Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/227



When the missionaries and first settlers came over the Rocky mountains down into the Snake river valley, they found a region wholly unlike anything they had ever beheld before. The Three Tetons. the vast lava sage brush plain, the great river coming from some mysterious distance nobody knew just where, the towering snow-capped mountains, the mighty water falls and the deep and trackless forests. It was a panoramic picture never to be forgotten; majestic and awe-inspiring rather than beautiful. The great mountain ranges, wide extended plains and gloomy forests seemed rather to forbid than invite examination. It was all natural enough and to be expected from the silent-going Indian, and necessary to the venturesome trapper; but for preachers and farmers, nature's wilderness required time to conquer. And for these reasons it was a whole generation of men from the time Jason Lee drove down his tent pegs in the Willamette valley until farmers and herdsmen ventured to build permanent homes on the wide extended areas of Central Oregon.

The Willamette valley was the first place settled in old Oregon. And it was by all visitors acclaimed the beauty spot of Oregon—another Garden of Eden. The only picture of the country extant made by one who knew its every nook and corner before the settlers came, and who had chased the elk and deer with his pony and rifle from Oregon City to Umpqua valley, and left a life-like description of the valley, was David McLoughlin, son of Dr. John McLoughlin. It was, he said, a natural park on a grand scale that could not have been improved by artificial culture. It was in its natural state of beauty, romantic and grand beyond the power of words to express, with prairies, streams and groves of trees filled with animal life. Herds of elk and deer could be seen everywhere feeding fearless of men. And from this valley the snow-capped peaks of both the Coast and Cascade ranges of mountains could be seen towering above the plains. This was the open book, the enchanting scene to every eye. But what was the underlying foundation?"

Everything in nature, says Emerson, is engaged in writing its own history; the planet and the pebbles are attended by their shadows, the rolling rock leaves its furrows on the mountain side, the river its channel in the soil, the animal its bones in the stratum, the fern and the leaf their epitaphs in the coal, and the falling rain drops sculptures their story on the sand and on the stone. Nearly everything that is known about the geological formation of Oregon is due to the unselfish labors of one man. The boy that grew up to be that one man was born