Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/159

CORRESPONDENCE 147 to three or four miles in breadth, with a rich deep soil, which extends to the tops of the highest hills. This country lies con- tiguous to the gold mines and is settling with astonishing rap- idity. Below the Coast Range, on the River bearing the name of the valley above, a commercial town is springing up by the name of Scottsburg. 302 In all this country there is but one Baptist and one Methodist minister. As the traveler proceeds south from this valley he passes through a narrow defile of another transverse range of mountains ten or twelve miles. This pass is called the Canon (pronounced kenyon) 303 and opens into the Rogue River Valley. This is surrounded by some of the richest gold diggings in the whole gold region of California andi Oregon, and is said to contain nearly as much farming land as the Umpqua Valley. In this valley already 2000 or 3000 souls have taken up their residence ; among this number two or three families of the first respectability are known to be Baptists. Here the Methodists have established a circuit occupied by two traveling preachers. Two years ago not a white man was found in all this valley. From this to the California line is a mining country, interspersed with some good land. Along the coast, south of the Columbia and west of the Coast Range, are numerous streams emptying into the ocean, on several of which are fine bodies of land, large enough to form small counties, generally lying about fine bays whose entrances are sufficiently large to admit brigs and schooners to enter with safety. These streams furnish a vast amount of water power and are skirted with immense forests of the best fir and spruce in Oregon. At the mouths of these streams settlements are being made such as Port Orford, the mouth of the Umpqua and Tillamook. But not a single gospel minister has ever visited one of these places since their settlement. Let us now take a brief view of that portion of country formerly embraced in Oregon situated north of the Columbia 302 See note 277. 303 This is the present Cow Creek Canyon.