Page:Route Across the Rocky Mountains with a Description of Oregon and California.djvu/147

Rh Walawala, the Snake River, and many other smaller streams, but that the great Columbia itself, runs through it, they will at once that the valley has not obtained its name from the river, but that the name applies to a portion of country bounded by high mountains, both on the East and West, and stretches North and South some three hundred miles, covering an area equal to twelve or fifteen thousand square miles. This large district of country is not only good for raising and keeping horses, mules, and cattle, but it will be very good for sheep also, as great numbers of them can be raised and kept in the finest and healthiest condition.

This valley has, also, much water power.

The Blue Mountains, which form the Eastern boundary of the Walawala Valley, cover an extent of country about seventy-five miles broad, and are, we believe, about nine-tenths timbered; through these mountains there are numerous small valleys, furnishing in many places, good soil, and every where fine pasture, upon which stock of every description can be kept in good condition throughout the year. But as the valleys in the mountains do not, perhaps, cover more than one twentieth of the whole area, this portion of country could only sustain a sparse population, and keep a limited amount of stock.

The entire country East of the Blue Mountains, including the Rocky Mountains and a broad belt of country some five hundred miles wide, West of them, embracing altogether a tract of some one thousand or eleven hundred miles broad, is, with the exception of some small spots-widely, very widely separated from each other, a vast and dreary desert—a sandy, dusty, rocky waste. Over much of this desert region, there are large dusty tracts, on which there is almost no vegetation. These dusty regions bear much the appearance of ashes and burnt earth, mixed.

The small spots of productive soil that are scattered over this grat desert of America, cannot amount to much if any more than one thousandth part of the whole. From which it will be seen, that it is better calculated to sustain small bands of savages living after the manner of the wandering Arabs, than any fixed population of agriculturalists.

South of the Snowy Butte, which is not far from the parallel of 42 deg. North, to the head of the Sacramento Valley, a distance of one hundred miles, the country is entirely covered with timber. It is mountainous, and contains no land fit for cultivation; and although much of the timber in these mountain regions is of excellent quality, it is so far removed from the