Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/434

 406 Documents. tion of a country possessing so many advantages? No, sir. This question has only to be agitated among the people, as we are now doing it, and a voice, that must be obeyed in this country, will be sounded through the land, until Congress will be compelled to act. There will be no escape fiom an immediate occupation of the Oregon Territory. Some travelers have represented the country as barren and sterile, with a climate damp and sickly, incapable of sustaining a dense popula- tion ; while others represent it as rich and fertile, with a fine healthy climate, where the winters are so mild as that cattle can keep fat during the winter, on the common grass of the prairies. Now, according to the best information I have been able to obtain, as well from books as from travelers with whom I have conversed, I am satisfied neither statement is correct. You cannot find in Oregon such large districts of uninterrupted rich lands as are found in Illinois. The very nature of a mountainous region forbids such an idea. But there you find rich valleys and plains in some places, surrounded in others by extensive districts of barren and sterile lands, interspersed with rocks and mountains. We find the same thing occurring in the Alleghany Mountains, with probably this difference, that among the Rocky Mountains there are plains and valleys, as well as high ridges, that are sandy and entirely barren, while these occur to a comparatively limited extent among the Alleghanies. The result of this is only, that just so far as the barren and sandy lands extend, that number of acres, and no more, must be deducted from the whole amount of good and arable land in the country. That part of the country which is good, is said by all to be of the finest description. The timber is large, of good quality for every purpose, of improving farms, building houses, or for ship- building. The prairies constitute the finest grazing lands, which continues during the winter, even as far as the latitude we are now in, while the productions of agriculture are, in nearly every respect, the same as in Illinois. The climate is mild, and, what is still more desirable, it is steady. The experience of the present winter here, it appears to me, would make any one desire to change it either for a colder or a warmer climate. Steady cold would be much preferable to constant changes, such as we have experienced here for the last three months. Strange as it may appear to many, it is notwithstanding true, that on the coast of the Pacific there is a difference of about ten degrees of latitude in the climate, comparing it with this ; so that in forty degrees, north latitude, you have the same climate as in thirty degrees on this side of the Rocky Mountains. You will have, therefore, in the Oregon, about such a climate, in point of temper- ture, as at New Orleans and Natchez ; while the high mountains and ele- vated valleys, together with an entire absence of lakes and swamps, make the country perfectly healthy. Here the sandy deserts come in for their share of advantages. The atmosphere about those sandy plains must be pure and dry ; no unhealth3^ vapor can be sent from them over the adjacent rich lands ; but, on the contrary, this circumstance adds to the health and comfort of the inhabitants. The range of mountains which extend in width from the head waters of the Missouri, Yellow Stone, Platte, and Arkansas rivers, almost to the shores of the Pacific ocean, is but a continuation of the Andes, which run parallel with the Pacific ocean, entirely from Terra del Fuego, through Chili, Peru, Quito, Guatamala, and Mexico, to the Oregon, and become finally lost in the frozen regions of the north. These mountains are, in manj'- respects, the same in character with those of the south ; they rise in many places above the line of perpetual snow. The climate varies