26 GEOGRAPHY OF OREGON. 



canic formation; and it must contain active volcanoes, as there are no 

 other means of accounting for the showers of ashes which occasionally 

 fall in many parts of Oregon, particularly in the vicinity of Mount St. 

 Helen's. The latest of these supposed eruptions took place in 1834. 



The country between the Pacific coast and this westernmost chain 

 consists, like the part of California similarly situated, of ranges of lower 

 mountains, separated by narrow valleys, generally running parallel to the 

 great chain, and to the coast. Its superficial extent may be estimated at 

 about forty-five thousand square miles,* of which a small proportion only, 

 not exceeding an eighth, is fit for cultivation. The climate, like that of 

 California, is warm and dry in summer ; very little rain falling between 

 April and November, though it is violent, and almost constant, during the 

 remainder of the year. Snow is rarely seen in the valleys, in which the 

 ground frequently continues soft and unfrozen throughout the winter. 

 The soil, in some of these valleys, is said to be excellent for wheat, rye, 

 oats, peas, potatoes, and apples; fifteen bushels of wheat being sometimes 

 yielded by a single acre. Indian corn, which requires both heat and 

 moisture, does not succeed in any part of Oregon. Hogs live and mul- 

 tiply in the woods, where an abundance of acorns is to be found ; the 

 cattle also increase, and it is not generally necessary for them to be 

 housed or fed in the winter. The hills and the flanks of the great moun- 

 tains are covered with timber, which grows to an immense size. A fir, 

 near Astoria, measured forty-six feet in circumference at ten feet from the 

 earth ; the length of its trunk, before giving off a branch, was one hun- 

 dred and fifty-three feet, and its whole height not less than three hundred 

 feet. Another tree, of the same species, on the banks of the Umqua 

 River, is fifty-seven feet in girth of trunk, and two hundred and sixteen 

 feet in length below its branches. " Prime sound pines," says Cox, 

 " from two hundred to two hundred and eighty feet in height, and from 

 twenty to forty feet in circumference, are by no means uncommon." The 

 land on which these large trees grow is good ; but the labor of clearing 

 it would be such as to prevent any one from undertaking the task, until 

 all the other spots, capable of cultivation, should have been occupied. 

 From the peculiarities of climate above mentioned, it is probable that this 

 country cannot be rendered very productive without artificial irrigation, 

 which appears to be practicable only in a few places ; and that conse- 

 quently the progress of settlement in it will be much slower than in the 

 Atlantic regions of the continent, where this want of moisture does not 

 exist. 



About one hundred and fifty miles east of the Far-West Mountains is 

 another chain, called the Blue Mountains, stretching from the Snowy 

 Mountains northward to the 47th degree of latitude, and forming the 



* The Strait of Fuca, which bounds this region on the north, is in latitude of 48.J 

 degrees ; and, assuming the 42d parallel as the southern limit of the territory, its 

 extreme length is 6£ degrees, or less than four hundred and fifty miles English. Its 

 breadth — that is, the distance between the Pacific shore and the great chain of 

 mountains which forms the eastern boundary of this region — does not average 

 a hundred miles ; and, by multiplying these two numbers, forty-five thousand square 

 English miles appears as the superficial extent of the westernmost region of Oregon. 

 It has, however, been gravely asserted and repeated on the floor of the Congress of 

 the United States, that the valley of the Willamet, which is but an inconsiderable 

 portion of this region, contains not less than sixty thousand square miles of the finest 

 land ; and many other assertions, equally extravagant, have been made, and are be- 

 lieved, respecting the vast extent of land in the country of the Columbia, superior in 

 quality to any in the United States. 



