The Shoshone Island. 85 



ers the bottom of such places and accumulates 

 there. 



That the mass of this ooze keeps increas- 

 ing with time needs no argument, and that 

 the increasing weight of continued accumu- 

 lation slowly presses the lower portion into 

 various stages of solidity is only a question 

 of time and gravitation. 



Such a natural process of growth of lake 

 sediments must have occurred in the deep 

 lakes of Eastern Oregon in those early Ter- 

 tiary times. Can we find them and verify 

 them in that region to-day? 



At a point sixty miles south of the Colum- 

 bia river and about forty east of the Des- 

 Chutes, on the old road to Canyon City, the 

 road gradually ascends from Antelope valley 

 to Cold camp, and from Cold camp to Kern 

 Creek hill, from whose ridge, looking east- 

 ward, a wonderful panorama opens to one's 

 view. It is the region known to the old min- 

 ers as the Potato Hills. Our Kern Creek hill 

 is simply the elevated shore line of an old 

 lake bed fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred 



