Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/255

Rh cut or pass lying across the summit ridge, the general course of the survey being southeast by east. From the summit thus found it is an estimated distance of only five (5) miles down to the Matoles branch of the Des Chutes River, here running east of north parallel with the range, the same course as that of the Willamette on the west side; but taking down the eastern declivity with an easy grade for a wagon road, the plain of the Des Chutes would be reached in about seven miles and the Willamette Valley and Cascade Mountains Road, where it skirts the base of Black Butte, three miles into the Des Chutes plain, in about ten miles. In making this view and survey an old and deeply worn trail was frequently crossed, and such a trail, less deep, was found leading over the pass eastward. The first observed trail gives some support to the Indian tradition of a former native thoroughfare down the valley.

The trail out of the pass is not so much worn, neither is the Strong trail leading off towards the west from a point about seven miles eastward, used by Lieutenant Fremont as he passed the locality in 1843. The trail so noted reaches first the immense springs of Matoles, where a full grown river rises from under the northeast base of Black Butte, into which the salmon ascend in July and August for spawning purposes, at that date and since making a valuable fishery for the Indians, and scarcely less valuable as fisheries where the numerous lakes to the westward, which, taken in connection with abundant game of the entire region, make it a hunter's paradise. At the date of Fremont's march, of which had Meek been informed in 1845, he would have almost certainly succeeded in getting the people he led into the Willamette Valley by that way easier than they reached The Dalles after he abandoned them.

After the viewing out and survey of the wagon road