622 OREGON. 
account of its harbour privileges and its connexion with extensive in- 
ternal waters to the north. But its lands are described by the officers 
of the Expedition who were over that district as generally poor, 
being dry and pebbly, and requiring abundant rains to render them 7 
productive.* 
Umpqua District to California.—On a land tour from the Columbia 
River to San Francisco, in California, a distance, as travelled by us, of 
about seven hundred and fifty miles, we left the Willammet district near 
latitude 44°, and on the way south traversed the valleys of the Ump- 
qua and Clammat rivers, and thence entered the Shasty Mountains 
to the head waters of the Sacramento, which river we followed down 
to its mouth. 
Between the Elk Mountains and the north fork of the Umpqua, a 
breadth of thirty miles, there is a succession of hilly and level prairie 
quite equal to the Willammet, though the variations in the soil are 
more frequent and abrupt. Sandstone hills often alternate with 
basaltic, and substitute a dry, harsh soil, for the dark reddish-brown 
loam of the basalt; and the subjacent rocks are at once distinguished 
by the colour of the earth above them. Beyond the Umpqua, the 
plains are of small extent, and the country is in general covered with 
a harsh gravelly soil. The hills are more abrupt, indicating a change 
in their geological constitution ; and though still grassy, the silico-tal- 
cose rocks that compose them often project in jagged points. 
Fifty miles south of Elk Mountain we left the Umpqua region by 
crossing the Umpqua Mountains—a most disorderly collection of high 
precipitous ridges and deep secluded valleys enveloped in forests. We 
estimated their height at twenty-four hundred feet. After travelling 
forty miles over an uninviting region, the latter part dry and sandy, 
we crossed the Shasty River, and continued through an unproductive 
country to a range of hills about fifteen hundred feet in height. 
Crossing this ridge, (named by us the Boundary Range, as it was 
near latitude 42°,) we entered upon an undulating region abounding 
in gravel and little else, and thence passed to the plains of the 
Clammat. 
The Clammat is a fine river, about one hundred yards wide, where 
forded by the party, thirty miles from the sea. Beyond this river, 
the hills and plains for forty miles contained some arable spots; but 
* The Cowlitz and Nisqually districts are particularly described by Captain Wilkes in 
his Narrative of the Expedition, and we refer to that work for an account of them. They 
were not visited by the writer. 
