Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/162

 150 REVEREND EZRA FISHER rish, 308 one of the Indian agents, traveled over a portion of this region in May and June of 1850. By his journals, he traveled one hundred and fifty miles in a course first northeast and then northwest. He says he passed 17 mill streams and, at the end of his journey, the plain appeared so broad that he could see no appearances of mountains as far as the eye could stretch its vision. He gives it as his opinion that this is a larger body of land and more productive than the Willamette Valley. Others who have traveled through this region give a similar descrip- tion of the country. Some represent it 100 miles wide in the broadest place; others represent it 150 miles across in every direction. A settlement is now being formed at the Dalles 309 and an- other is contemplated on the Umatilla the next summer, and the time is near when flourishing states will spring into exist- ence above the Cascade Mountains on the waters of the Colum- bia and Snake rivers and their tributaries. The missionaries who were stationed among the Nez Perces and Flathead In- dians 310 represent much of the land occupied by those tribes as exceedingly productive in grasses, small grains, Indian corn and all the varieties of vegetables grown in New York and New Jersey, while it possesses a mildness and salubrity of cli- mate nowhere else enjoyed in North America. The mineral resources of this country are yet unexplored, yet gold has been washed from the sands of the rivers, 60 or 70 miles north of the Columbia, which indicates the probability that the precious met- als, in greater or less quantities, lie buried in the sides of all the surrounding mountains. Now with all these facts spread out before us, shall not the spirit of immigration to the Pacific Coast pervading the whole country east of the Rocky Mountains be regarded as 308 Rev. Josiah L. Parrish came to Oregon in 1840 under the Methodist Mis- sion. Bancroft. Hist, of Ore. I:i77J II 1213. 309 The Dalles was occupied as a mission station by the Methodists in 1838. Bancroft, Hist, of Ore. I:i62. It was transferred to the American Board in 1847. The place was abandoned after the Cayuse war in 1847-8, and only one or two persons lived there until the establishment of the government military post in 1850. A trading post was then soon established and a town began to grow up. Ibia, Ilrgi, 252, 289, 290. See also the letter of Jan. 15, 1855. 310 These were the missionaries of the American Board in the present north- eastern Oregon, southeastern Washington and northern Idaho.