Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/410

 382 John Minto. stream deepened them,* and yet goes on, but with the effect of counteracting the tendency of the water to carry soil in the stream-beds, which, in regard to those extending to the Colum- bia, is slight, except in the case of cloud-bursts, which are happily of limited area and infrequent. The movement of soil-making by the wind may be fairly estimated at nine months of every year, in action, and the play of freshets by snow-melt lasts only about one month. In order to show the more general effect of these soil- forming winds in shallowing the lakes of Southeastern Ore- gon, I insert the following extracts from Professor Condon's book, "The Two Islands," which I think should be used in the high schools of Oregon : "In 1876, Governor Whiteaker, while camping in Eastern Oregon in the neighborhood of Silver Lake, noticed some fossil bones on the surface of the prairie and shortly after brought some fragments to the writer for examination. The Governor was soon convinced that he had discovered an im- portant fossil bed, and the next summer by kindly furnishing a team and sending his son as guide, he gave the writer the pleasure of visiting this Silver Lake country. * * * The last part of the journey took us through a monotonous dead level covered with sage-brush, until finally we reached the home of a ranchman on the shore of one of those strange alkali lakes whose flats are at this season covered with a thick inflorescence of alkali. Here we left our wagon and the next morning started on horseback for the fossil beds. After traveling about eight miles we saw, from the eminence of a sand dune, an apparently circular depression four or five miles across, in the lowest portion of which was a small pond or lake, surrounded by grass and tule rushes. Perhaps two ♦The following extract from a letter from a business man's observation (T. C. Elliot's, of Walla Walla, Washington,) will explain the effect: "* * * I am afraid that my own observations in the matter of allu- vial deposits is not intelligent enough to be of value in the stating. In this particular section (Walla Walla) there is certainly considerable soil moved every year by the wind, but at first glance it is the lighter upon the heavier soils. The silt that is carried out upon the bottom land adjoining the rivers is kept there by being sown to alfalfa, etc. But there are blow- holes in our fields from which the ashy soils cover adjoining acres, often to their detriment; and there is a stretch of country in this country that is affected by the winds blowing up through the Columbia River gorge at Wallula and is blowing off as it is put under plow. This last spring the wheat was simply uncovered and blown away, both before and after germination. As to the better fertility of the 'slopes inclining from the sun,' that is very certainly true."