628 OREGON. 
south, to the Kooskooski. On the Spokane, sixty miles south of 
Colville, they again met with granite, and this seemed to be the rock 
of the hills to the eastward. But with this exception, they found no- 
thing but basaltic rocks along the whole route to the Snake River. 
The party returning to Nisqually followed the Eyakema River, a 
small western branch of the Columbia, and found basalt, basaltic lavas, 
and basaltic conglomerate the prevailing rocks. 
I have seen specimens from the north, of garnet in trapezohedral 
erystals two-thirds of an inch in diameter, of pyrites in cubes, chal- 
cedony, opal, kyanite, graphite, oxyds of manganese and iron, besides 
different varieties of granite, serpentine of light and dark shades, calc 
spar, argillite, and compact and porphyritic basalt. But the parti- 
cular localities of the specimens, beyond the statement that they were 
from the Northwest Coast and New Caledonia, were not given. ‘The 
Salmon River region is described by Mr. Parker* as containing hori- 
zontal sandstone and shale of various colours, with rock salt, besides 
basaltic and granitic rocks. 
The country from Nisqually to the Chekelis, and thence to the 
coast, was traversed by Mr. Eld, who remarks that there were bluffs 
of a soft sandstone and crumbling clay on the banks of the river, and 
in many places along the route. Boulders of granite also were ob- 
served by him on the Chekelis, some of which were four and five feet 
in diameter. 
On the tour to California, basaltic rocks were met with along the 
Willammet nearly to the settlement, a distance of thirty miles. At 
the Willammet Falls, the rock is a cellular lava, in some parts nearly 
scoriaceous. Over the plains and rolling prairies to the Elk Moun- 
tains, the tertiary sandstone and shale are intermingled, as near Asto- 
ria, and the same rock constituted these mountains at the pass, and 
the country onward to Elk River. Basaltic hills were distinguished 
not far distant on our left, and a line of basaltic rocks crossed this 
river just above our place of encampment. Beyond the Elk to the 
Umpqua, basalt and tertiary sandstone were passed in alternate hills, 
till we reached the latter river. 
At this place commenced the first of the granitic series of rocks met 
with by us. ‘Talcose rock is largely developed, and is the surface 
rock through the greater part of the way to the Umpqua Mountains. 
A considerable region of an older secondary conglomerate—a siliceous 
* Parker’s Exploring Tour beyond the Rocky Mountains, Ithaca, New York, 1 vol. 
12mo. 1838. pp. 105, 108, 109. 
