Expedition to Oregon Desert 155 



day brought our supplies, and loaded them into Mr. 

 Duncan's wagon. Then taking him with us for 

 guide, we started on our long drive to the boneyard, 

 fifty-six miles through the great sage-brush desert 

 of eastern Oregon. 



On we journeyed, through what seemed an inter- 

 minable expanse of sage-brush, greasewood, and 

 sand. The bunches of sage-brush topped conical 

 mounds of sand, whose sides were scoured and 

 polished by the winds that howled in and out 

 through the labyrinth of hills, laden with drifting 

 sand. If one could have gained an elevation above 

 the level of these sandhills, and looked out over the 

 landscape, one would have gazed upon a scene of 

 even greater desolation than that afforded by the 

 parched short-grass plains of western Kansas, a 

 dreary, monotonous waste of olive green, stretching 

 away north, east, and south, as far as the eye could 

 reach, and shut in on the west by the great ranges of 

 the Sierras, whose flanks, dark below the timber 

 line with heavy forests, were deeply scarred above 

 with glistening white glaciers. 



We followed the California road to Oregon, for 

 in those days Oregon was practically an unknown 

 territory, with the exception of the Willamette Val- 

 ley. And I suppose that it is still so, for that moist, 

 fertile valley differs as widely from the vast semi- 

 desert east of the Cascade Range as the Santa Clara 



