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372 the setting apart large tracts covering water sheds for national forest reserves. The state was entitled to indemnity school lands for all these losses. It was in connection with the securing of lands in lieu of these losses that the most grievous blunders were made.

The conduct of the work of selection throughout creates an impression of dilatoriness and lack of intelligent procedure. The salt springs' grant of 46,080 acres was wholly forfeited through neglect. The state would have fared likewise with other grants had not extensions of the periods within which selections were to be made been allowed by congress. It must be admitted that there was little to suggest to the early Oregonians that the lands away from the centers of the valleys would ever be worth securing. An unlimited timbered wilderness and beyond that to the east a continental stretch of semi-arid plains hedged about the small settled areas in the valleys. These were mitigating circumstances that excuse the early dilatoriness, but they in no way exonerate the state from blame for