INDIAN SALMON-TRAPS. 229 bringing valuable dogs with them will have to keep them tied up, or else may expect to lose them, as I have unfortunately experienced. The repugnance of the white man to the dark and spotted salmon is not shared by the Indians. They had a salmon-camp on Big Elk, the chief tributary of the Yaquina, last year, which I went to see. The river runs between steep hills, covered with the usual brush, and with a narrow trail cut through along the edge of the water. The tide runs up for about four miles above the junction with the Yaquina, and there, in a wide pool into which the little river fell over a ridge of rocks, hardly to be called a fall, the Indians had their dam and traps. Just below the fall they had planted a row of willow and hazel stakes in the bed of the stream close together and tied with withes. In the center was an opening a little lane of stakes leading into a pocket some six feet wide. The Indian women sat out on the rock by the side of the pocket with dip-nets and ladled out the salmon, which had been beguiled by their instinct of pushing always up the stream into entering the fatal inclosure. The Indian tyhees or shelters were on the bank close by-miserable hovels made of boughs, and some old boards they had carried up-and hung round with torn and dirty blankets to keep in the smoke. Poles were set across and across, and from these hung the sides and bellies of the salmon, while a little fire of damp wood and grass was kept constantly replenished in the middle of the floor, by a wretched-looking crone who squatted close by. When we got there, a younger woman was opening and splitting the salmon just caught, pressing the eggs into a great osier basket, where they looked exactly like a pile of red currants. She gave us a handful of eggs for trout-bait; as every one knows, the most deadly and poaching lure for that fish. And we found the benefit of them that same evening at Elk City, four miles below, where the salmon-trout crowd almost in shoals to be caught. CHAPTER XX. Eastern Oregon-Going 66 east of the mountains "-Its attractions-Encroaching sheep-First experiments in agriculture and plantingGeneral description of Eastern Oregon-Boundaries-Alkaline plains -Their productions-The valleys-Powder River Valley-Description--The Snake River and its tributaries-The Malheur ValleyHarney Lake Valley-Its size-Productions-Wild grasses-Haymaking-The winters in Eastern Oregon-Wagon-roads - Prineville-Silver Creek-Grindstone Creek Valley - Crooked RiverSettlers' descriptions and experiences-Ascent of the Cascades going west-Eastern Oregon towns-Baker City-Prineville - Warnings to settlers-Growing wheat for the railroads to carry. WHILE Western Oregon and the Willamette Valley in particular have been settled up, the valleys, plains, and hill-sides of Eastern Oregon are only just now beginning to attract population. But the reports of that country have spread far and wide through the valley, and half the young men are burning to try their fortunes "east of the mountains." When a youngster has been brought up in a wide valley, the eastern sky-line of which has been marked out, from his very infancy, by a line of rugged hills, over which the snow-peaks tower; when he has been used to see the mountains stand out clear and majestic, rosy in the glow of the setting sun, and then putting on their winter garments of purity, and shining cold in the clear moonlight of the winter nights; when he has watched them disappear as the mists of the autumn rains filled the valley, to be hidden for weeks from his |