is seldom severely cold. The mercury in Fahrenheit's scale sinks a few days only, as low as ten or twelve degrees below zero.
That part of Oregon bounded on the north by Shmillamen River,[54] and on the east by Oakanagan and Columbia Rivers, south by the Columbia, and west by the President's Range, is a broken plain, partially covered with the short and bunch grasses; but so destitute of water, that a small portion only of it, can ever be depastured. The eastern and middle portions of it are destitute of timber—a mere sunburnt waste. The northern part has a few wooded hills and streams, and prairie valleys. Among the lower hills of the President's Range, too, there are considerable pine and fir forests; and rather extensive prairies, watered by small mountain streams; but nearly all of the whole surface of this part of Oregon, is a worthless desert.
The tract bounded north by the Columbia, east by the Blue Mountains, south by the forty-second parallel of north latitude, and west by the President's Range, is a plain of vast rolls or swells, of a light, yellowish, sandy clay, partially covered with the short and bunch grasses, mixed with the prickly {241} pear and wild wormwood. But water is so very scarce, that it can never be generally fed; unless, indeed, as some travellers, in their praises of this region, seem to suppose, the animals that usually live by eating and drinking, should be able to dispense with the latter, in a climate where nine months in the year, not a particle of rain or dew falls, to moisten a soil as dry and loose as a heap of ashes. On the banks of the Luhon, John Days, Umatalla, and Wallawalla Rivers[55]
