Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 37.djvu/393

 their entire teams. We heard of one man's loosing one hundred cows out of four hundred, betwene Salmon Falls on Snake, and Fort Boysse,

You ask if Oregon is not hilly like old Connecticut. I do not know that I can answer any better than I have already, for I have not been any distance in the country.

When I write about Oregon I mean all west of the Cascade Mountains. All the country near these mountains I am told is very broken, yet people have settled nearly under them. Betwene the Mountains and the River, so far as I have seen I think is not as hilly as Hartford or New Haven Counties. I have been told by people that have been up the country to look at it, that it was the finest looking country that they ever see in any country befor, especially about French Prairia. Mr. Mercer says that the Tualatin plains is as nice a country as he ever see, and so does a most every one say, it being so well divided with Timber & Prairia land. The southern part of Oregon is a most all mountains, and the vallies that people settle in are very narrow and broken, but the climate is said to be beautiful, healthy and a good stock country. I have traveled the road from here to Portland a number of times, and that is no more uneven than the road from your old place to Homer is, yet I do not know as that is a good specimine. Roads are few and far betwene in this country, there being none, only in the old settle parts of the country, so that when ever we wish to go any where, we generally take to the water. Yet from what I know of the face of the country (and I have taken not a little trouble to find out about it.) I really do not think it as rough as Connecticut, and I do think it is alltogether better land, with less stone or rock, much better for raising small grain, and a long ways ahead of it for raising fruit. There is high mountains here, I know, and there is much of the country taken up with them. The country is all volcanic, from Bear River to the Ocean. The rock in or about Bear River is all volcanic, many holes in the ground where the inward fires have found vent, and where the laver has some day pored red streams over the land.

If the rail-road ran through the Bear valley I would not exchange a section that I could pick out there, for twice that amount in any other country that I was ever in. There is