Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/435

 Speech of Senator J. Semple. 407 greatly on the different sides of the same ridge, as well in temperature as in humidity. On one side you will see a fine green and fertile valley ; and on the other side of the same ridge you find a dry and barren soil. In the whole extent of the Andes, they rise in ridges, one above another, in rapid succession, from the ocean to the highest part, there forming table- lands and valleys, which are more or less extensive ; they all along gradu- ally slope towards the east. From this conformation, it follows that the rivers which empty into the Pacific are all small, compared with those that head in the same mountains, and empty into the Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico. It is not, therefore, to be expected that river navigation can ever be very extensive west of the Rocky Mountains. The Columbia river is navigable without interruption, only about one hundred miles from its mouth. The continued falls and rapids would render it very difficult and expensive to make a good river- navigation for any great distance towards its source. These falls, however, affording abundance of water above, would render it altogether easy to make a canal along its banks, rising towards the mountains by means of locks. But while this rapid fall of the waters, from the mountains to the ocean, is opposed to good river-navigation, there is one advantage to be derived from it which will always counterbalance this disadvantage : C-anals, for the purposes of irrigation, can always be made to flow over the adjacent valleys and mountain sides. In this manner the Peruvian Indians, prior to the discovery of America by Columbus, converted large districts of barren land (in a country where rain never was known to fall) into fertile fields. I have no doubt but that many of those dry districts of the Oregon, represented as barren for want of rain, could be turned into the most fertile lands by means of irrigation ; and this with no great expense. Those dry parts of the country will ultimately be the most agreeable places of residence, and at the same time the most productive. Being dry, the air will be purer and more healthy, while the rains neither prevent labor in the fields, nor interrupt traveling. They will be the most pro- ductive because, as there is no rain, the crops will have uninterrupted sun and heat (as necessary to vegetation as rain), while from the irrigation there will, at the same time, be afforded abundant moisture at the roots. The mineral productions of the Oregon are, of course, but little known. Its riches, in this respect, must hereafter be developed. An abundance of rock-salt is found in the mountains, similar, in all respects, to that found in the same ridge of the Andes, in South America. The mineral produc- tions, I have reason to believe, are the same as found in the whole of that ridge of mountains from north to south. The Province of Sonora, in Mexico, was many years ago the richest gold region in America. The Spaniards found in that Province, as far as thirty-six of north latitude, gold washings, where one man would obtain several thousand dollars by a day's labor. The Baron de Humboldt, in his work on New Spain, affirms the truth of this, and says that the farther north they went, the richer were the gold mines. The wars with the Apache Indians finally drove the Spaniards from those rich mines. I have conversed with several persons who have been among the Apache Indians, and have heard indirectly from others, and all agree in the state- ment, that both north and south of the Rio Colorado of the west, there are rich gold mines. This rich, auriferous ridge extends to the Lake of Timpanagos, within the limits of the Oregon Territory. The rivers are full of fish, of the finest quality. The salmon are caught in large quantities, and constitute an extensive article of commerce.