Overton Johnson and William H. Winter

“ As it runs over the wide prospect, it peoples it with thousands and thousands of busy inhabitants, sees every plain checked with fields, and even the steep and rugged Mountain-side made to yield to the hand of the husbandman; every where houses, gardens, orchards, and vineyards, scattered in countless multitudes over hill and valley; flocks and herds feeding on every hand; the broad highways coursing the valley or winding away over the hills, thronged with a busy concourse, all moving hurriedly to and fro, engaged in the avocations of a civilized life ”

“ But, looking beyond the snow-capped barrier, which bounds the vision to the East, the mind labors in vain to read, from the character of such dreary regions, what will be the future destiny of those wilds and wastes. Long may the lover of romantic scenes and adventures, find in them an ample scope for all his inclinations. Long may the Poet and writer of fiction, undetected, rear there the fabricks of their dreams, and people the green mountain-girt Oases of those unexplored solitudes, with the gallant, lovely and happy creatures of their imaginations. ”

“ The scenery in Oregon is varied, romantic, picturesque, and grand. There is certainly nothing to equal it in North America, East of the Rocky Mountains; and, although much has been said of the beauty and grandeur of the scenery of Switzerland, we doubt if any thing can be there found to equal it; taking into view the rich, extensive, and flowery plains, surrounded by tall and heavy forests of ever-green, watered by many large and living streams, flowing sometimes smooth and gentle, then rapid and again precipitating, in broad and heavy. ”

“ During this performance of the Indians the Camp fires burning bright, lighted up the surrounding forest to a considerable distance, showing the tall green pines and leaving all beyond (though the moon was high) in deep, dense darkness, giving to the wild scene so wildly acted, in those far savage solitudes, additional wildness; so far surpassing what we commonly consider to belong to nature and reality, that one seemed to dream, and standing in Tartarian shades, to gaze upon the regions of the damned. ”

“ There were once, on the waters of the Columbia, the Willammette, and along the shores of the Ocean, powerful tribes, but pestilence and disease, since the coming of the white man, have swept them rapidly away, until but a few poor, wretched, degraded beings, beyond the reach of charity, remain. Once Chenamus, a proud, intelligent, and influential Chief of the Chenooks, held sway over all the tribes between the shores of the Pacific and the Cascades and between the Umpqua and Puget's Sound, and extended his influence beyond the Mountains. ”

“ But to conclude this portion of our subject by summing up, in short, the advantages and disadvantages which the Territory of Oregon possesses, in comparison with other countries, or rather, with portions of the United States. We suppose its principal advantages, for instance, over the Valley of the Mississippi, to be, in climate, in its situation for Commerce, in its water power, in its forest of gigantic trees, in the purity of its waters, and in the vastness and beauty of its scenery. In all of these it is certainly superior. ”

“ The morning had been fair, and we were moving slowly along through the middle of one of the wide prairies, without noticing the cloud which had been gathering in the North, until its thunders awoke us from our dreaming. The breeze, which before had scarcely stirred the grass upon the plain, grown into a gale, now soared over the hills. ”

“ Thirty-nine miles farther down, we saw, on the North side of the River, two very large Springs, bursting midway from the lofty precipices, rushing down like rivers, and foaming along over the piles of rock. They looked, at a distance, like banks of snow resting on the cliffs.
Seventeen miles below these Springs, are the Salmon Falls. These Falls are not perpendicular, except in one or two small shoots on the North side. The great body of the water runs down an inclination of not more than twenty-five feet in three hundred yards. ”

“ There is, we suppose, no portion of North America, East of that great dividing chain—the Rocky Mountains—similar to that on the West. The general features of the country, the climate, the soil, vegetation, all are different. Nature appears to have created there, upon a grander scale. The mountains are vast; the rivers are majestic; the vegetation is of a giant kind; the climate, in the same latitude, is much milder. The soil, generally, is inferior to that of the Western States. ”

“ New farms are being opened daily, and the cabin of the bold and enterprising pioneer may be seen rising on many a verdant hill, or nestled away in the quiet seclusion of many a flowery nook; and ere long the plow share and the axe promise to turn this wild and flowery wilderness into rustling fields and blooming gardens. ”

“ It is difficult to form a correct idea of a country from any description that can be given. Men are apt to expect too much—to draw their pictures too fair; they look to those wild and distant regions for something surpassing nature, and they are disappointed. The world contains now no Garden of Eden. There is no particular portion of the habitable globe that possesses advantages greatly superior to the rest. If one has a better climate, the other has a better soil ”

“ But to describe the climate of Oregon with the greatest exactness, in the fewest words, is, we think, to compare it to France; which, laying between precisely the same parallels of latitude, and occupying exactly the same position on the Eastern Continent that Oregon does on the Western, boasts a climate which has long since and universally been acknowledged one of the finest on the Globe. The situation of Oregon in regard to commerce every one who knows anything about the geography of the world is already acquainted with. ”

“ Away to the South the peering summits of some lofty chain are dimly drawn upon the sky. To the West you hear the distant Ocean's sullen roar, as its waves, with crash tremendous, break upon its rock-bound shores. ”

“ A wheeled carriage is seldom used by a Californian; a horse and rope answers his purpose. Often when he goes to any of the towns to purchase an article, he fastens his money—which is a bullock's hide—to one end of his lasso, and then mounting his horse, winds the other end around the horn of his saddle, and putting spurs, dashes off at a furious rate, over hill and plain, with or without a road, to the town. ”

“ Every thing was calculated to inspire the mind with feelings of no common kind. He, alone, who for the first time stands upon the deck of some tall ship, whose sails are spread before the breeze, and whose foaming prow looks steadily towards some distant clime, when for the first time he sees the loved shores of his native land sink into the wave, and the blue waters of the treacherous deep gather around him, may appreciate the sensations which awakened in our hearts when here we reflected upon where we were, and what we had undertaken: when the past ”

“ Imagination, peering into the far future, beholds enthroned upon an hundred heights, the lordly mansions of the opulent, surrounded with gardens, teeming with fruits and flowers; with parks and pools and groves of ornamental trees; and far up the sides of the surrounding mountains, the herdsmen's and the shepherd's humble cottages repose in sweet and solitary quiet, deep buried amid the mountain pines. ”

“ They love to witness combats between the Wild Bull and Grizzly Bear; for this purpose, a strong arena is formed with heavy palisades, and the animals are taken wherever they can be found, with the lasso, and dragged into the arena. By them, a Bull is taken, and managed without difficulty; but the Bear, with all their skill and horsemanship, is still a powerful opponent; yet, four or five of these Californians, mounted on their strongest horses, will even take this powerful and ferocious animal alive, and convey him several miles, in order to gratify their fondness for barbarous scenes. ”

“ Here, on our right, is a high range of Mountains extending North and South, and on our left, the Snowy Butte, a lofty isolated peak, rises from the bosom of eternal snow, and gives rise to the West branch of the Sacramento River, which we struck in ten miles after leaving the Clamuth Valley, and continued down it, frequently crossing and recrossing the stream. Fifteen miles below the point where we first struck this stream, we came to a Soda spring bursting out from the foot of a high hill, and running into a small basin formed by travelers or Indians for the convenience of drinking. ”

“ Although they were fortunate in finding their way through an unknown country, and still more so in preserving their lives from its brutal and hostile inhabitants, yet the lateness of the season, together with their entire ignorance of a great portion of the pathless wilds and precipitous mountains over which they had to pass, subjected them to numerous and serious hardships. At times when they saw no way to move forward an additional obstacle was opposed to their advancement by heavy falls of snow, greatly increasing, and at the same time concealing the dangers of their perilous way. ”

“ Continuing down the Valley on the West side we found, all along on the River, villages of Indians living in miserable huts made of poles, set on end in a circle on the ground, leaned together, fastened at the top, and covered with grass and dirt. We found those in the upper part of the Valley, entirely naked, and so wild that they fled from our approach into the thickets, leaving their villages and all their property behind them. ”

“ The few Cotton Wood and Willow trees which line the margins of some of the streams and rivers, and the Pines which grow at the base of the Mountains, are all the timber which the Valley affords. Where the soil along the streams and near the mountains is rich, the climate favors the production of wheat, rye, oats, etc., the common garden vegetables, and is supposed to be more congenial to the growth of Indian Corn than that of Western Oregon. ”

“ The Spirits of all of which things, according to their opinion, will be required for their comfort and subsistence when they themselves have come to be disembodied Spirits. They are in many respects very superstitious: one instance of which is shown in the removal of a large stone, which lay in the way of some men who were taking saw-logs into the River, a mile below Oregon City. The workmen were about to remove it, when they were forbidden by some of the Indians, and told that it was once a man, and if they removed it, the River would rise up to it. ”

“ In the Southern part of California irrigation is necessary to the production of wheat and garden vegetables, but in the North this is seldom the case, the late winter rains being sufficient to perfect the harvest. But a small portion of the Province is yet in cultivation, the Spaniards, who comprise the chief population, being engaged principally in rearing and herding cattle and horses, for which both the climate and country are peculiarly adapted. Many individuals own several thousand animals, which are kept in bands, and require only the attention of a herdsman. ”

“ We slept to dream of all that we loved and had left behind us, and awoke to know that they were far from us and that our home was the wild uncultivated field of nature, "whose walls the hills and forests were, whose canopy the sky." Having traveled up the Kanzas River 90 miles, we came, on the 30th of May, to where the Emigrants were crossing. We saw here the first village of Kanzas Indians. Their huts are made of poles and bark, and are about sixteen feet wide, by thirty long, and eight high. ”