THE SAGE PLAINS OF OREGON 
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abundant is the blue-flowered hyacinth-like camas, Camassia 
esculenta, these formations are known as camas meadows. They 
cover from a few acres to many hundreds. By the middle of 
summer these meadows, drained by some creek or rivulet, are 
dried out, the fine black soil, extremel}'’ sticky when moist, gap- 
ing open in deep, ragged cracks and becoming so hard that an 
ordinary spade makes scarcely any impression upon it. A lump 
of it broken off with a pick and cut with a knife shows a smooth, 
shining surface very similar to that of pipe-clay. When the soil 
of a camas meadow reaches this stage of dryness, the vegetation 
ripens, the seeds and dormant bulbous underground parts carry- 
ing the plants over the remaining period of drought. 
As one descends from the open plains into the valley bottoms 
and approaches a lake or the sink of a stream, the soil becomes 
alkaline and the vegetation changes, the sage brush being fol- 
lowed by a somewhat similar hard-wood spiny shrub known as 
greasewood, Sarcohatiis vermiculatiis, and this, in turn, in case the 
alkaline valley bottom is dry, is succeeded by a hard-baked soil, 
absolutely devoid of vegetation. If the valley bottom is moist, 
the greasewood may be succeeded by a green carpet of salt grass, 
and this in turn by an incrustation of salt, often with a thin cov- 
ering of briny water or oozy alkaline mud in the center of it. If, 
as frequently happens, 'the water in one of these valley bottoms 
is nearly fresh, it supports a more luxuriant vegetation, and the 
dense line of salt grass may be followed by taller succulent marsh 
grasses, the area covering hundreds and sometimos even thou- 
sands of acres and furnishing an almost inexhaustible sup})ly of 
forage. In still wetter soil and surrounding the open water 
grows a line of tule, as it is called, a species of tall bulrush, 
known to botanists as Scirpus lacastris occidentalis. 
At the western base of Steins mountain, in a great groove 
formed on the east b}’’ the slo|)ing mountain base and on the 
west by an abruptly ended Uj)lift of the lava crust, lie a long 
succession of marshes or slews, as they are called, connected by 
allowing stream and covering prolaibly a hundred thousand 
acres. This land constitutes the principal part of an immense 
ranch, consisting of 180,000 acres of fenced land, for the most 
}>art well watered. Indeed it covers all the available water siij)- 
})1}' of the region and controls a several times greater area ol' arid 
grazing land l)elonging to the government. In the spring the 
cattle are driven out into the o|)en sage Inaisb, where they graze 
for several weeks upon the abundant spring vegetation. I.ater, 
