Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/56

Rh summers compensate. By the first of July the clouds which clothe the prairies in waving grass and beds of flowers have passed away, and a clear sun ushers in each long delightful day, which begins in a clear twilight two hours after midnight, and ends only in another lingering twilight, softer though not more beautiful than the first. Often the temperature of the dry summer season falls to sixty or fifty-seven degrees Fahrenheit; seldom it exceeds seventy-two or seventy-six, though occasionally rising for a brief period to ninety or one hundred; yet whatever the heat of meridian, by four o'clock in the afternoon it begins to abate, leaving the evening so pleasantly cool that the bed requires a blanket—so comfortably cool that the settlers acquire a love for sleep that becomes characteristic, and is sometimes mentioned to their discredit. About four months of dry weather, with little or no rainfall, constitutes the summer of western Oregon, during which the grass becomes yellow and the earth powdered. Grain ripens and is gathered in August. September is seeding time, experience early teaching that it is better to have the wheat in the ground over winter, even if it must be pastured down, than trust the chance of late spring sowing.

The food resources native to western Oregon are fish, game, and berries. The Indians use a root resembling the potato, which they call wapato, found in abundance on Wapato Island, and also in some shallow lakes or overflowed prairie land. In wild fruit the country is prolific; but none are as fine as the same kinds in the middle states of the continent. Elk, bear, and deer are plentiful, but owing to the difficulty of pursuit through the dense undergrowth of the mountain forests, the chase is laborious. There is an abundance of water-fowl, conspicuous among which are brant, geese of several species, cranes, mallard, canvas-back, and summer duck, blue-winged and green-winged teal, snipe, golden and killdee plover, and other wading birds, some of which are not pal-