98 WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 



situated in the midst of protecting sagebrush 

 plains that stretch from the foothills of the Cas- 

 cades eastward to the canon of the Snake River at 

 the foot of the Rockies in Idaho. 



Separated thus by the deserts from any close 

 encroachment, saved to itself by its own vast size 

 and undrainable, unusable bottoms, and guarded 

 by its Federal warden and the scattered ranchers 

 who begin to see its meaning. Lake Malheur 

 Reservation must supply water-fowl enough to 

 restock forever the whole Pacific slope. 



For here in the marsh of burr reed and tule, 

 the wild fowl breed as in former times when only 

 the canoe of the Indian plied the lake's shallow 

 waters, when only the wolf and the coyote prowled 

 about its wide, sedgy shores. I saw the coyote still 

 slinking through the sage and salt grass along its 

 borders; I picked up the black obsidian arrow- 

 heads in the crusty sand on the edge of the sage 

 plain ; and in a canoe I slipped through the green- 

 walled channels of the Blitzen River out into the 

 sea of tule islands amid such a flapping, splashing, 

 clacking, honking multitude as must have risen 

 from the water when the red man's paddle first 

 broke its even surface. 



