umpqua River, to the ocean, containing an extent of territory greater than any county of its age in the State, notwithstanding its boundaries have several times been altered. It covers an area of four thousand square miles.

It was a clear, sharp, October morning, when I first left Eugene to go down into Southern Oregon. As the stage rattled out of town in the direction of the Umpqua, I took a last, lingering look at the fair, level valley encircling hills of russet-color, dotted with bits of green, in groups of oaks or pines; of Spencer's Butte, with its sharp, dark-tinted cone; and of the blue Cascades, now purpling under the morning sunrise. From the most distant mountains, light-gray mists were rising; in the middle distance was a purple interval; on the nearer hills, rich, yellow sunlight. The orb of day was not yet high enough to shine on the hither side of the peaks behind which he was mounting. They stood in their own shadow, and let his slant beams bridge the valleys between their royal heights, until they rested on the humbler foot-hills among which we were wending our way, and touched with a golden radiance the yellow leaves of the maples or silvered the ripples in the Wallamet water.

Such gorgeousness of color never shone, out of the tropics, as the vine-maple, ash, and white-maple display, along the streams in this part of Oregon. I had thought them bright, glowing,