Besides the above mentioned, there are numerous other valleys, all of which are well timbered and of unparalleled fertility.
No country in the world affords a better soil, or a more romantic scenery. The mountains bounding them rise in stately grandeur, oftentimes far above the clouds, to converse with the relentless snows of successive ages, now presenting their nude sides, paved with dark masses of frowning rocks, or proud forests of evergreen, verdant lawns, flowery dales, and sterile wastes, to overlook the perennial beauty and matchless fecundity at their feet, —while the lesser eminences with their deep ravines, o'erhanging cliffs, and shadowy recesses, tell the place where the storm-winds recruit their forces and the zephyrs creep in to die.
There are also large valleys, of equally fertile soil, upon the head waters of the Tlameth river, near the southern boundary, well worth the attention of emigrants.
The most interesting portion of the Western Division, however, is that bordering upon the Wallammette and its affluents. The valley of this river is one hundred and fifty miles long by thirty-five broad. The soil is a deep alluvion, of extraordinary fertility.
It is not only well watered, but well timbered, and produces all the vegetables, fruits, and grasses indigenous to the country, with astonishing profuseness. No region was ever better adapted to agricultural or grazing purposes.
The Fualitine Plains, adjoining this beautiful expanse of fertility upon the left, towards the Columbia, embrace an area of forty-five miles in length by fifteen in breadth, well watered and amply timbered, with a soil in all respects equal.
The Klackamus, Putin, Fualitine, Yamhill, and other rivers, are all of them skirted by beautiful and fertile valleys of greater or less extent, while the adjacent hills and prairies afford not only frequent forests of excellent timber, but generally a very good soil.
The landscape of this vicinity, though not, strictly speaking, hilly, is highly indulating, but quite productive in grass and herbage.
The Cawlitz river, which empties into the Columbia a short distance below the Wallammette, has several rich bottoms, and waters a large extent of country, admirably adapted to stock-raising and agriculture.
At the mouth of the Wallammette river is an island some fifteen miles in length by nearly the same distance in breadth, called Wappato; it is of a deep alluvial soil, formed from sedimentary deposites and decayed vegetable substances, and is very rich and densely timbered.
The country at the mouth of the Columbia and for some ten or fifteen miles interior, is sandy and sterile, —a fact much to be regretted, as from its peculiar locality this point must necessarily become the site of a vastly important commercial emporium, vying in population, splendor, and opulence, the time-grown cities of more eastern climes.
The stately forests of pine and fir, in the Western Division of Oregon, have for a long time challenged the admiration of the world, and it is strongly doubted whether the chosen veterans of foreign woods can produce a rival to some few specimens of the proud giants of its soil.
These not unfrequently tower to a height of two hundred feet, and even
