396 
THE SAGE PLAINS OF OREGON 
Bitterroot mountains from the east in the summer of 1805 and 
traveled laboriously across the plains and then down the valley 
of the Columbia to the ocean. The subsequent history of eastern 
Oregon may he divided into the period of occupation by the 
Hudson’s Bay Company and other fur-dealing organizations, 
then the ])eriod of gold-mining excitement, and finally the j^eriod 
of agricultural settlement, beginning with the Grand Ronde and 
stretching out to other le.ss attractive localities. 
Two decades ago the plains of eastern Oregon, soiith of the 
Blue mountains, were practically an unsettled region. It was 
then generally recognized that the country was capalde of pro- 
ducing a good quality of beef in enormous amounts, and the 
available land was rapidly taken up, chierty under homestead 
entries, so that now there remains little land worth entering. 
The country, however, is still very sparsely settled. Perhai)s the 
most suggestive fact about the whole region is that no point in 
the United States lies further from a railroad than the center of 
this plain. Even the great desert from Death valley eastward 
across southern Nevada and Utah is more deeply penetrated by 
railroad lines than is this great wilderness of eastern Oregon. 
Traveling southward from the Dalles to the southern part of the 
state and then eastward into Idaho one can go more than a 
thousand miles without cro.ssing a railroad track, although no 
point is more tlian about 160 miles in a direct line from some 
railroad connection. 
In the }'ear 1893 the Division of Botau}^ in the Department of 
Agriculture began to make a comprehensive examination of the 
vegetation of these ifiains, beginning with the Columbia plains 
proper, in the state of Washington. In 1894 this work ^tas con- 
tinued southward across the Columbia through the neck of the 
dumb-bell and down nearly to the southern boundary of the 
state of Oregon. In 1895 the work was interrupted for more 
urgent exi)lorations in the Coeur d’Alene mountains, but in 1896 
it was again taken up and the remainder of the Oregon plains 
was covered. The collections made in these three years, though 
not confined entirely to the plains region, but including also 
some of the adjacent forested mountain country, contained not 
far from 1,800 species, and it is probable that the plains them- 
selves, as distinguished from the forests upon the surrounding 
mountains, contain not less than 1,000. 
This year the route followed was from the town of Ontario, on 
the Snake river, westward to Harney, from which place a side 
