175 [ 174 J 
Leading for 5 miles up a broad dry branch of the Malheurs river, the 
road entered a sandy hollow, where the surface was rendered firm by the 
admixture of other rock ; being good and level until arriving near the head 
of the ravine, where it became a little rocky, and we met with a number of 
sight bringing with them the two animals. They belonged to a pa : 
which had been on a buffalo hunt in the neighborhood of the Rocky moun-, 
tains, and were hurrying home in advance. We presented them with 
some tobacco, and other things, with which they appeared well satished, 
and, moderating their pace, travelled in company with us. 
e were now about to leave the valley of the great southern branch of 
the Columbia river, to which the absence of timber, and the searcity of 
water, give the appearance of a desert, to enter a mountainous region where 
the soil is good, and in which the face of the country is covered with nutri- 
tious grasses and dense forest—land embracing many varieties of trees pe- 
culiar to the country, and on which the timber exhibits a luxuriance of 
growth unknown to the eastern part of the continent and to Europe. This 
mountainous region connects itself in the southward and westward with 
the elevated country belonging to the Caseade or California range ; and, 
as will be remarked in the course of the narrative, forms the eastern limit of 
the fertile and timbered lands along the desert and mountainous region in- 
cluded within the Great Basin—a term which I apply to the intermediate 
region between the Rocky mountains and the next range, containing — 
lakes, with their own system of rivers and ereeks, (of which the Great Salt- 
is the principal, ) and which have no connexion with the ocean, or the great 
rivers which flow into it. This Great Basin is yet to be adequately explored. 
And here, on quitting the banks of a sterile river, to enter on arable moun- 
tains, the remark may be made, that, on this western slope of our continent, 
* 
