Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 22.djvu/164



154 S. H. TAYLOR

seen no geese nor turkeys, and presume there are none in the valley. Surrounded by mountains as this valley is, it cannot, of course, be otherwise than well watered.

I can only say of the Rogue River what I have heard, that it is so large as to require ferries. On either side, down valleys three or four miles wide flow little creeks Bear, Bute, Evans, Antelope, &c from the mountains to the river. There are many little brooks that reach the creeks, and there you see every where small spring runs that in a little way lose themselves in the soil and by all of these is afforded an abundant means for irrigation. A few, very few, trout are in the creeks, and some salmon live to get up here from the sea, but so bruised and beaten about by the drift in the swift streams, that they are unfit to eat. Of game on the wooden slopes the deer are really "too numerous to mention." Back a few miles in the mountains, the black, brown and grizzly bears are abundant. The grizzly is one of the noblest animals in the world more powerful and more fearless than the tiger. There is a species of the American lion, and what is said to be a very fair repre- sentative of the hyena, in the mountains though I doubt whether the latter is vouched for by any very good authority. Myriads of wild geese and sand hill crains but their place of resort, so far as we know anything about it, is several lakes in the interior, some of which we pass in coming over from the Humboldt, and of which I may write more fully at another time. The grizzly is an animal of incredible strength. I have seen a cub, five months old, break up a bullock's leg in the joint, stripping away the muscles from the bone with his claws. But they can neither climb a tree nor run along a steep hill side, and so they are not very dangerous. The fiercer animals have never been known to descend into the valley. Small game is scarce. Wild fruit, except the apple, is rather abund- ant. Of that, no form is found save the tree a fine crab tree, but bearing only a very few small berries, half as large, per- haps, as a currant, and half as good. The grapes of this valley are abundant and superior. The domestic apple does remark-