natural beauties and advantages of superior climate, excellent water, rich prairies, and fine forest. It is being rapidly taken up by dairymen, fruit-farmers, and others. Fine water-power may be obtained in numerous places, owing to the rapid fall of the streams coming out of the mountains. A glance at the map will show the three principal forks of the Wallamet converging towards Eugene, each of which has tributaries with small lateral valleys that contain very choice tracts of land.
The amphitheatre of mountains, running down into the valley in long slopes and ridges, furnishes it with superior facilities for a great variety of manufactures which depend on wood, water, stone, and like materials. When these are to be found, together with a variety of good soils adapted to all branches of farming, there can be no doubt of the future of such a country. From every side the riches of these hills will glide down into the lap of that city.
CHAPTER IX.
FURTHER REMARKS ON WEST OREGON.
The Wallamet prairies are not an uninterrupted level like those of Illinois. In some parts they resemble the "oak openings" of Michigan; in other parts the plains are quite extensive, but nowhere are we out of sight of large bodies of timber on the mountains, or the groves that fringe the rivers. Ranges of hills and isolated buttes occur frequently enough to save the landscape from monotony, and furnish variety of soil as well.
The first thought in viewing West Oregon is that it must be a country of perennial verdure,—a country of exhaustless food resources for cattle. Such is not the fact, however, owing to the absence of rain during about four months of the year, when the grass is dried up. For this reason it cannot furnish fresh pasturage later than the first of July, until the rains begin in October or November, when the chilly weather makes cattle poor, although grass is abundant. Time was when the Wallamet Valley waved in early summer with luxuriant native grasses, red and white clover, and many beautiful flowering plants. Cattle might wallow through grass breast-high on the prairies,
