westwardly from them to the Saptin the country is dry and worthless.
The part of Oregon lying between the Straits de Fuca on the north, the President's Range on the east, the Columbia on the south, and the ocean on the west, is thickly covered with pines, cedars, and firs of extraordinary size; and beneath these, a growth of brush and brambles which defies the most vigorous foot to penetrate. Along the banks of the Columbia, indeed, strips {243} of prairie may be met with, varying from a few rods to three miles in width, and often several miles in length; and even amidst the forests are found a few open spaces.
The banks of the Cowelitz, too, are denuded of timber for forty miles; and around the Straits de Fuca and Puget's Sound, are large tracts of open country.[57] But the whole tract lying within the boundaries just defined, is of little value except for its timber. The forests are so heavy and so matted with brambles, as to require the arm of a Hercules to clear a farm of one hundred acres in an ordinary life-time; and the mass of timber is so great that an attempt to subdue it by girdling would result in the production of another forest before the ground could be disencumbered of what was thus killed. The small prairies among the woods are covered with wild grasses, and are useful as pastures.
The soil of these, like that of the timbered portions, is a vegetable mould, eight or ten inches in thickness, resting on a stratum of hard blue clay and gravel. The valley of the Cowelitz is poor—the soil, thin, loose, and much washed, can be used as pasture grounds for thirty miles up the stream. At about that distance some tracts {244} of fine land occur. The prairies on the banks of
