Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 22.djvu/36



26 LINDSAY APPLEGATE

stream, where there was a little water standing in holes. On leaving this place we found the country still quite level, but exceedingly rocky; for eight or ten miles almost like pave- ment. Late in the afternoon we came out into the basin of a lake (Goose lake), apparently forty or fifty miles in length. Traversing the valley about five miles along the south end of the lake, we came to a little stream coming in from the moun- tains to the eastward. The grass and water being good, we encamped here for the night. Game seemed plentiful, and one of the party killed a fine deer in the vicinity of the camp. From a spur of the mountains, near our camp, we had a splendid view of the lake and of the extensive valley bordering it on the north. On the east, between the lake and mountain range running nearly north and south, and which we supposed to be a spur of the Sierra Nevadas, was a beautiful meadow coun- try, narrow, but many miles in length, across which the lines of willows and scattering pines and cottonwoods indicated the courses of a number of little streams coming into the lake from the mountain chain. A little southeast of our camp there appeared to be a gap in the mountain wall, and we decided to try it on the succeeding day.

July 9th we moved up the ridge towards the gap, and soon entered a little valley, perhaps containing a hundred acres, ex- tending to the summit of the ridge, thus forming an excellent pass. The ascent was very gradual. The little valley was fringed with mountain-mahogany trees, giving it quite a pic- turesque appearance. This shrub, which is peculiar to the rocky highlands, is from fifteen to twenty feet high and in form something like a cherry tree, so that a grove of moun- tain mahogany strikingly resembles a cherry orchard. About the center of the little valley is a spring of cold water, making it an excellent camping place, and for many years afterwards it was the place where the immigrants were wont to meet and let their animals recuperate after the long, tiresome march across the so-called American Desert ; for this Sierra ridge