Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 37.djvu/174

 hundred feet high and not more than 30 or 40 feet apart, and are nearby, and I believe on the south side are quite perpendicular. The road here runs betwene two lofty ridges of almost solid granit with but here and there a tree, or even any thing for a blade of grass to to take root in. It must be remembered that these rocks, all through this section of country are entirely naked. In New England the mountains are covered with Pine the Ceder and the Oack, but you can hardly find timber of any kind enough for one good farm betwene the Missouri River and the Blue Mountains. Perhaps there is nothing that the emegrant is so much disappointed in, as he is in the amount of tim- ber. Even after we cross the Rocky Mountains, there is no timber to be found but wild sage which is a little shrub, that grows all over the face of the country some of it not more than four or five inches high, while in other places it will reach the hight of 5 or 8 feet, and in the wood part, very much resembles some old thick bark, is very stiff, and bad to walk among, and gives out a very strong oder. It is to be found all the way from 60 or 70 miles east of Fort Laramie to the Grande Ronde, and a little in midle Oregon or betwene the Blue & Cascade Mountains, and is the principle feuel for the emegrants. We have a great deal of bad or poison water at different places all the way from Loup Fork to Bear River, much of it so bad that if cattle get to it, it is amost shure death. The largest part of these are along the Sweet Water. Some of the Springs, known as the Soda Springs are of this nature. These Springs are a great curiosity, being on the bank, or near the bank of a small mountain stream that runs into Bear River within a short distance of this place. The water is rather warm and has a sour tast. Some of the springs are on the tops of mounds, made by the water forming a rocky crust, one above the other, until the rock exceeds the hight of the fountain, then the water ceases to flow from them, or bursts out in some new place. In all of these springs there is a constant emission of acid gass which makes many of them present the appearance of the boiling of a pott. There is two of these springs, not more than 3 or 4 feet from the creek be- fore mentioned, the water of which looks like red paint, and boils as though there was the hotest kind of a fire under them, though they are no warmer than any of the rest. The water