Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/209

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The following extraordinary piece of information now going- the rounds, looks very much like a misapprehension or a mistake. A postscript to a letter from a gentleman in the Indian country, dated the nineteenth of October, received by a gentleman in Saint Louis, says:

"Fort Hall, on the Oregon, has been delivered up to Lieutenant Fremont, and it is believed that Fort Vancouver soon will be."

Now it is a fact that Lieutenant Fremont is out in the Oregon country under government order, but his business relates only to an extended survey of the region, and there is not a shade of likelihood that he had either authority or force for such a critical operation as the taking of Fort Hall. The item can not be entitled to credit.

By far the most promising region, in an agricultural point of view, that we passed over in our whole route, was that along the banks and in the vicinity of the Kansas River. We saw no other land as good during our further progress west, but, on the contrary, traveled over soil in every way inferior and lacking advantages necessary for the farmer. The Willamette or Wallamette Valley, in Oregon, is the first favorable locality for farming purposes that is met with, after leaving the Kansas, until the traveler has fairly crossed the prairies and the mountains and descended among the Pacific tributaries. But this valley is admitted, quite generally, by enemies as well as friends of the Oregon enterprise, to be a really romantic and attractive section. Mills, cooper shops, mission houses, and other buildings have arisen already by the active enterprise of those who have settled there, and the large company that went out last summer is, no doubt, about this date busily [engaged] in operations for the general improvement of the place.

We found the region fertile and well timbered in all the valleys until we left the Blue, and then the illimitable grassy waste spread away before us, with not another stick or shrub to meet our eyes for days together. The prevailing timber upon the Kansas and other streams we found to be sycamore, elm, bur oak, black walnut, box elder, the linden tree, coffee bean, honey locust, white and red ash, cottonwood, and sumach, besides groves of the American plum that appeared here and there. The river banks were garnished with grapevines, and upon the bluffs that were not barren, we noticed groves of black-jack and thickets of dwarf chestnut oak. Of the grasses and flora of the prairie we shall speak in another place, but we wish to mention the presence here of the Missouri wheat (the Triticum Missouricum of