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 CORRESPONDENCE 149 terprise of the present citizens. Saw-mills are being put in requisition, and already a considerable trade in lumber is car- ried on from the Sound and the Columbia. One Methodist minister 3 6 affords all the evangelical preaching the pioneers of this whole district receive. He entered the vast field but last December. As we leave this district and pass through the Cascade Mountains by the uninterrupted channel of the Columbia, sufficiently deep at all seasons to float the largest class of river steamers, we arrive at the Dalles east of the Cascade Mountains. This may be said to be the head of steam naviga- tion of this great river. Here we enter a region of country which has been generally described as altogether unfit for set- tlement by civilized man. But instead of this being one vast plain of sands covered with little else but sedge and artemesia, that portion of the country lying between the Cascade and the Blue mountains affords one of the finest grazing countries in North America, with a soil capable of producing all the prod- ucts raised in the northern and middle states in great profusion. The only serious obstacle to the speedy settlement of all this region of country is the scarcity of timber in the more southern and eastern portions and, in some parts, scarcity of water. Yet large portions of the north and west of this region are repre- sented as possessing both of these advantages. That portion of this division lying north of the Columbia and east of the Cascade range is represented by those who have traveled through it as a most desirable region, to which immigrants will soon be attracted in crowds. The Rev. Mr. Waller 307 who resided some eight years at the Dalles, rep- resents this section of the country as one hundred miles long andi varying from 15 to 50 miles in breadth and embracing large bottoms, with timber crowning the hills and mountain sides in abundance, also skirting the streams. The Rev. Mr. Par- 306 Rev. John F. DeVore was formally transferred from the Rock River Conference to the Oregon Conference in 1853, and was the apostle of Methodism to Puget Sound. Hines, Missionary Hist, of the Pac. N. W., p. 418. 307 Rev. Alvan F. Waller came to Oregon as a member of the Methodst Mit- sion in 1840. Bancroft, Hist, of Ore. i: 177. 190.