Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/170

 152 John Minto. the home we had made. The out-door life was so necessary to my wife that we lived within rifle-shot of our house the sum- mer and fall succeeding our first experience in the mountains. For six years we summered in among the mountains, and bought the lands we camped on to have the equity of settlers' rights. I had little to do, even when I took my sheep there to get the recreative benefit of mere change of range, and that is great, even if the sheep lose flesh rather than gain it. They soon settled into regular hours of feeding, as did the cattle. The gad-fly was the pest of cattle and horses; the stock fed from day-break until about 9 a. m., when they would start in a hurry for the home corral, where, if smudge fires were kindled, they would show their appreciation by getting into the smoke. Here, next to good milk, the settler caring for bees could have good honey; in fact, could produce nearly every necessity except flour. Sheep fed from sunrise till 9 a. m., and from 4 p. m. till sunset, leaving me much time to examine the rocks and streams. The bed of the Little North Santiam was once a flowing river of mud, carrying rocks and trees of different kinds; trees becoming locked up in it and petrified. In one place where I often crossed, a whole tree, from roots to branches, was exposed by the wear and tear of the river. At another, what seemed to have been a young maple had petri- fied into a bluish stone and had broken by the undermining of ihe banks. It is today a fine field for a young geologist. The timber, however, was my attraction; there were but few places near our camps which did not show the action of fire. Fire was the agency used by the Calapooia tribes to hold their camas grounds and renew their berry patches and grass-lands for game and the millions of geese, brants, cranes and sw^ans which wintered in Western Oregon. To me it seems easily unbelievable by a person coming here now, to state the quantity of waterfowl, cranes, curlew and snipe which wintered on the grasses and roots of the damp lands of the valleys and the sloughs, ponds and streams sixty-four years ago. Large ground game, deer and occasionally elk, were not