Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/472



464 REVEREND EZRA FISHER

Preached on the 17th and 18th, baptized two candidates and received one more for baptism. The house, 30 by 40 feet, is nearly completed. Here a minister is more immediately needed than in any other point in the territory a ready, business-like, devoted preacher, who could give direction and exercise a general supervision in bringing into existence and sustaining an academical school for the denomination. Such a man would receive $200 or $250 from the church the first year. The church is young and inexperienced, but is by far the most wealthy church in the territory. From Marysville I followed up the valley of the most western fork of the Wil- lamette 70 miles through a level prairie country studded with small groves of ash and soft maple, while the hills were crowned with oak groves, but on the Willamette bottoms the balm of Gilead, white fir and soft maple constitute the prin- cipal growth of timber. Crossing the Calapooia Mountains, a distance of 8 miles by good wagon road, one enters what is called the Umpqua Valley, 272 which consists of a series of narrow valleys varying from a few yards to three or four miles in width. In the midst of these valleys and on every hand rise hills varying in form and elevation from the gentle sloping mound fifty feet in elevation to low mountais rais- ing their imposing summits 2000 or 3000 feet above the level of the valleys below, whose sloping sides are covered with a luxuriant growth of the most nutritious grasses, everywhere interspersed with open groves of red and white oak. Fenc- ing and building timber is rather scarce till you approach the Coast, Cascade and transverse ranges of mountains. Springs of pure water are abundant near the base of these hill slopes. After crossing the Calapooia Mountains, I trav- eled about 50 miles through these valleys on the great road from the Willamette Valley to the gold mines. 273 This road has already become a great thoroughfare where loaded wag- ons, pack trains of mules and horses and droves of beef cattle

272 For the early history of the Umpqua Valley, see note 246.

273 This road followed in most places the old Hudson Bay Company's trail to California. George H. Himes.