A day or two ago I saw a pair of fresh horns standing in front of one

of the stores in the town, which were quite four feet six inches long,

spread three feet six inches at the tips, and weighed forty pounds by

scale.

[Sidenote: _ELK._]

As we handled them, a dry-looking, bearded, long-booted fellow joined

the group. "Those horns are nothing much," said he; "I killed an elk

some time back in the Alseya country, back of Table Mountain, that when

we set the horns on the ground, tips downward, a feller could walk

upright through them." "Oh, yes," said we; "did you walk through them,

stranger?" "Wal, no, I guess not," said he, "but a feller might, you

know."

The elk go in bands of from seven to twenty in number, and their tracks

through the woods are trampled as though a drove of cows had passed

along. To kill an elk you can not go out before breakfast and return to

dine. You must secure a good guide, who knows the mountains well; you

must take a pack-horse, with food and blankets, as far into the wilds

as the last settlement reaches, and there leave him. Then slinging your

blankets round your shoulders, and packing some flour, bacon, and

coffee, a small frying-pan and coffee-pot, and tin cup, into the

smallest possible compass, and taking your rifle in your hand, not

forgetting the tobacco, you must strike into the woods.

When night comes on, build your fire, fry your bacon, make some damper

in the ashes, smoke the pipe of peace, and lie down under the most

sheltering bush. No snakes will harm you, nor will wolf or cougar

molest you, and the softness of your bed will not tempt you to delay

long between the blankets after the first streak of dawn.

Rise and breakfast, and then on again. All that day, perhaps, you will

have to tramp on and on, seeking one mountain-slope after another; here

skirting brush too thick to penetrate, there walking easily through the

low fern among the massive red and furrowed trunks of the gigantic

firs.

Your guide finds "sign," and reports that it is not fresh enough to

follow; so pursues his course till, looking back on the devious miles

of weary wandering, you can hardly credit it that you have been but

eight-and-forty hours on the trail. But your camp is pitched once more,

and dawn has again roused you from your ferny bed. Listen! the branches

are crackling and rustling close by. You and your guide race for the

spot, rifle in hand, too eager almost to duly remember woodland rules

of caution. Crouching and crawling as you get closer to the sounds,

peering through the fern, you see--what? Six, eight, ten, twelve,

seventeen great beasts; one with enormous head, two others with smaller

but still imposing antlers; the rest the mothers of the herd.

Unconscious of danger, they browse round; both rifles speak together,

and the monarch and one of the smaller stags lie prostrate. You stay

hidden; the deer group together in a confused crowd, too foolish and

excited to think of flight. Again your comrade fires, and another

falls, and yet another, till, in disgust at the needless slaughter, you

step from your shelter, and the survivors rush madly away, crashing

through the wood as if a herd of cattle were in flight.

I have known men, not usually cruel or excitable, get so maddened in a

scene like this, that seven great elk lay dead together before they

thought of stopping firing; and yet they knew that from the wilderness

they stood in it was impossible to carry off the meat of even one!

Many hunters prefer elk-meat to any deer; others think the fawn of the

white-tailed deer the best eating in the world.

[Sidenote: _CAMP ON BEAVER CREEK._]

One night last summer we camped out on Beaver Creek, nine miles south

of the Yaquina, along the beach. We had been trout-fishing all day from

a canoe, and were glad to stretch out before the fire limbs that had

been somewhat cramped from the need of balancing the rocking craft with

every cast of the fly. Before the fire stood roasting a row of trout,

held in place over the hot embers by a split willow wand. We heard

voices approaching through the wood, and presently a half-breed hunter

and two friends of ours came in sight. They had been out two days after

elk, but failed to find. On the way back they came across a doe and

well-grown fawn; the latter they had killed, and brought it in. It was

speedily skinned and cut up, and a loin, shoulder, and leg were

skewered on sticks and roasting in the blaze. No bad addition to our

fish supper, deer-meat and trout; the coffee was the only contribution

of civilization to the meal, and a merry evening, extended far into the

night, followed, as the logs were piled on, and the ruddy glow and

showers of sparks lighted up the wild but comfortable scene, dancing in

the lights and shadows of the overhanging trees.

Did you ever hear of flounder-spearing by torch-light? I have tried it,

and do not propose to try it again. Yaquina Bay abounds in flounders--a

flat fish resembling the turbot more than the flounder; red-spotted

like the plaice, and weighing from one pound up to five or six. After

nightfall, when the evening tide has just turned to come in, and the

sandy channels and banks are all but bare, away from the main

deep-water, channels of the bay, you may see tiny specks of distant

lights moving on the black water. These are the Indian canoes. Take a

skiff from the beach by the hotel at Newport, and row out to sea. Here

are two or three lights near together, under Heddon's Point, on the

south shore. Row on till the lights in the hotel are blended into one,

and the dark outlines against the sky of the overhanging cliffs are

lost to sight. No sound reaches you in the darkness, but the recurring

rattle of the sculls in the rowlocks, and the soft lapping of the tide.

The lights you are seeking grow brighter, and you distinguish the glare

of the fire and the moving, dim form of the fisherman. The canoe, some

sixteen feet long, is boarded roughly across amidships, and on a thin

layer of sand and wood-ashes burns a pine-knot fire. The Indian stands

in the bows, his back to the fire; as you look, he poles himself along

by driving the handle of his long spear into the sand underlying the

shallow channel. His fire burns dim for a moment, and he turns and with

the same spear-handle he trims it; then, stooping, throws on it a fresh

lump of the resinous pine. The fire dulls for an instant, then flares

with a bright light, and a thick puff of smoke rises into the air, on

which the glare falls strongly. The short, athletic form of the Indian,

and his swarthy, flattened features, glittering eyes, and bushy hair,

stand out for a moment in strong relief. He turns, and again looks

keenly into the black water. A moment, and he strikes, the spear making

the water flash as it dips swiftly in. Yes, he has it, and the frail

boat quivers as he balances it ere he lifts out his struggling prey,

and, with a deft, quick motion, throws the fish off, flapping and

bouncing on a heap of victims in the stern of the canoe. Without a

smile or word, or an instant's respite, he turns again and resumes his

keen watch, moving to the shallower waters as the tide makes.

[Sidenote: _FLOUNDER-SPEARING BY TORCHLIGHT._]

I had a friend who was an enthusiast in the sport, and he beguiled me

to join him. About eight we started, and about two in the morning we

returned. Warm as the weather was, I was chilled to the bone; and the

worst of it was, I had not succeeded in striking one single fish. My

friend armed me with a long spear and a lantern, and deposited me in

the stern of the boat; similarly provided, he knelt in the bow and

pushed the skiff along from bank to bank of sand and mud. My light did

not burn brightly enough to show more than the dimmest outlines of the

fish, just off the sandy bottom of the bay. Here scuttled an old crab,

scared by the novel light, and hurrying for shelter, crab-fashion, to

the nearest bunch of weeds. There was a school of tiny fish, their

silver sides glancing as the ray reached them; and there, again, a

quick, white flash betrayed the sea-perch, not waiting to be spoken to.

Every now and then my friend darted his long spear at what he said were

the flounders, but I could see nothing with my untrained eyes but a

gray cloud and a gentle stirring of the sand. He did get one fish at

last; and I, being too proud to say how bored and tired I was, waited

sleepily for the rising tide to drive us home. How glad was I when he

announced that the water was now too deep to see distinctly, and how

thankfully I stumbled up the slimy steps by the little wharf and in to

bed!

[Sidenote: _FLOUNDER-FISHING BY DAY._]

Flounder-fishing in the daytime is good sport. Find out the nearest

camp of Indians there on the beach, crowded under a shelter of sea-worn

planks, a few fir-boughs, and a tattered blanket; the smell of tainted

fish pollutes the air, and a heap of flounders, each with the

triangular spear-mark, attests the skill of last night's fishermen.

"Any fish, muck-a-muck?" say you, blandly. Without turning her head, or

raising herself from her crouching posture by the old black kettle,

stewing on a tiny fire of sticks in the center of the hut, the old

crone grunts out, "Halo" (none). "Want two bit?" you say, nowise

discouraged. Money has magic power nowadays, and she rises slowly and

shuffles past you to where a rag or two are drying in the sun on a

stranded log. From under the clothes she brings out a dirty basket of

home make, and in it is a heap of greenish, struggling prawns. She

turns out two or three handfuls into the meat-tin you have providently

brought, holds out her skinny hand for the little silver pieces, and

buries herself in her shanty without another word.

Fit out your fishing-lines and come aboard; the tide has turned, and

the wind blows freshly across the bay. The surf keeps up its continuous

roar on the rocky reefs outside. On the sand-bank in front of you sits

a row of white and gray gulls preening themselves in the morning sun; a

couple of ospreys are sailing overhead in long, graceful, hardly-moving

sweeps, and away out by the north head hangs an eagle in the air,

watching the ospreys, that he may cheat them of the fish he looks to

see them catch.

Set the sail and let her go free, and away rushes the little boat,

tired of bobbing at her moorings by the pier--away across the bay, to

where the south beach sinks in gentle, sandy slope. Take care of that

waving weed, or we shall be on the edge of the bank! Here we are, and

down goes the kedge in six feet of water, close to but just clear of

that same edge.

Now for the bait; tie it on tightly with that white cotton, or the

flounders will suck it off so fast that you will have nothing else to

do but keep replacing it. Keep your sinkers just off the bottom, and a

light hand on the line. A gentle wriggle, a twitch, and you have him;

haul him in steadily. Up he comes, a four-pounder, tossing and flopping

in the bottom of the boat. Here comes a great crab, holding on to the

bait grimly, and suffering you to catch him by one of his lower legs

and toss him in. Now for a sea-perch; what a splendid color!--bands of

bright scarlet scales, interlaced with silver. But what is this? A

stream of water flows from the fish's mouth, and in it come out five or

six little ones, the image of their parent. I wonder if it is true (and

I think it is) that the little ones take refuge inside their parent in

any time of need? The fishermen on this coast call this the

"squaw-fish," from this sheltering, maternal instinct.

But we have been here long enough; the water is too deep, the fish have

gone off the feed, and we shall have to beat back, lucky if we do in

two hours the distance we ran in half an hour on our way.

The tide has run nearly out this evening: a good chance for some

rock-oysters. Get your axe and come along. Where? Along the coast

toward Foulweather; we shall find those long reefs almost bare. We

climb over the big reef on the north head of the harbor, under the

lighthouse hill, and wind in and out on the hard sand among the rough

rocks, all crusted over their sides with tiny barnacles. There is

little kelp or seaweed here. The surf beats too powerfully in this

recess, away from the shelter of the great outer reef.

See that group of Indian women and children away out there, barelegged,

digging with their axes in the rock. They are after the rock-oysters

too.

Now is our chance. Jump on to that rock before the next wave comes in,

and climb on to the reef beyond it and get out to low-water mark. Here

we are. Do you see that crevice? Chip in and wrench the piece off; the

rock is soft enough sandstone to cut with that blunt old axe. Here is

the spoil--soft mollusks, are they not, and not pretty to look at? But

wait for the soup at dinner to-morrow before you pronounce on them. And

we dig, and then venture farther out and farther, till the turn of the

water warns us to get back.

The evening is closing in; the sun has set, leaving a hot, red glow,

where his copper disk has just sunk beyond the Pacific horizon; and the

eye wanders out from the infant waves, at foot just tinged with red,

and reflecting the light as they move up in turn to catch it, to the

blue and still darker blue water beyond, out to the sharp indigo line

where sky and water meet.

No land between us and the Eastern world; the mind can hardly grasp the

idea of the vast stretch of sea across which this new world reaches

forth to join hands with old China and Japan.

[Sidenote: _SEA-OTTERS._]

Before we go to bed, step for a moment into the quaint general store

all but adjoining the hotel. What a medley! Flour and axes; bacon and

needles and thread; fishing-lines and bullock-hides; writing-paper and

beaver-traps; milk-pails and castor-oil; tobacco in plenty, and skins;

and a smell compounded of all these and more, but chiefly the product

of that batch of skins hanging from that big nail in front of you, and

lying piled on the bench by your side. Take them down, and turn them

over; Bush won't mind. And we shake hands with the proprietor, coming

from the darkness at the back. He has borne an honorable limp ever

since the war, and has never yet quite recovered from illness and

wounds. He swears by Newport as the best, and healthiest, and most

promising place in the world. "Say," he whispers in our ear, "got a

sea-otter skin to-day!" "Where did you get it, Bush, and who from, and

how much did you have to pay for it?" "Got it from the Indians," he

says; "they shot it away up by Salmon River, beyond Foulweather, and

had to give more dollars for it than I care to say." "Where did they

get it?" "Where they always do, away out in the kelp among the surf."

"Don't they ever come to land?" "No," he answers, "they live, and

sleep, and breed out in the kelp. But if you want to know all about

them, why don't you ask Charlie here? He has been trading this summer,

and last winter and spring, up by Gray's Inlet in Washington Territory,

where they are plenty." So saying, he calls up the captain of the

steam-schooner lying at her moorings by the quay.

From this man, and from hunters and Indians all along the coast, I have

gathered many a tale of the habits of the sea-otter, and of the fate of

those that have been killed; for the rarity of the beast, and the

beauty and value of its skin, interest these men, both from their

hunters' instinct and from the mere money business of it. I know also

that scientific naturalists desire all the facts they can get, that

such facts may be placed on record before this connecting link between

the seals and the otters perishes from the earth. I believe that the

sea-otter (_Enhydra marina_) is only met with on this north Pacific

coast, along which it is gradually being driven northward by constant

hunting. Thirty years ago they were common along the Oregon sea-line;

now the killing of a single specimen is noted in the newspapers; and

hardly more than one a year is generally met along the coast. They

inhabit the belt of tangle and kelp, which is found a few hundred yards

from the beach, beyond the shore-line of sand or rock. They are never

seen ashore, or even on isolated rocks; when the sea is warm and still,

they live much on the surface, playing in the weed; sometimes,

supporting their fore-feet on the thickest part of the wavy mass, they

raise their head and shoulders above the weed, and gaze around. Parents

and children live together in the weed; I have not heard of more than

two young ones being seen in the family group. The skeleton is about

four feet long: the fore-paws are short, strong, and webbed; almost in

the same proportions as a mole's; the hinder extremities are flappers,

like the seal's. The hide is twice the size of the common otter's; the

fur the most beautiful, soft, thick, and glossy in the world--dark-brown

outside, and almost yellow beneath, like the seal's. They are sometimes

shot from a steam-schooner, like my friend's, lying-to at a safe

distance, but much more commonly from the shore. Along the coast of

Gray's Inlet several hunters make a regular business of it. Quite high

watch-towers of timber are built just above high-water mark, and on

these the hunter climbs with his long-range rifle, and watches. He

provides a man on horseback to follow any otter he may be fortunate

enough to kill, up or down the coast, and take possession of it when

thrown up on the beach by the tide. These men seem to prefer the Sharp

rifle for accuracy of long-range fire. That they are no mean proficients

may be judged when I mention that one hunter killed upward of sixty last

year; the skins, or most of them, my friend the captain bought, at

prices, varying with size and condition, of from fifty to one hundred

dollars each. I am told that about August the young ones are seen in

company with their parents; but that the otters may be met with at

almost any time in the year when the sea is calm enough for them to be

marked among the tangle.

[Sidenote: _COMMON OTTER. MINK._]

The common otter (_Lutra Californica_) abounds in the tidal

portions of the rivers along this coast. Two Indians, whom I know, shot

six in an hour or two among the rocks bordering a little cove some

eight miles north of the Yaquina, into which a little river empties

itself. The skins are not quite so large as those of the English otter,

but the fur is valuable. The mink (_Putorius vison_) resembles the

polecat, but is nearly twice as large, with nearly black fur; it

frequents the borders of the streams, and takes to the water with the

greatest readiness. We have rabbits in Oregon (_Lepus Washingtonii_)

not much more than half the size of the common rabbit of Europe, but

similar in habits and place of residence. It is on these that the mink

chiefly preys. I was walking my horse along a quiet stretch of sandy

road, between thick bushes, returning from the Yaquina one day in

summer, when a rabbit darted out before my horse and down the road for

a hundred yards as hard as he could go; then into the bushes, then back

into the road, and up the other side, close to me, evidently in the

greatest fear. I stopped to see. Presently, a mink came out where poor

Bunny first appeared--nose to the ground, and hunting like a ferret. He

followed the rabbit's track step by step down the road, into the

bushes, back again close to me, then into the brush; and then out came

poor rabbit again, the heart gone out of him. Stopping an instant, then

going on a few steps, stopping again, and at last, trembling, he

bunched himself into his smallest compass in the middle of the road,

and there awaited his fate. Not losing one twist or turn, patient,

fierce, inexorable, the enemy followed, not raising his nose from the

trail till he was almost on his prey. Then a quick bound; the rabbit

was seized by the head, almost without a struggle, and dragged nearly

unresisting into the bushes down toward the river's edge, while I

passed on, musing on the points of resemblance between cousins on

opposite sides of the world. Fortunately, these rabbits are very

scarce. They are hardly seen in the valley; they live solely in the

woods, never in or about the cultivated ground.

CHAPTER VII.

Birds in Oregon--Lark--Quail--Grouse--Ruffed grouse--Wild-geese--

Manoeuvres in the air--Wild-ducks--Mallard--Teal--Pintail--Wheat-duck

--Black duck--Wood-duck--Snipe--Flight-shooting--Stewart's Slough--

Bitterns--Eagles--Hawks--Horned owls--Woodpeckers--Blue-jays--Canaries

--The canary that had seen the world--Blue-birds--Bullfinches--

Snow-bunting--Humming-birds at home.

I have read comments on the scarcity of birds in America. This may be

true in some parts; here, in Oregon, we have abundance, except of

singing-birds. Of these last the meadow-lark is almost the sole

example; and his song, in its fragmentary notes and minor key, does not

even remind one distantly of his English cousin, who always seems to

express by his gush of complete and perfect melody the joy that fills

his being:

"... In a half sleep we dream,

And dreaming hear thee still, O singing lark!

That singest like an angel in the clouds."

The quail (_Oreortyx pictus_) has one long, sweet whistle, with the

peculiarity that it is almost impossible to follow up and find the bird

by his note; it sounds so close that you expect the bird is standing on

the nearest log, but you look in vain; then it calls you from a hundred

yards off, among the brush; again from the other side, and you try to

drive him out of the left-hand thicket; but all the while your dog is

working in the wood twenty yards ahead. You turn your head just in time

to see a dark-brown bird flit like a flash across the road and

disappear.

In the shooting-season the quail is one of the hardest birds to kill.

They run in front of the dog in the brushwood with the greatest speed,

then rise and fly for fifty or a hundred yards like lightning, and then

take to their heels again.

In harvest-time the grouse (_Tetrao obscurus_), here called the

partridge, come down from the fir-woods to the grain-fields and give

good sport. They frequent the corners of the fields, nearest to the

brush, and as the brood rise, ten or a dozen in number, and wing

quickly across to shelter in the wood, it reminds one of old times and

of partridge-shooting in Norfolk or Suffolk ten years ago.

When the grain is cleared off, the grouse keep to the slips and corners

of brush nearest to the field for some weeks. As the season advances,

they take to the fir-woods again, and lose their interest to the

sportsmen by becoming in the first place almost impossible to find, and

next worthless for the table from their turpentine taste. After the

grouse have left the harvest-fields and got back into the woods, the

shot-gun sportsman must be quick indeed to shoot as the bird rises and

makes for the nearest tall fir. There he perches and defies you. The

rifle-shot waits till the bird has taken up its place on the bough and

peers over to look after the dog; then he shoots and often kills,

though the head and neck of a grouse thirty or forty yards off is not a

very big mark.

The ruffed grouse (_Bonassa Sabinensis_), here called the pheasant, is

a fourth larger than the common grouse, with beautiful bright-brown

plumage, dashed with yellow, and a spreading tail. He frequents the

oak-grubs and scattering brush of the foot-hills, and is found all

through the less dense portions of the woods of the Coast Range. He

gives good sport, rising to the dog and giving a longer flight, and

offering the sportsman a fairer chance.

[Sidenote: _WILD GEESE._]

As soon as the first half of October has passed by, the cry of the

wild-geese is heard far away in the sky, and their V-shaped companies

are seen winging their southward course. These first advance-guards do

not stay, and scarcely ever descend low enough to tempt even the most

sanguine shot. But in a week or so the main army arrives. Following up

the general course of the Willamette River, they betake themselves to

the sand- and gravel-bars of the river to spend the night, leaving in

the early morning for the bare harvest-fields, where, after a vast

amount of debate and consideration, and many long, circling flights,

they descend to feed. Now every kind of firearms sees the light, and

the gun-maker of the town begins to reap his harvest.

As you ride along the country roads in the valley, you see a lurking

form behind almost every fence. It is a kind of sport exactly suiting

the average Oregonian, who likes his game to come to him, and is great

at watching for it.

Following with your eye the line of timber that betokens the river's

course, you see six or seven great flocks of geese (_Bernicla

Canadensis_) on the wing at once; some in the far distance, mere

specks in the air, others near enough for you to overhear their

conversation, which goes on continually. However confused the crowd

that rises from the river, it is but a few seconds until order is

taken. One flies to the head to guide the band, others take places on

either side behind him; regular distances are kept, leaving just enough

room for free motion, but no more. Inside the head of the V, and

generally on its left side, fly two or three geese in a little

independent group. I think it is from these that the officer appears in

turn to lead the van.

How many times have I watched their evolutions with delight!--all the

keener that the band was coming my way; that the quick, regular beats

of the wings had nearly stopped, and the spread pinions showed they

were about alighting in the very field under the snake-fence of which I

crouched, double-barrel in hand.

The voices grow louder; the conversation and debate is perfectly

confusing; they are near enough for you to note the outstretched necks

and quick eyes glancing from side to side; the blue-gray colors on the

wings, with the black bars, are plain. Waiting till they have passed

over, some thirty yards to the right--for it is of no avail to shoot at

them coming to you (the thick feathers turn the shot)--here go two

barrels at the nearest birds. What a commotion! There is a perfect

uproar of voices all declaiming at once, and away they scatter as hard

as they can, resuming regular order in a hundred yards, but leaving one

poor bird flapping on the ground. My dog runs to pick him up, but can't

make out the big bird, and comes inquiringly back to know what on earth

I mean by shooting at birds he surely has seen--"Yes, about the

home-pond, master--what _are_ you about?"

The geese are sorely destructive to the autumn-sown wheat; the farmer

welcomes the sportsman from selfish motives, as well as from his usual

hospitality, when he sees him, gun in hand.

The wild-geese are nearly all of one variety (_Bernicla Canadensis_); a

few white ones (_Anser hyperboreus_) appear now and then, prominent

among their gray brethren by their snowy plumage. Wild-ducks come next,

and by the end of the first week of November the sportsman's carnival

is in full swing. First come the mallard and his mate (_Anas boschus_),

in small bands; next follow the whistling and the common teal

(_Querquedula cyanoptera_ and _Nettion Carolinensis_); then the pintail

(_Dafila acuta_) in great bands; following these, the wheat-duck, or

gadwall (_Chaulelasmus streperus_), in multitudes; then, at a short

interval, the redhead (_Fuligula Athya Americana_) and the black duck

(_Fulix affinis_). These stay with us all the winter, as do also the

wood-duck (_Dix sponsor_), and until the crocuses cover the wild ground

once again. We have the snipe (_Gallinago Wilsonii_) in our

marsh-lands, but not in large numbers, and one specimen of the great

solitary snipe has been killed.

The snipe have a curious instinct for knowing exactly how many one

piece of marsh will support. Near this house is a wet corner, fed by

springs and also by ditches. The extent is about an acre; it is covered

with rose-bushes and alder-shoots, and with rushes. In this are usually

three snipe, never more. Several times each winter we have cleared the

three out, but in a week or so successors fill their places.

[Sidenote: _FLIGHT-SHOOTING._]

Our favorite sport in winter is "flight-shooting"--killing the geese

and ducks as they fly round the swamps at evening, preparing to settle

for their night's feed. This comes in after the day's work is pretty

nearly done. Mounting our ponies about four o'clock, we canter off to a

big swamp about three miles off. Through this flows a little stream,

whose water swells with the winter rains into two little lakes. Long

grass and sedges cover the ground, and a good many patches of reeds

give shelter.

Arriving just as the sun is setting behind the mountain south of Mary's

Peak, his departing rays strike in brilliant red and yellow light along

the surface of the pools, filling the valley with quivering, purple

haze. We post ourselves at long intervals along the marsh, crouching

while the light lasts, among the reeds. Just as the red light fades

away, a group of black specks is seen against the sky, rising from the

fir-timber that bounds the distant river. They grow quickly larger, and

presently the rapid beat of wings is heard, as they whistle through the

air overhead. The first flight round is high up in the sky, as they

take a general view. Circling at the far end of the swamp, back they

come, this time nearer to the ground. Just as you are debating if you

dare risk the shot, whish! whish! comes the big band of teal close

behind you, dashing by with a swoop worthy of the swiftest swallow, and

defying all but a chance shot into the thick of them. By this time the

big ducks are past, your chance at them is gone, and you hear in a

second or two the bang! bang! from lower down the swamp, telling of one

of your comrades' luck. Here come some more--right, left, overhead,

behind--till an unlucky cartridge sticks in your gun, and the scene

falls on an unhappy wretch cursing his luck, and devoting himself, his

gun, his powder, the ducks, the swamp, and all Oregon to the infernal

deities!

Night has fallen; the pale gold-and-green light has faded from the sky;

the dark purple line of mountains has turned into a solid mass of the

darkest neutral tint; one star after another has shown out overhead, to

be reflected in the still, shallow water in which you stand.

A low voice calls out of the darkness, "Time to go home, I suppose."

And a quick canter along the muddy road, possible only because the

horses know every step of the way, soon brings us home to a late meal,

where all our battles are fought over again, and the spoils, in their

various beauty, are proudly shown. Among the game-birds may be included

the blue crane, which flies in bands of from ten to twenty, high in the

air. But it does not remain here, and is only killed by chance.

The other day a bittern (_Ardeidae minor_) was shot--a bird somewhat

larger than the European bittern, but exactly resembling it in all

essentials.

[Sidenote: _EAGLES, HAWKS, HORNED OWLS._]

Eagles and hawks we have in abundance, and of all sizes. The former are

destructive to the young lambs even in the valley. How bold they are,

too! One flew into a bush the other day as I rode across a wide

pasture, and watched me as I came close by him, never taking to flight,

though I passed within twenty yards of him--near enough to note the

defiant, proud expression of his great black eye. Last summer we lost

chicken after chicken. I could not make out the robber, having taken

precautions against rats, _et id genus omne_. One night, about ten

o'clock, our English servant burst into the sitting-room with--"Sir,

sir, bring your gun; here's a heagle come down on to the roof of the

barn!" One of us ran out with a gun, and made out a big bird against

the starlit sky. A shot, and down it came on the roof of the stable,

making the horses jump and rattle their halter-blocks. It turned out to

be a splendid specimen of the great horned owl. After his death the

depredations among the chickens ceased for the time. Very often a pair

of owls, just like the English barn-owl, are seen beating the swampy

ground, I suppose after rats; quartering the ground, and examining

every sedgy patch like a setter-dog.

Two kinds of woodpeckers are common; the smaller sort abounds in the

burned timber, and again and again in the course of the day's ride you

hear the tap, tap, and see the little fellow propping himself against

the black trunk with his strong tail. The larger woodpecker is a

beautiful bird, with a bright brown-and-gray speckled and barred chest,

and a scarlet head and top-knot. These birds are eagerly sought by the

Indians, who adorn themselves with the red feathers, and use them also

as currency among themselves in various small transactions.

The blue-jays are as noisy in our woods as in other parts of the world,

and as inquisitive and impertinent.

In summer we have flights of little yellow-birds just like canaries.

One of my boys brought his pet canary from England in a little cage. He

cared for and tended it all the long journey, and until we were on

board the steamer coming up the Willamette. In the course of the

morning he thought he would clean out his bird's cage. The open door

was too strong a temptation. Out slipped the captive, and, after a

short flight or two in the cabin, away he went into the outer air and

perched on the upper rail of the pilot-house. After a moment he caught

sight of a flock of little yellow-birds flitting round a big tree by a

farmhouse on the bank. Off flew the little traveler to join them, and

the last we saw of him was that he was joyfully joining the new

company, while his master stood disconsolately watching the escape of

his favorite.

Flocks of little bluebirds (_Sialia Mexicana_) frequent the town, the

whole of their plumage a bright metallic blue. Among them is sometimes

seen the golden oriole (_Icterus Bullockii_), making, with his orange

jacket and black cap, a brilliant contrast with his blue companions.

Along the fences, and in the clumps of bushes filling their angles, is

the favorite haunt of a pretty bird (_Pipilo Oregonus_), in plumage

almost exactly resembling the European bullfinch; like him too in

habit, as he accompanies you along the road in little, jerky flights.

[Sidenote: _HUMMING-BIRDS AT HOME._]

When the winter day has closed in, and the lamps are lighted, several

times the little snow-bunting (_Iunco Oregonus_) has come tapping at

the window, attracted by the light, and seeking refuge in the warmth

within from the rough wind and driving rain without. In the

honeysuckle, which covers the veranda and climbs over the face of the

house, two sets of humming-birds (_Selasphorus rufus_) made their home.

It was pretty to watch them as they poised themselves to suck the

honey, and then darted off to one flower after another among the beds,

returning every instant to their nests, close to our heads, as we sat

out in the cool evening air. We were taken in several times by the

humming-bird moths, which imitated exactly the motions of the birds.

CHAPTER VIII.

Up to the Cascades--Farming by happy-go-lucky--The foot-hills--Sweet

Home Valley--Its name, and how deserved and proved--The road by the

Santiam--Eastward and upward--Timber--Lower Soda Springs--Different

vegetation--Upper Soda Springs--Mr. Keith--Our reception--His home and

surroundings--Emigrants on the road--The emigrant's dog--Off to the

Spokane--Whence they came--Where they were bound--Still eastward--Fish

Lake--Clear Lake--Fly-fishing in still water--The down slope east--

Lava-beds--Bunch-grass--The valleys in Eastern Oregon--Their products

--Wheat-growing there--Cattle-ranchers--Their home--Their life--In

the saddle and away--Branding-time--Hay for the winter--The Malheur

reservation--The Indians' outbreak--The building of the road--When,

how, and by whom built--The opening of the pass--The history of the

road--Squatters--The special agent from Washington--A sham survey.

After recovering from a sharp attack of illness last fall, I was sent

away for change of air. I fancied the mountain air would revive me

speedily; so we resolved to travel up to the Upper Soda Springs, in the

Cascades. It was two days' journey from the valley. The first twenty

miles led us across the rich valley portion of Linn County. We had to

pass through the little town of Lebanon.

Near here we saw an illustration of farming carelessness that I must

mention. The harvest of 1879 was marked by the first recorded instance

of rust attacking the spring-sown wheat. The spring was unusually late,

and when the rains ceased, about the 25th of May, the summer sun broke

forth at once with unclouded warmth and splendor. The lately sown grain

sprang up in marvelous vigor, and the crop promised abundantly for the

farmer, when, just before the wheat hardened in the ear, the rust

seized it, the leaf took a yellow tinge, and the grain shriveled up.

The valley portions of Linn, Lane, Marion, and Benton Counties

suffered, the first-named the most severely.

In our ride across the valley we passed several fields which were

standing abandoned and unreaped; the preparations for next year's crop

were in active progress; in one great wheat-field we saw the farmer,

with his broad-cast grain-distributor fixed in his wagon, sowing his

seed among the untouched, shriveled crop! And the wonder is that the

crop of this year, all through this stricken district, was unusually

fine for both quality and quantity of wheat.

I do not know that a stronger fact could be adduced in proof of the

still wonderful fertility of this Willamette Valley than that it should

be possible this year to reap a good crop, grown on ground that was

neither reaped, plowed, nor rolled--nothing done but to cast abroad the

seed and harrow it lightly in.

Soon after passing Lebanon, eighteen miles from here, we reached the

foot-hills of the Cascades; round, swelling, sandy buttes; sometimes

covered with short pasture-grass; generally bearing a growth of

oak-brush, sprinkled with firs of a moderate size.

[Sidenote: _SWEET HOME VALLEY._]

We slept at the first toll-gate, at the other side of Sweet Home

Valley. This pretty vale deserved its name. Some five or six miles long

by about two in width, there was a good expanse of fertile bottom-land,

plowed and cultivated; all round the hills rose, lightly timbered in

part, affording pasture for the cattle. We were told that the first

five settlers were bachelors, and called the Valley "Sweet Home" to

induce their lady-loves to follow them so far into what was then a

wilderness. That their invitation succeeded, I judge from the fact that

the valley has now three hundred inhabitants; that the settlement was a

permanent one, I judge from the fact that a neat schoolhouse, well

filled with scholars, is now the chief ornament of the valley.

The road followed on along the course of the Santiam River, now

becoming a rapid mountain-stream, with many a rock and ripple. By the

side of every farmhouse stood one or two "fish-poles," betokening that

the river was of use as well as ornament to the dwellers by its banks.

The road now led us straight eastward to the mountains, whose

fir-crowned summits frowned on us from every side. Here and there a

little valley nestling among the hills had been reclaimed to the use of

man; and many a neat little farm and well-grown orchard, with fenced

grain-fields and hay-fields, witnessing to the successful labor of the

owner, smiled on us as we passed.

On nearly all appeared the magic words: "Hay and oats sold here. Good

accommodation for campers"; betokening that we were on the main road of

travel, and that the farmers found a ready market for their produce at

their very door.

At one farm stood a set of Fairbanks's scales, for weighing and

apportioning the wagon-loads before undertaking the passage of the

mountains. The ascent was soon commenced; indeed, we had mounted

several hundred feet before we were well aware of it, so good was the

engineering of the road.

[Sidenote: _LOWER SODA SPRINGS._]

The timber grew larger on either side and ahead; no burned timber here,

but massive, heavy growths, extending mile after mile, of spruce,

hemlock, and pine, interspersed with many a cedar, tall, straight, and

strong. Very little undergrowth of brush; a good deal of brake-fern and

of grass; and by the sides and along the edges of the little gullies

and canyons that we crossed, the large maidenhair-fern grew in beautiful

profusion. We were never far from the Santiam, and now and again the

roar and rush of water told us of little falls and rapids in the

stream. Always ascending, here with a long, straight stretch of grading

cut into the hill-side, there with a winding course to cheat the hill

that rose to bar our road; down a short distance, then along the little

valley with its farm, then up again, till we gained the brow

overlooking the settlement at the Lower Soda Springs. The little wooden

houses, with galleries overhanging the rocky stream; the heavy

fir-woods clothing the hill-sides; the abundant ferns and creeping

plants growing down to the water's edge; the abrupt outlines of the

rocks in places too steep for vegetation--all reminded us of Norway,

and of happy tours in bygone years. And the welcome we received from

the hospitable innkeepers served to strengthen the remembrance.

We went down to drink at the soda-springs. Long, inclined ledges of

white and gray rocks lead down to the river's edge; there, within a few

feet of the sweet, running water, so near that the rise of one foot in

actual level of the stream would overrun the spring, we found the

alkaline spring, welling out from a hole six inches across in one of

the wide ledges of gray rock. I never yet tasted a mineral water that

was nice, and it seems as if the medical value of a spring varied

exactly with its nastiness; so judged, I should say that the Lower Soda

Springs were very valuable. A few hours more, over broken country,

which grew wilder as we advanced, brought us in twelve miles' travel to

our destination. The last few miles entered a burned timber-patch,

where the black trunks either towered high into the air or lay supine,

rotting by degrees into yellow mold. The vegetation had a different

aspect from the Coast Range; a great feature in the brush was the

abundance of elder-bushes, then covered with blue-gray berries, and the

flourishing dogwood-trees, whose branches bore a quantity of large,

white flowers and also of scarlet fruit. We had crossed the Santiam

several times, here by timber bridges, there by fords.

The excellence of the road, its freedom from rocks and "chuck-holes,"

alike surprised and pleased us, and my poor bones would have told a sad

tale if all the stories of "mere wagon-track" had been founded in even

the semblance of fact.

[Sidenote: _MR. KEITH._]

We mounted the little rise which brought us in sight of Upper Soda

Springs. On the left of the road stood a barn; on the right, three

little detached wooden huts, from one of which the thin, blue smoke was

rising and betokened the habitation of the owner. A thin, bent, elderly

man issued from the barn with a big bundle of hay in his arms, as we

drove up, and came across to meet us. "Mr. Keith?" I asked. "I have a

letter of introduction from a friend of yours, and we wish to stay with

you for a week or ten days." "You read it to me," was the answer; "I

haven't got my spectacles." So I read it. "Well, sir, can we stay?" "I

don't mind men, but I can't abear women," was the somewhat forbidding

response, as my wife smiled across from the back of the carriage. "I

don't think you need mind my wife, Mr. Keith; she won't give you any

extra trouble." "I don't mind cooking for men--they don't know any

better; but, as for the women, they are always thinking how much better

they could do it." However, we settled it amicably, and took possession

of the third little hut, where the bundle of hay was soon shaken out on

to the two standing bed-places on either side. We made great friends

with the old gentleman, whose roughness was all on the outside, and who

slew his chickens, and cooked his cabbages, and stewed his dried plums

and apples for us without stint, and in a manner that no woman could

object to.

The situation was most romantic--just under the shadow of a huge body

of rugged rocks on one side, while on the other Mr. Keith's little

fields, from which all the dogwood and elderberry bushes had not been

grubbed out, led to the edge of the bank overhanging the Santiam. The

river here is a beautiful stream, rocky and broken, deep and shallow,

by turns, with a trout under every stone.

Mr. Keith's garden was a few steps from the house, in a little bottom;

although so high up above sea-level (about twenty-five hundred feet, I

believe), the vegetables were as fine as I ever saw, and the

grape-vines, trained over a trellis in front of the house, were loaded

with fruit.

Here, among the hills, trout-rod for me and sketch-book and

water-colors for my wife, we spent ten happy days. There was no lack of

company, for, besides our old host, all the passers-by stopped at the

house. Hardly a day went, even at that late period of the season,

without from six to ten wagons passing, on their way from Western and

Southern Oregon to the wide plains and fertile valleys of Eastern

Oregon and Washington Territory.

The self-reliance, the absolute trusting to the future, of all these

good people was impressive. The whole family were together: beds,

chairs, stove, blankets, clock, saucepans, and household stores were

all packed or piled into the wagon; underneath hung a box or basket

with a couple of little pigs or a dozen cocks and hens. A couple of

cows were driven along or took their parts as a yoke of oxen in

draught; a colt or two and a few young cattle ran by the side, and the

family dog, presiding over the cavalcade, seemed to have more of a

burden on his mind than the human heads of the expedition. Many stopped

to camp for the night, almost all for at least one meal, and all

without exception to get a drink from the effervescing soda-spring.

[Sidenote: _OFF TO THE SPOKANE._]

One wagon was driven by a pleasant-spoken man; with him were his wife

and a sick baby of a year old. They had nothing for the baby but

potatoes and flour. Their stores were but scanty. "Where are you

going?" said I. "To the Spokane, I guess," was the reply. "Where do you

come from?" "Well, I had a valley-farm, and we were doing pretty well,

but I hadn't my health good, and I thought we'd try the Spokane." "Do

you know where it is you are going?" "No, but they told us to take this

road and we'd find our way." "Have you any idea how far it is?" "Not

much; a hundred miles or two, isn't it?" "Put five hundred or so on,

and you'll get there." "You don't say so! Well, I dare say we shall get

through all right." "What do you mean to do?" "Well, I haven't money

enough to buy a farm, so I shall just take up a place." "You mean to

homestead, then?" "I guess so." "How many miles can you make in a day?"

"Not more than ten or fifteen with this old scrub team." "Have you

thought that this is the first week in October, and that you can't

expect to get there much before January?" "I guess not; but I dare say

we shall get on very well." "You told me just now you had not much

money; have you thought how long it will last you, spending two dollars

a day on the road?" "No, I haven't rightly figured it. I knew we

shouldn't have much left when we got there." "What makes you want to go

to the Spokane?" "Well, I've heard it's good land up there." "Isn't

Oregon good enough for you?" "I don't know but what it is. I didn't

know the place was so far off." I fetched him a large scale map, and

left him to think it over after supper. They were off in the morning

before we were out, and I have no idea whether they reached the

Spokane; my only consolation was, that the baby was the better for the

care and food it got that night, and for the additional stores they

carried away for it.

This conversation was, perhaps, an extreme one; but it is absolutely

true to facts. All that we talked to were equally hopeful, and few much

better instructed as to their course. Certainly no people in the world

could be better qualified to make a little go far, to take cheerily all

the inevitable discomforts of both the long journey and the new home,

and to make the best use of every advantage they found or made. Only a

few were going to this Spokane country, away north in Washington

Territory; the rest were bound for Eastern Oregon, which is being

settled up marvelously fast, when the difficulties of getting there,

and of getting their produce out from there, are taken into account.

The stretch of burned timber country ended about the Upper Soda. All

round it, and on from there eastward, grew miles upon miles of

magnificent fir, hemlock, spruce, and cedar-trees, averaging three feet

through, and, I judged, a hundred and fifty feet in height. I measured

several of the dead trees on the ground, which ran from two hundred and

twenty to two hundred and fifty feet in length, and the tops of all of

them were gone.

A few miles farther on eastward are Fish Lake and Clear Lake. The

former merits its name from the abundance of trout from one to three

and four pounds in weight. In summer the water shrinks away to little

more than a stream in the middle of the depression which forms the

lake, and a growth of rich, succulent grass follows the subsidence of

the waters. Clear Lake, some four miles off, is vastly different. It

evidently occupies the place of a great and sudden depression of

timber-covered country, for, looking down into the deep, clear water,

the great firs are seen still standing erect on the bottom, far, far

below. Fly-fishing on this lake is wonderfully good. Throw the flies on

to the still water, oh! so quietly, and there let them lie motionless;

in a moment or two a dim form shines deep down, rising with a quick,

vibrating motion, and up comes your friend: with a greedy snatch he

takes the fly, and bolts downward with it, to be speedily checked and

brought to book.

Soon begins the descent, much more gradual than the ascent, and not so

prolonged, since all Eastern Oregon is a kind of plateau, elevated from

one to two thousand feet above sea-level.

[Sidenote: _VALLEYS IN EASTERN OREGON._]

A stretch of lava-bed is soon reached, the acme of desolation, where

the road has been painfully worked by crushing down the rugged blocks,

or laboriously moving them with levers from the path. Two or three

miles carry us across, and then the bunch-grass country begins. Great

tussocks of succulent feed for spring and early summer, dried by the

hot sun into natural hay for autumn and winter use, afford pasture for

countless herds of cattle. Even here there are watercourses and springs

a few miles apart. The valleys--namely, Des Chutes, Crooked River

Valley, Ochoco, Beaver Creek, Grindstone Creek, Silver Creek, Harney

Lake, and Malheur--stretch in a practically unbroken line across the

whole of the remainder of Oregon to the eastern boundary of Snake

River.

Take Crooked River Valley as a specimen. It varies from one to three

miles in width, but is bounded, not by the steep and rugged hills we

are used to in the Coast Range, but by gently swelling bluffs, covered

with bunch-grass to and over their tops. The valley-land is rich and

fertile, and wherever cultivated yields abundantly in potatoes,

cereals, vegetables, and small fruits of all kinds. Sixty and eighty

bushels of oats to the acre is not an unusual crop. And tame grasses

take firm hold of the country wherever opportunity is given them. The

bunch-grass slopes, with occasional sagebrush scattered among the

grass, are not to be always set apart for such common use as at

present.

Precisely the same character of land has been plowed up and put into

wheat during the last few years round Walla Walla, just north of the

northeast corner of Oregon, and produces forty bushels of wheat to the

acre. Indeed, it is from country like this that the great crops of

Northeastern Oregon and Washington Territory are produced; crops

yielding a magnificent return, if not to the farmer whose enterprise

and industry have served to raise them, yet to the recently formed

transportation company called the Oregon Railway and Navigation

Company, by whose boats plying on the Columbia the wheat is carried to

Portland to be shipped.

At present these vast stretches of rolling hill and dale are the home

of the cattle-rancher--a strange and wild life. A suitable site is

fixed on, commanding ample water privilege, with some valley-land near

by to grow sufficient hay, and to raise the desired quantity of oats

and vegetables; here the house is built, the lumber being hauled by

wagons perhaps fifty or a hundred miles from the mill. The rancher's

family consists of his wife and children, and possibly five or six

herdsmen. While looking after cattle, these men almost live in the

saddle. Horses abound, and form as good a source of revenue as cattle,

in proportion to the capital engaged. The Eastern Oregon horse is

taller and bigger-boned than the valley horse, but naturally his

education is not so well attended to, and he is apt to be "mean" and to

buck. Little recks his rider, and after a bout of bucking, in which the

horse has not dislodged the man, but has shaken up every bone in his

body till he is sore all over with the constant jar, as the horse comes

to the ground all four feet at once after a mighty jump, then it is the

man's turn. Driving in the heavy Mexican spurs, with their rowels two

or three inches across, the rider starts wildly out, and mile after

mile the open country is crossed at a hard-gallop. The herd is soon

seen and ridden round, and a close lookout is kept to see if any

stragglers have joined the band, and if the calves and yearlings are

all right. Branding-time comes twice a year, in spring and autumn, when

the cattle of a whole "stretch" of country are driven together,

separated according to the various ownerships determined by marks and

brands.

In spring come in the Eastern buyers, who travel through the country,

collecting a huge drove of perhaps from ten to twenty thousand head.

The three-year-old steers fetch about fifteen or seventeen dollars a

head; no wonder the ranchers prosper, considering that the cost from

calfhood was only that of herding.

Some of the provident ones collect one or two hundred tons of natural

hay against the severities of winter. It may be that for two or three

years the hay will stand unused; then comes the stress. Deep snow will

cover the face of the country and lie for weeks, too deep for the

cattle to live, as in ordinary winters, on the dry bunch-grass

protruding from the snow, or easily reached by scratching a slight

covering away. Even an abundant store will not save all, for many of

the herd will have taken refuge in distant valleys, or perhaps have

retreated far off the whole range in the face of the driving storm. And

even those that are found will move very unwillingly from any poor

shelter they may have secured toward the life-saving food.

[Sidenote: _THE MALHEUR RESERVATION._]

There is a large Indian reservation called the Malheur Reserve; the

road crosses its southwest corner. These Indians are quiet enough now,

but only three years ago there was an outbreak among them. One rancher

had built a fine stone house, just outside the reservation bounds, and

there lived in comfort, surrounded by all the necessaries and many of

the luxuries of life. He had six or eight thousand head of cattle and

some three hundred horses in his band. One morning a friendly Indian

rode up in haste, telling him to get away, as the hostiles were coming

to kill them all. Mounting their horses, the rancher and his wife took

to flight; they looked back from the hill-top to see the flames and

smoke rising from their comfortable home, telling how narrow had been

their escape. A hurried ride of fifty miles took them to safe refuge;

and the speedy repulse of the Indians, and their being driven once

again within their own boundaries, enabled the rancher to rebuild his

house, and restore once more his household goods.

This road was built by men who were sent out from Albany, and spent

years in the work, rifles by their side; for the country fourteen years

ago was not the safe domain it has now become. The first idea was to

use the pass through the Cascades (which is the lowest and safest in

Oregon, so far as I can learn), to build a road to open the plains of

Eastern Oregon to the Willamette Valley. After a good deal of the work

had been accomplished, a suggestion was made to the owners of the road

that if they would undertake to extend it clear across the State to the

Idaho boundary, a distance from Albany of some four hundred and fifty

miles by the necessary deviations from a straight line, a land grant

might probably be procured from Congress to aid the work. Whatever may

be said of the general policy of granting the national lands to

corporations to aid wagon-road and railroad enterprises, there may

surely be cases where the effect is not only to secure the execution of

the work, but also to encourage the settling up of a district, and the

consequent increase of the population and wealth of a State.

Here was the state of affairs in Eastern Oregon prior to 1866: A vast

country, adapted for the gradual settlement and ultimate habitation of

a prosperous race, was lying at the mercy of a few roving bands of

Indians, who made the lives and property of even casual travelers their

speculation and sport. What was the value then of all that country?

Could any purchaser for it have been then found, at even a few cents an

acre?

[Sidenote: _BUILDING OF THE ROAD._]

The projectors of the road took their lives in their hands when they

ventured forth to work. They risked themselves, their horses and

equipments. Every pound of food consumed had to be brought in wagons

from their starting-point. As they progressed, their danger and

difficulty increased with every mile they traversed; and the last

section of the road was built by men who had suffered themselves to be

snowed in and shut off from families and friends, and to give up every

chance of succor in distress, that the work might not stand still. And

it was no light work, even judged by us who travel the road at ease,

and have hardly a passing glance for the rocky grade, the deep cutting,

the ponderous lava-block, the huge black trunk. How appalling must the

undertaking have appeared to those who had first to face the dangers

and difficulties of a mountain-chain, to plan for and survey out the

most favorable route among heavy timber and rocky precipice, beside

rushing waters and through deep gorges; and then across those wide and

then silent plains, where the timid antelope ranged by day, and the

skulking wolf by night made solitude hideous with his melancholy howl!

No roadside farms to welcome them, no little towns to mark, as now, the

stages of their journey, but farther and farther into the wilderness,

till four hundred miles lay between the workers and the valley-homes

they had left months before.

And this was no wealthy corporation, which has but to announce its

readiness to receive, and dollars are poured into its lap by a public

hungry for dividends, until it has to cry, "Hold, enough!" Here were no

regiments of yellow workmen, trained to labor in many a ditch and

grade; but citizens of Oregon, who desired to build up their State; who

believed the records of their fellows as to the miles of country that

could be forced to contribute their quota of productions if but the way

were opened in and out; who, having themselves prospered in the sound

and moderate way in which Oregon encourages her children, were ready to

risk what they had gained in a cause they knew was good--these men

combined their energies to the common end. It was an enterprise which

roused and maintained the kindly interest of all. The working parties

in the Cascade Range were followed up by the teams of those who desired

the first choice of settlement in the promised land beyond.

By the time the last great log that barred the pass was reached, a long

string of wagons stood waiting its removal. While the long saws were

plied, and then the levers brought, all stood in expectation; willing

hands lent their eager aid: the great wooden mass rolled sullenly away,

and the tide of settlement poured through the gap. Between that day in

1867 and 1880 upward of five thousand wagons have made the journey,

and, to the honor of the original locators be it said, all without

accident arising from the road.

The first few years all went merry as a marriage-bell. The road

naturally followed the fertile valleys; and small blame to the

road-makers if, having the whole country before them, they chose the

smoothest and cheapest route. No man will climb a hill and cut his way

along its side if he can find good level ground at the bottom.

The road-makers were entitled under their congressional grant to

alternate mile-square sections in a wide belt on either side of their

road; the intervening sections were, of course, opened to settlement by

the construction of the road. The open-valley sections were soon seized

on, and a band of settlements justified, even so soon, the principle of

the road-grant.

[Sidenote: _SQUATTERS._]

But to many men in this world, and Oregon has her share, the

descriptive motto is not, "Labor is sweet, and we have toiled," but the

antithesis, "Other men have labored: let us enter into the fruits of

their labor." So squatters entered with the legitimate settler, or

close on his heels, and took possession of many a section of the road

company's land, "taking the chances," as they would express it, of

something happening to help them to hold. To aid matters, these men

fenced across the road near their houses, and carried the road round on

the hill-sides above their farms. The settlers were not slow to follow

so promising an example, and, to have the benefit of the bottom-land

through which the road ran, they also pushed the road away up the

hills.

On more than one occasion the road company sent and had these fences

removed and opened the original road afresh. But travelers did not aid

them; for here came in a trait of American character I have often

noticed, namely, unwillingness to insist on strict right against their

neighbors, and a readiness to make any shift, or agree to and use any

_detour_, when to keep the old, straight road would involve a question.

So the valley road got disused in places, and travel went round by the

hills.

Next, the squatters bethought them that they might in time upset the

road grant, and get good title to their neighbors' vineyard. So they

sent on a petition to Washington, alleging that the road had never been

made; that there was no road at all; that there had been a colossal

fraud. But the matter was investigated, and discovery made that the

United States authorities had ceased to have any jurisdiction so long

ago as 1866. Still, those who were agitating thought something might be

made of it. So, somehow or other, the Secretary of the Interior, Mr.

Carl Schurz, was induced to interfere, not deterred by the knowledge

that the land department had declined to act twelve months before; and

so, a year after the squatters' complaint had been refused, an agent

was sent out to report; he was well armed with the assailants' stories

in advance, and he need be a man of superexcellent straightforwardness

and hardihood unless he too could "see something in it."

In this case the phoenix was not discovered, and the eyes, ears, and

common-sense of hundreds of men who knew the road well were outraged by

a report that no road existed or had been made except for about sixty

miles at the western end; and that the road, if road it could be

called, was a mere wagon-track, capable of use only for a short time

and under exceptionally favorable circumstances!

It was of course assumed that, at so great a distance from

headquarters, a hostile report would end matters, and that all the

advantages hoped for by the squatters, and by any and all who had

espoused their cause, would be forthwith enjoyed.

We have yet to learn that the American Congress will consent to be made

parties to such an outrageous conspiracy; to cast an infamous slur on

the characters of American citizens who ventured much in an undertaking

for the public good; in violation of plain and acknowledged principles

of law, to hamper and delay an enterprise relying on the title gained

in 1871, and quietly enjoyed for ten years.

[Sidenote: _HARNEY LAKE VALLEY._]

The largest of the valleys through which this road passes is Harney

Lake Valley, only about eighty miles from the eastern boundary of the

State, which will receive fuller description farther on.

CHAPTER IX.

Indian fair at Brownsville--Ponies--The lasso--Breaking-in--The

purchase--"Bucking" extraordinary--Sheep-farming in Eastern Oregon--

Merinos--The sheep-herder--Muttons for company--A good offer refused

--Exports of wool from Oregon--Price and value of Oregon wool--Grading

wool--Price of sheep--Their food--Coyotes--The wolf-hunt--Shearing--

Increase of flocks--"Corraling" the sheep--Sheep as brush-clearers.

[Sidenote: _BREAKING-IN._]

Some of our people wanted to buy ponies this last fall, and heard that

the Indian pony fair at Brownsville, about twenty-five miles from here,

was the best place. They rode off one fine October morning, and

returned the next day but one, with a handsome four-year-old. The scene

as they described it was exciting and interesting. I should say that

the town of Brownsville is a lively little place, with seven or eight

hundred inhabitants, and some fine woolen-mills. It is the nearest

valley town to the mountains accessible by the wagon-road to those

crossing from Eastern Oregon. Near the town was the fair-ground, a

large, fenced inclosure, with from two to three hundred ponies

careering about it in a state of wild excitement. Nearly all the

Indians were Warm Springs, some few Nez-Perces. Both these tribes are

far finer-looking and better grown than our coast Indians. They wear

white men's clothes, but deerskin moccasins on their feet. Except for

the absolute straightness of the black hair, these men almost exactly

resemble the gypsies as seen in Europe; they are very like them too in

many habits of mind and life--equally fond of red and yellow

handkerchiefs for neck-wear for the men or head-gear for the women.

Several of the Indians were on foot, others on horseback in the

inclosure where the horses ran. On our friends telling one of the Warm

Springs chiefs who was standing there of their wish to buy a horse, he

questioned them as to the kind they wanted, and the price they were

willing to give. Then, on giving some directions to one of the Indians

on horseback, that worthy unslung his lasso from his saddle-horn and

rode into the crowd of horses. The whole wild band were kept on a rapid

gallop round and round. The Indian soon selected one, and flinging his

lasso over its head he turned and stopped his horse abruptly, and the

captive was brought to the ground with a shock enough to break every

bone in his body. He was quickly secured by another rope or two by

other Indians standing near, and was then carefully inspected. Not

being altogether approved, he was set free again, and quickly rejoined

the band. Another was caught, and another, and at last a trade was

arrived at, subject to the breaking-in of the horse in question. The

horse, carefully held by lasso-ropes, was quickly saddled, a hide

bridle with sharp and cruel curb-bit was slipped over his head, a young

Indian mounted, and all the ropes were let go. Away went the horse like

an arrow from a bow; then as suddenly he stopped; then buck-jumping

began, while the Indian sat firm and unmoved, seemingly immovable. This

play lasted till the horse tired of it, and then off he went at a

gallop again. Before he got too far away the rider managed to turn him,

and he was kept going for an hour and more till he was utterly

exhausted, and the white foam lay in ridges on his skin. By this time

all the bucking had gone out of him, and he suffered himself to be

brought quietly back to the corral, and he was handed over to the

purchaser as a broken horse. A long negotiation as to price had ended

in sixteen dollars being paid in silver half-dollar pieces (the Indian

declined a gold ten-dollar piece), and a red cotton handkerchief which

happened to peep from our friend's pocket, which clinched the bargain.

The average size of the ponies was just under fourteen hands; the shape

and make were exceedingly good. There was one splendid coal-black

stallion, a trifle larger than the rest, whose long mane and tail

adorned him; for this the Indians declined all moderate offers, and got

as high as fifty dollars, and would hardly have sold at that. There was

a considerable proportion of the spotted roan, which is the traditional

color for the Indian "cayuse."

[Sidenote: _THE SHEEP-HERDER._]

Sheep-farming in Eastern and Northern Oregon has become a very

important pursuit; it is also followed largely in the southeastern

portion of the State. As sheep advance cattle retire, and many a growl

have I listened to from the cattle-men, and most absurd threats as to

what they would do to keep back the woolly tide: even to the length of

breeding coyotes or prairie-wolves for the special benefit of the

mutton. The merinos, French. Spanish, and Australian, thrive better in

the drier climate east of the Cascades than in this Willamette Valley.

The vast expanse of open country covered thinly with grass involves the

herding system. One of our fellows undertook this business near Heppner

in Umatilla County. He had entire charge of a flock of 1,700 merinos.

There was an old tent for him to sleep in, but he preferred to roll

himself in his blankets on the open ground. No company but his dog, and

no voices but the eternal "baa, baa" of the sheep, which almost drove

him mad. His "boss" came out to him once in three weeks with a supply

of coffee, flour, beans, and bacon; and, if meat ran short, there was

abundance of live mutton handy. About once in three weeks, on the

average, a stray traveler would cross his path, and have a few minutes'

talk and smoke a pipe. He had not the relaxation of sport, for the

sheep have driven deer and antelope from the country. Early in the

morning his sheep were on the move; he had to follow them over the

range; about noon they lay down on the hill-side, and he stopped to eat

his scanty meal. All the afternoon they wandered on, till evening fell,

by which time they were back on the sheltered hill-side, which stood

for headquarters, and where the tent was pitched. Day in, day out, the

same deadly round of monotonous duty, until he hated the look, the

smell, the sound of a sheep, and I think has an incurable dislike to

mutton which will last him all his life. Don't you think that his forty

dollars a month was earned? When October came, and a few flakes of snow

heralded the coming winter, the "boss" came, and warned him that he

must now elect whether or not to spend the winter with the sheep, as

the way out would shortly close. If he would stay, he could have a

share in the flock to secure his interest, and could also take his pay

in sheep, which would thus start his own individual flock. The offer

was a tempting one; the path was the same that all the successful

self-made sheep-men had followed; cold and privation alone had not many

terrors to a hardy man; but--one look at the sheep decided him; he

could not stand their society for six months longer. So he left, and

returned to the valley, like a boy from school.

I know one or two men, who, forced to accept a situation of this sort,

have used the time for the study of a language, and, after a few months

with the sheep, have come out accomplished Spanish, Italian, or German

scholars. But it takes some resolution to overcome the temptation to

drift along, day by day, in idleness of mind and body more and more

complete.

The Portland Board of Trade reports that, for the year 1879, 766,200

pounds of wool were received at that city from Eastern Oregon, and

2,080,197 pounds from the Willamette Valley, showing in value an

increase of about thirty-five per cent. over the previous year. But

Messrs. Falkner, Bell & Co., of San Francisco, reported that the

receipts at that city of Oregon wool aggregated 7,183,825 pounds for

the clip of 1879. The figures for 1876 were only 3,150,000 pounds. It

should be noticed also that Oregon wool commands an excellent price in

the market, even six cents higher than California, possessing greater

strength and evenness, and being free from burs. The valley wool is

clearer from sand and grit than that from Eastern Oregon.

But much remains to be done in this valley. Far too many of the farmers

are absolutely careless about scab; and sheep, infested with this

noxious parasite, are suffered to run at large and poison the

neighbors' flocks. It is true that a law intended to extirpate this

curse now exists; but neither is legislation as sufficient nor its

enforcement so strict as in Australia, though the necessity for both is

full as great. There is but little encouragement either to the valley

farmer to expend labor and money in improving the quality of his flock,

when he sees his neighbors' inferior fleeces command just as high a

price, the wool from perhaps ten or twenty farms being "pooled" without

regard to quality. The remedy is of course found in grading the wool;

steps for this purpose are being talked over by many intelligent

farmers, and I expect soon to see them carried out.

The exhibit at Philadelphia of Oregon wool received medals and diplomas

from the Commissioners of the Centennial of 1876, with high and

deserved praise. And the show at the Paris Exhibition of 1878 was also

splendid; the Oregon fleeces equaling the Australian in length,

strength, evenness, and beauty of fiber.

[Sidenote: _PRICE OF SHEEP._]

I shall have a little more to say as to the breeds of sheep when the

State Fair at Salem is described, where the best specimens were

supposed to be, and I believe were collected. Sheep in this valley are

worth from $1.25 to $1.75 for store-sheep for the flock, and from $2 to

$3 for mutton-sheep in winter. The wool of a sheep may be taken to

fetch $1 on an average of seasons. The sheep eat grass all the year

round; they have never seen a turnip or cole-seed. I know many farmers

who have kept sheep successfully for twenty years on nothing whatever

but the natural wild grasses. The great enemy of the sheep in these

foot-hills, where the pasture is intermixed with brush, and borders on

the thicker brush and timber of the mountains behind, is the coyote.

Two or three of these little wolves will keep half a county on the

alert, destroying far more than they eat. This "varmint" is somewhat

larger than a Scottish sheep-dog, and of a tawny color; he has long

hair like a colley, and is much more cowardly than fierce. He lives in

the thick brush, whence he steals out at dusk on his murderous errand.

He hunts generally alone, though one of our friends saw three together

one evening this winter. His pace is a long, untiring gallop, and it

takes a very good hound to run him down.

The usual plan of the hunt is for several rifles to command the outlets

from a piece of woodland, and then to take into the brush a collection

of five or six of the best hounds that can be got together. When the

scoundrel breaks cover he may go fast, but the rifle-bullet or buckshot

goes the faster, and it would not do to miss.

The sheep killed by the coyote is identified by the two little holes on

either side of the throat, where the wolf has struck and held to drink

the fast-flowing life-blood. The carcass is rarely torn. But the worse

and more common coyote is the mongrel hound. Every now and again one of

these impostors takes to murdering, and, demure and quiet as he looks

by day, slouching around the barn, spends his nights killing the

neighbors' sheep. There is not much chance for him if he is but once

seen; his life is a very short if a merry one.

When shearing-time comes round there are plenty of applicants for the

job. The price is usually five cents a head, the farmer providing food,

but the shearer finding his own tools. Some of these fellows will clip

a hundred sheep a day, or even more: true, you must look after them to

prevent scamping, in the shape of cuts on your sheep, and wool left on

in thick ridges, instead of a clean, good shear. We expect an increase

of at least one hundred per cent. on the ewes at lambing-time, even

though so little cared for; those farmers who are good shepherds too,

improve greatly on this average. The lambs must be well looked after,

unless the wild-cat, eagle, and coyote are to take their toll. Not half

the sheep are kept in this valley that ought to be, and that will be,

when change or succession of crops are universally practiced.

[Sidenote: _"CORRALING" THE SHEEP._]

The amusing part of sheep-keeping in our coast-hills is "corraling," or

gathering them for the night. By day they roam freely over the

hill-sides, and you would be surprised to see how they thrive in

brushwood and among fern, where the new-comer could hardly detect a

blade of grass. These mountain-sheep, too, are more hardy and

independent than the valley flocks. But, when the lambs are about, I am

sure it is wise to undertake the labor of collecting them in the

"corral" for the night. Without your sheep-dog you would be lost, for

you would not have a chance on the hill-sides, and over and under the

occasional logs, with sheep that jump and run like antelopes. But the

dog cures all that, and you can stand in the road and watch Dandy or

Jack collect your flock just as well as if he were in the cairns and

corries of old Scotland, whence he or his grandfather came. I like to

see them march demurely in at the open gate, and then run to the log

where you have scattered a handful of salt for them, every grain and

taste of which is eagerly licked up. And they are excellent

brush-clearers; they love the young shoots of the cherry and

vine-maple, and keep them so close down that in one or two seasons at

most the stub dies, and can be plowed out and burned. Therefore every

settler who takes up land, or buys a partly cleared farm, will find

both pleasure and profit in his sheep, and that to him they are a

necessity, even more than to the valley farmer. He must expect a

percentage of loss from the wild animals, but his vigilance and love of

sport together will reduce that percentage to the lowest point.

CHAPTER X.

The trail to the Siletz Reserve--Rock Creek--Isolation--Getting a

road--The surveying-party--Entrance at last--Road-making--Hut-building

in the wilds--What will he do with it?--Choice of homestead--Fencing

wild land--Its method and cost--Splitting cedar boards and shingles--

House-building--The China boy and the mules--Picnicking in earnest

--Log-burning--Berrying-parties--Salting cattle--An active cow--A

year's work--Mesquit-grass on the hills.

When I traveled through Oregon in 1877, we visited the Siletz Indian

reservation. To get there from the district called King's Valley, where

we were, we had to take the mountain-trail first cut out by General

Sheridan, when, as a young lieutenant, twenty years ago, he was

stationed on this coast. The trail went up one mountain and down

another, and crossed this river and that creek, till, at the foot of

one long descent from a lofty ridge, which we thought then, and which I

know now is, the water-shed between two great divisions of this county,

we entered a valley entirely shut in. At the southeastern end, where we

entered it, it was a narrow gorge, down which a quick stream hurried,

with many a twist and turn, and over many a rocky ledge. The hill-sides

above were thick with fern and berry-bearing bushes, and the black

trunks of the burned timber stood as records of the great fire; but the

stream ran through a leafy wilderness, where maple, alder, and cherry

shut in the trail, and the maiden-hair and blechnum ferns grew thickly

along the banks. The valley widened out as we advanced, and we found it

in shape almost like an outspread hand, the palm representing the

central level bottom, and the fingers the narrow valleys and canyons

between the encompassing hills. The trail led us by turns along the

bottom and the lower steps of the hill-sides. We camped to dine, and

explored some distance up the side-valleys, coming on old Indian

camping-places, with the bones of deer and beaver scattered round.

The isolation of the place, hidden away there among the hills, the

fresh abundance of the vegetation, the mellowness of the thick, fat

soil shown where we crossed again and again the creek dividing the

valley down its entire length, all charmed me; the steep yet rounded

outlines of the hills often recurred to me when I was very far away.

When I came back to Oregon, in 1879, I took the first chance I had of

going over this old ground.

The question was, if it were possible to run in a road out of the main

Yaquina road, which I knew lay but some five or six miles off.

So I sent out a surveying-party to ascertain, and a rough time they

had. It rained almost incessantly; the brush was thick; they lost their

way; it got dark, and they went wandering on till they struck a trail

which led them to a river. "Now we're all right," said the leader;

"this is the Yaquina; the road is on the other side of the creek." So

they struck into the rushing water, then running in flood, and waded

across waist-deep. But no road on the other side; only a dark trail

leading into thick brush. Presently it was pitch-dark, and the surveyor

confessed he did not know where he was; that this was certainly not the

Yaquina, and apparently there was no road. The rain still fell heavily,

and saturated them and their packs. Then one of the horses, which they

were leading along, slipped from the bank into the flooded stream, and

nearly dragged his owner after him. At last they determined to camp.

Not a dry spot and no dry wood could they find. So they lay down under

the shelter of the biggest log, and ate a supper of raw bacon and an

odd lump of stale crust. Not even a match would light, and they staid

out the weary hours of darkness as best they could, wishing for dawn.

With the earliest light they were on foot once more, and, after

wandering a little farther, the leader identified the Rock Creek

Valley, and pointed out the Siletz trail. They had found a route, but

certainly not the route I wanted.

Next I went out myself and questioned the settlers down the road as to

the trails across. At last we struck on what looked from a distance the

lowest gap in the encircling mountains, and made up our minds to keep

on trying for a road through that till we got it, or were satisfied it

was impossible. Perseverance answered, and we struck a trail up the

course of the Yaquina River nearly to its source, and then through some

thick wood to the foot of the mountain, on the other side of which was

the Rock Creek Valley; then up the mountain to the low gap, and thence

the way was plain down into Rock Creek.

[Sidenote: _ROAD-MAKING._]

Road-making in Oregon is like road-making elsewhere. We had a party

of twelve or fourteen men at work, and had to build three huts at

intervals before the road got through. The huts only took a few hours

to construct. Cut down a dozen cherry poles, straight and long; saw off

a cedar log and split it up again and again, till you get planks out of

it four feet long and about an inch or so thick. Drive your cherry

poles into dug holes, and set up the frame of your hut; build a recess

five feet wide and two feet deep at one end for a chimney; board the

whole in, and double the boarding on the roof; line the inside of the

chimney with damp earth for about two feet up, and then carry that up

above the roof of your house also by boards; hang a door on a couple of

wooden hinges made by choosing strong forked pieces of crab-apple which

will not split; beat down the floor level and hard, and, if you are

very luxurious, set up standing bed-places, or bunks, of cherry-pole

legs and cedar boards for the beds, and your habitation is complete--as

soon, that is, as you have brought in a huge back-log and set a great

fire blazing. Cut off a few chunks of wood level for chairs, and fix

two or three boards against the walls for shelves, and you have no idea

of the comfort you can get out of your house.

We dug, and graded, and moved logs, and built bridges, and laid

corduroy crossings over wet places, and in about three months the way

into Rock Creek was clear. I confess to a little pride when the first

wagon went safely in, and down into the level bottom below. The next

question was the hard one, What will he do with it? The wilderness was

before us; how were we to civilize it? Gazing down into the valley,

with here a ferny slope, there a copse filling acres of bottom, then a

deep canyon with green trees, there a beaver-dam flooding the best piece

of land at every high water, and everywhere the great black trunks,

standing or lying prostrate, in some places heaped together in the

wildest confusion--it was a case that called for the "stout heart to

the stiff brae."

The first thing was to settle the place for a homestead, supplied with

water, but out of the reach of flood. And a rising ground, some hundred

yards from the river, along one side of which ran a clear little stream

at right angles to the creek, supplying a chain of three beaver-ponds,

overhung with trees and shrubs, was chosen.

[Sidenote: _FENCING WILD LAND._]

The next thing was to find out the most open spaces, free from logs and

brush, and which could be plowed for oats and hay. Three such were soon

set apart, lying far distant from each other, and therefore giving

three distinct centers from which clearing should spread. Then the plow

was set to work to tear up the ferny ground, and what few logs there

were had to be cut in pieces and split for burning. Next came the

fencing. It takes five thousand rails, ten feet long and five or six

inches thick, to make a mile of snake-fence. A man can split from one

to two hundred rails a day, according to the soundness and straightness

of grain of the timber; and good hands will contract to saw the logs,

split the rails, and keep themselves the while, for about a dollar and

a quarter the hundred rails. The difficulty was, that not one in forty

of the fallen logs was sound, and the rail-splitters had to wander all

up and down the valley and far up the hill-sides to get the right

material. However, eleven thousand rails were provided and gradually

hauled to their places, and the fields and the intervening spaces of

wild lands all fenced in.

Meanwhile, as we were too far from a mill to haul lumber to any

advantage, we had to rely on the cedar, which splits more evenly and

easily than the fir; and some five thousand boards, six inches wide and

from four to six feet long, were got ready; while the timbers for the

house and barn were split from straight-grained, tough fir. Then came

the shingles, and a contract at two and a half dollars a thousand set

two excellent workmen going, and first fifty thousand and then twenty

thousand more were made on the spot. Then the house-building and

barn-raising went on merrily, though with constant grumbling at the

expense of time in preparing the rough materials, instead of having

ready-sawed lumber from the mill. We sent to the saw- and planing-mill,

fifteen miles away, for doors and windows, and one wagon brought in all

that were needed for a nine-roomed house, at a cost of just eighty

dollars; the doors and door-frames ready, and the windows duly glazed.

At last the house was barely habitable, and we moved in in patriarchal

procession.

We treated ourselves to one China boy to cook and wash. For his benefit

a cooking-stove was sent out, and set up in a handy kitchen, close to

but detached from the house. These China boys are well off for sense.

The wagon was heavily laden with stores, and the mules were struggling

up a muddy hill. "Get out, John, and walk," said the Scotch driver, and

John had to obey. Long before the top was reached, John got in again at

the rear, and scrambled back into his place. "Get out, John, I tell

you!" "Never mind, Kenzie; horsee no see me get in; they know no

better."

But a good deal of the cooking went on over a bright fire of logs down

on the ground in front of the house, where the tripod of sticks stood,

with the black kettle depending. For the children it was a continuous

picnic; two or three times a day they were bathing in the river; and

whenever they were not tending the fires, which were burning up the

logs and brushwood all the time, they were off, fishing down the creek.

There was abundant employment for every hour of the day, and a

comfortable assurance that the work once done was done for good; that

is, that each patch of ground cleared and sown was so much actual

visible gain.

[Sidenote: _LOG-BURNING._]

At night the scene was most picturesque--bright stars overhead, and

great fires going in twenty places, lighting up the whole valley with a

crimson radiance. Some of the huge trunks, fifty or sixty feet high,

were lighted by boring two auger-holes so as to meet a couple of feet

deep inside the tree; the fire would lay hold of the entire mass, and

cataracts of sparks burst out in unexpected places high up the stem,

pouring out in a fiery torrent at the top. And then, when the tree had

been burning for a day or more, it would fall with a heavy crash, and a

great spout of fire would start forth.

And then there were the berrying-parties. All the women and children

would start for the hills, and come back, their baskets laden with ripe

blackberries, and the crimson thimble-berries, and yellow

salmon-berries, and scarlet huckleberries, and later on with the black,

sweet sal-lals. And they filled their nut-bags and pockets with the

wild hazels.

If it rained too hard, and it did once or twice, the pocket-knives were

all in use, and candlesticks, and salt-cellars, and other trifles, were

cut out of the ever-useful cherry and crab-apple.

And the cattle had to be salted. This went on near the house, and in

the great corral, to get them to recognize their headquarters, a most

necessary knowledge for them before the winter set in. They were quick

to learn, and, after a time or two, a short excursion down the valley,

with a pocketful of salt, and the long-drawn cry of "Suck, su-uck,

su-u-uck," would bring a speedy gathering from distant hills and tall

patches of valley-fern, and a long procession would follow the caller

back to the corral.

These cattle, most of them mountain-bred, do tricks that would make a

valley-cow's hair stand on end. We got one fine young heifer into the

narrow branding-corral, to milk her. This was shut off from the large

corral by a fallen log five feet thick, which looked high enough to

keep the idea of scaling it out of any cow's mind. But I saw her make a

standing high jump on to the top of the log, and over, as neatly as the

best-trained hunter could possibly have done it, even if his rider had

the hardihood to put him at it.

Even while getting their own livelihood on the wild feed on the

mountain-sides, where you and I could see nothing but fern and

thimble-berry bushes, the cows grew fat and yielded abundance of milk,

and that very rich. And even through the rainy months of winter the

cattle have kept themselves fat and flourishing.

[Sidenote: _MESQUIT-GRASS ON THE HILLS._]

The work has now been going on nearly eleven months, and this is the

position to-day: The road is made. The house is built, but not quite

finished inside. The big barn is finished, with stable attached. The

orchard is cleared, plowed, planted with trees, which have now nearly a

year's growth, and is in part seeded down into permanent pasture; as to

the other part, it is in potatoes and onions. Two fields--one of four,

the other of eight acres--are cleared and plowed, and will be in oats

this spring. Another field, across the river, is cleared, but not yet

plowed. The garden round the house is prepared. Another field, near the

house, of about three acres, is cleared, plowed, and now being sowed

down in clover. Another clearing, of about two acres, on old beaver-dam

land by the river, is planted in cabbages in part, and the rest will be

in carrots and beets. About two hundred acres are fenced in for sheep,

and about ninety head are on it, helping out the brush-cutting by

eating the shoots. About fifteen hundred acres of hill-land were burned

and sowed down in mesquit-grass, which is now, at one year old, about

three inches high. Some forty head of cattle, chiefly cows and calves,

and a few two-year-olds, are in the valley and all doing well; the

steers were sold fat to the butcher in December last. The building work

has been done by one carpenter and an assistant, and he has had

occasional help in preparing boards. The doors and windows came from

the mill; and the timbers and boards were got out of the rough logs by

separate contract. The outside work has been done by three men, and an

occasional fourth. The place will support itself this year, if all goes

well, and next year should yield a fair profit. No doubt a more

experienced deviser, and more constant supervision, might have shown a

speedier profit. But I have given these details by way of example in

bringing wild land in, and making a "ranch" of it.

CHAPTER XI.

The Indians at home--The reservation--The Upper Farm--Log-cabins--

Women must work while men will play--The agency--The boarding-house

--Sunday on the reservation--Indian Sunday-school--Galeese Creek

Jem--The store--Indian farmers--As to the settlement of the Indians

--Suggestions--A crime--Its origin--Its history--The criminals--

What became of them--Indian teamsters--Numbers on the reservation

--The powers and duties of the agent--Special application.

At Rock Creek we are only ten miles from the Siletz Indian agency, and

I have paid many visits there, and have seen a good deal of the working

of the agency, and also know a good many of the Indians pretty well.

[Sidenote: _THE RESERVATION._]

First, as to the place itself. There is no question that on the

reservation is some of the best land in the country, and the most

easily improved. At some not very distant geological date, the valley

must have consisted of a series of lakes, connected by rivers. On the

sides of the hills are two clearly defined terraces, and the flat

bottoms, are not covered with heavy timber, either alive or dead. There

must have been one convulsion which let the waters out and reduced the

level to the lower terrace, and then a subsequent one which abolished

the lakes altogether, leaving the Siletz River for the water-course of

the whole district. Entering the reservation from the Rock Creek trail,

there is about six miles of rough and tangled country to get through,

where the hills are broken, and the river foams and breaks every now

and again over rocky ledges. The brush is thick along the river-banks,

and the thimble-berries grow so high and strong that, as you ride by,

you can pluck the berries from the level of your face.

Mounting a hill, which closes the gorge ahead of you, the whole valley

known as the Upper Farm lies before you. At this point Rock Creek joins

the Siletz itself, which here is a wide and rushing stream, and divides

the valley along its entire length into two unequal parts. The hills

fall back on either side of you and lose their broken forms, becoming

long slopes, draped thickly with the heavy brake-fern. Here and there

stand the houses of the Indians, each with its grain- and hay-fields;

while of cattle of all ages, and little groups of ponies, there is no

lack.

Except in one or two instances, the houses are log-cabins, and you miss

the staring white paint so common in this country. The barns also are

log-built.

There is not much show of neatness about the houses, fences, or the

inhabitants. As you ride along, you pass an old crone or two, with bare

feet, and ragged, dirty petticoats, each with a large basket on her

back, supported by a broad band across the forehead, in which she is

carrying home the potatoes she has been digging in the field.

Round one or two of the doors you see a group of lazy ones, men and

children, lying or squatting on the grass or in the dust of the bare

patch in front--the women you see through the open door at work inside

the house. The voices cease as you come in sight, but your salutation,

either in Chinook or English, is civilly returned, and a quick glance

takes in at once your personal appearance and that of your horse, and

every detail of your equipment. You see a few men at work in the

fields, but only a few. The men are better dressed than the women; torn

or ragged clothes are very rare, and nearly every man has a red or red

and yellow handkerchief loosely knotted round his head. Here come two

cantering after you on their ponies; one carries a rifle, and you

recognize him as one of the reservation Indian police. He asks you your

destination and business, and, as you are bound straight for the

agency, he lets you go on without a pass. They are bound to be strict,

and to see that unauthorized visitors do not enter, and, above all,

that no whisky comes within the reservation boundaries.

Four miles more along the road, nearly all the way through farms, or by

open pasture-fields, where grass and fern dispute possession, but all

through fine bottom-land, varying in width from one to two or three

miles across, brings you to the agency on the Middle Farm. What timber

is left standing are huge firs, splendid specimens of trees. Here is

the agency, the central spot of the reservation-life. The prominent

building there, two stories high, with overhanging eaves, spick and

span in new white paint and red shingles, is the boarding-house. Here

some forty or fifty Indian children of all ages are collected from the

outlying portions of the reservation, and are clothed, fed, and

trained; their actual teaching goes on in the adjoining school-house.

The low, gray house in the orchard, behind the boarding-house, is where

the agent lives; those other two white houses, each in its garden, are

inhabited by the farmer and the builder or head-carpenter and

millwright. In front of the boarding-house is a pretty, open

grass-field of six or seven acres; and that neat, white structure at

the lower corner of it is the store. The Indians' houses are dotted

round; the fields are better kept and cultivated than the Upper Farm;

there is a notable absence of loafers and stragglers round, and more

farming going on; several teams of horses are in sight.

[Sidenote: _INDIAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL._]

The agent receives us kindly, and shows us round everywhere with

interest in his work and its results. One Sunday I was there, and,

hearing the church-bell calling to service, went in. The Sabbath-school

was just beginning in the school-room behind the boarding-house. It was

a mixed assembly of all ages, some ninety or a hundred in all. The

women were better dressed, and the little children had been treated to

all the comforts and care in the way of dress their parents could

muster. There was a great variety of type apparent, for the remnants of

thirteen tribes of the coast and Klamath and Rogue River Indians are

collected on this reservation. Nearly all could speak a little, and

understand more, English--and I think we could have got on quite as

well without the help of the Indian interpreter, who turned our English

into fluent Chinook. This man, named Adams, is an excellent fellow,

well instructed, capable, civil, and, I believe, an earnest Christian

man. The agent asked me to take the Bible-class at the far end of the

room, and soon I was the center of the observant eyes of a dozen Indian

men of all ages. Certain of them were friends of mine. Old Galeese

Creek Jem, a little fellow about five feet high, with a broad face and

a pair of twinkling, laughing eyes, had brought us some salmon in Rock

Creek a few days before, and was under promise to bring us some more on

Monday. Two or three of the others always stopped for a chat as they

passed through. All of them, I noticed, were curious to see how King

George's man would act in this new capacity. I am bound to say that

they showed considerable knowledge and some reflection in the answers

they gave. Perhaps this is not to be wondered at, considering the

resolute efforts made now for several years past to instruct and

Christianize the Indians here.

At the store I found an excellent stock of all things that the Indians

need, and marked at prices which enabled them to lay their money out so

as to get its fullest value. The assistant told me that they were all

keen traders, and alive to minute differences in quality and texture of

their purchases.

[Sidenote: _SUGGESTIONS._]

The great majority of the men now heads of families on this

reservation, engaged in farming a little, and sufficiently instructed

in methods of labor to add considerably to their resources by working

during a part of the year for the outside farmers, who are very ready

to employ them, do not, I consider, either wish or require to be

treated any longer as children or wards of the United States

Government. In my judgment, the time has come to apply a far different

rule. Many to whom I have talked, and others whose opinions I have

gathered from trustworthy sources, desire earnestly to be relieved from

the restrictions and to abandon the privileges of their present

condition. If the lands they now farm, the houses they now dwell in,

could become their private property, I believe that they would support

themselves and their families in respectability. It may be desirable,

it probably is, to prevent their having now the power of free sale and

disposal of such lands, so as to guard them at the outset from

designing purchasers; but I believe the larger part by far would prize

earnestly their separate estate. Why should not an independent officer

have power to establish such families on homesteads of their own, on

sufficient evidence of character and capacity--such men ceasing

thenceforth to have claims for support on the agency as a whole, but

still entitled to all the common benefits of the school, the church,

and the store? The open land of the reservation would be diminished, of

course, but how could it be put to better purpose? I am persuaded that

the sight of their neighbors established on homes of their own would

operate as a strong stimulus to those growing up and entering on life,

to decent and orderly behavior. And as one district of a reservation

became thus settled up, I think the boundaries of the open land devoted

to general Indian purposes might be proportionately removed and

contracted.

Naturally, this plan would be of slow operation, but I think it would

be sure. I am aware of the powers given to Indians by the homestead act

to obtain land, but the plan differs in important respects from that

set out above.

The Indians on the Siletz reservation, of which alone I know anything

from personal observation, are not all of the desirable class to whom I

have referred. Some mistiness on the moral law yet remains. For

instance, a murder was committed by three of them a month or two ago.

It took place on the northern and remote part of the reserve, far away

from the agency itself.

Here lived one who, being a quack-doctor, claimed the character of a

mighty medicine-man, having power to prescribe for both the bodies and

souls of his patients. To him resorted many of his neighbors, whose

faith in his charms and spells was boundless.

He undertook the cure of the wife of one Charlie, and the poor thing

endured his remedies patiently. But the woman grew worse and worse.

Charlie and his friends debated the case, and at last concluded that,

if the medicine-man could not cure the woman according to his contract,

and that she died, it would prove to them that the doctor was a humbug,

and deserved to die the death.

The catastrophe arrived, for the woman died. A council was held, and

due inquiry made. The decision was fatal to the doctor, and Charlie and

two friends undertook to secure that no one else should be misled and

defrauded by the quack.

Proceeding to his house, away up north by Salmon River, near the

sea-coast, the three fell on the medicine-man with clubs, and, despite

threats, prayers, and entreaties, they beat him to death. The news soon

spread, and was carried to the ears of the agent.

I can not help confessing to a half sympathy with the murderers, though

I am fully aware of the enormity of the crime. It would be a

satisfaction to feel justified in conscience in calling for a bodily

expiation of the false pretenses and ignorant mummeries that did one's

wife to death. And I hear that the Indians in question, while

acknowledging that they knew they were sinning against the laws that

governed life on the reservation, yet evidently had no consciousness of

intrinsic wrong.