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Show 398 WESTERN WILDS. faint ; and from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot they were wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. At Canonville we ran out into the Umpqua Valley, at a point where the river comes in from the east and turns due north. After crossing we traveled the rest of the day down the east bank. Many clear and pretty streams dash down from the Cascade Range, cross our' road and empty into the Umpqua. The range bends in towards the coast, and hence none of these valleys are as wide as that of the Sacramento. Reaching Roseburgh at dark, we found that the Oregon and California Railroad had just been completed to that point, saving us eighteen miles of the staging we had expected. Next day was Sunday, and I can not recall a more pleasant Sabbath than this, which we spent in a slow ride down to Portland. Roseburgh is south of the " divide" and on the slope towards the Klamath; but the intermediate ridges are not so high as those behind us, and far more pleasant as seen from the inside of a car. Forty miles brought us fairly into the Willa-mette Valley, the largest body of good land in Oregon, containing nearly six thousand square miles. The soil is wonderful, being in many places from six to thirty feet in depth. The high Cascade Range shuts off all hard winter storms ; the lower Coast Range on the west only ad-mits the mildest airs of the Pacific ; the summers never get so dry or hot as in California ; all the rains are gentle, and destructive storms and freshets are unknown. The surprisingly slow development of such a region can only be accounted for by the method of settlement, the first comers getting title to nearly all the land. The new settlers eagerly seize on every chance for improvement, and are doing considerable ; but it is complained that these old fellows " hold on to the land like burrs, and die mighty slow." And from longer experience with the " first families," I am driven to the painful conclusion, that about a hundred first- class funerals would prove of great advantage to Oregon. In the lower portions of the valley the road traverses what are called " Beaver Lands." The theory of their origin is that the beavers, by damming up the shallow creeks and building their houses in them, caused the beds and adjacent low lands to overflow and fill with accumulations of earthy matter and decayed vegetable deposits. This must have been the work of many centuries, and has left ' a soil which only grows more fertile by cultivation. But these lands are found nowhere but in the Willamette Valley, and do not altogether exceed twenty thousand acres. I reached Portland at sunset of a beautiful sabbath evening not at |