integration of the basalt and refinement of the other volcanic matter poured out over this country in the distant ages. One may still discover evidences that it was at one time a sea-bed; that later it was ground by monstrous icebergs; and that later still it was overflowed with lava. Here stalked the mammoth beside lakes now dried up, whose sands yet sepulchre his bones, with those of other extinct animals. It is a country full of wonders, which should never be heedlessly passed over, but should be the favorite study-ground of science.
East Oregon contains fifty-eight thousand square miles, and is divided into counties, fourteen in number, which often comprise the valley of a river. Union County, for instance, occupies the Grand Rond Valley, a circular grassy plain, long celebrated for its beauty and fertility. Here, in the early times of overland immigration by wagons, the traveller found food for cattle and rest for himself in these delightful meadows, after the long, exhausting march over the hot, sterile sands of Snake River. This valley is thirty miles in diameter, well watered, and very productive in all the cereals, fruits, and vegetables of the temperate zone. A considerable amount of the land is subject to overflow, which makes it greatly esteemed as grass-producing. Timber is also conveniently near on the encircling mountains, where mills are working up the fir, pine, spruce, and tamarack forest into lumber.
Union City, the county-seat, was settled in 1862 during the mining excitement in East Oregon and Idaho, but is not now as large as it was at that period. La Grande is the principal town, with two thousand inhabitants. It also dates back to the sixties; but when the O. R. and N. Railroad approached to within a mile without touching it, the sleepy old town arose and shook itself, and removed its business houses to the line of the railroad, where its growth finally reunited it to the older portion. There are a dozen saw-mills within a few miles of the town, the lumber being floated down by means of flumes to the shipping points, this method being found to be more economical and safer than driving down the logs to be sawed here, although in some localities this can be done. A part of the car-shops of the O. R. and N. Company have been removed from The Dalles to La Grande. A sash-and-door-factory, a creamery, two brick kilns,
