Two Years in Oregon Part 18

The growth of the business has been marvelous. The following table shows the canning of the Columbia River salmon during the ten years ending with 1880:

Year. Cases. Year. Cases.

1871 35,000 1876 429,000 1872 44,000 1877 393,000 1873 103,000 1878 412,924 1874 244,000 1879 440,000 1875 291,000 1880 540,000

Each case contains four dozen tins of one pound each, or two dozen of two pounds.

The total output of the Pacific coast for 1880 is estimated at 680,000 cases.

[Sidenote: _SALMON._]

Besides the Columbia River, which is the main source of supply, other Oregon rivers are laid under tribute. The Rogue River, the Alsea, Umpqua, Coquille, Nehalem, Siletz, and Yaquina Rivers are all salmon-yielding streams. The system followed is generally known. The proprietor erects his cannery on the edge of the river, generally on piles driven into the mud. The cannery consists of a large warehouse for laying out the fresh salmon as soon as caught. Next comes a building fitted with large knives for cutting up the salmon into the proper length for canning, and boilers in which the cans or tins are boiled. Then come the packing and storing houses. That the undertaking need be on a large scale may be judged from the fact that they may have to deal with three or four thousand salmon at a time, as the produce of one night's take, and these salmon averaging twenty-five pounds in weight.

The canneries make their own tins, one man, by the aid of ingenious machinery, putting together fifteen hundred tins in a day.

The boats and nets belong to the cannery. The fishermen are paid by the fish they bring in: one third belongs to the cannery in right of boat and nets; the other two thirds are bought from the fishermen at fifty cents a fish.

The importance to Oregon of the trade is shown by the proceeds for the year ending August 1, 1879, from the 412,924 cases exported being $1,863,069.

The tin for the salmon, and also for the canned beef which is prepared in several of the canneries, is all imported. The imports for 1879 amounted to 54,520 boxes, costing from $8 to $9 a box.

The number of salmon ascending some of these streams to sp.a.w.n is almost incredible.

Both the Siletz and the Yaquina Rivers yield two kinds: one a heavy, thick-shouldered, red-tinged, hooknosed fellow, which is never eaten by white men when it has pa.s.sed up out of tidal waters; the other a slim, graceful, bright-scaled fish, known as the silver salmon. Of this last there are two runs in the year: one in April and May, the other in October and November.

The heavy, red salmon runs in the fall of the year, from August to November, and the heads of all the streams, even to the little brooks among the mountains, are filled with ugly, dark, yellow-and-white spotted fish pushing their way upward, until I have seen five huge fish in a tiny pool too shallow to cover their back-fins. Some get back to the ocean with the autumn floods; the majority are left dying, or dead, on the gravel or along the edges of the streams. Here they are deadly poison to dogs, and to wolves also. It is almost impossible to keep dogs of mature age in the coast district; sooner or later they are almost sure to get "salmoned," and to die.

The only way is to allow the puppies free run at the salmon: two out of three will die; the survivor, having pa.s.sed the ordeal, will be salmon-proof and live to his full age.

The symptoms of salmon-poisoning are refusal of food, staring coat, running at the eyes, dry and feverish nose, absolute stoppage of digestion, followed by death in about three days after the first appearance of poisoning.

All sorts of remedies have been unsuccessfully tried. A young dog may battle through, if dosed with Epsom salts as soon as his state is observed; for an old dog, I can find nothing of avail. Castor-oil, large doses of mustard, shot in quant.i.ties forced down the throat, calomel, aloes, blackberry-tea--all of these I have heard of, but have not the slightest faith in any one.

Therefore, any new-comers into the coast country bringing valuable dogs with them will have to keep them tied up, or else may expect to lose them, as I have unfortunately experienced.

[Sidenote: _INDIAN SALMON-TRAPS._]

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 gra.s.s was kept constantly replenished in the middle of the floor, by a wretched-looking crone who squatted close by.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Newport Pier, 1879.]

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 "east of the mountains"--Its attractions-- Encroaching sheep--First experiments in agriculture and planting --General description of Eastern Oregon--Boundaries--Alkaline plains--Their productions--The valleys--Powder River Valley-- Description--The Snake River and its tributaries--The Malheur Valley--Harney Lake Valley--Its size--Productions--Wild gra.s.ses --Hay-making--The winters in Eastern Oregon--Wagon-roads--Prineville --Silver Creek--Grindstone Creek Valley--Crooked River--Settlers'

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 gaze, and then suddenly revealed as the drying and vigorous west wind dispelled the veil which the warm south wind had only served to thicken--I can sympathize with the longing felt, even if unexpressed, to climb this barrier and find if there be in verity a Canaan beyond.

And then, until lately at all events, to the young and bold there was a strong attraction in the life on horseback, in the gallop after the straggling cattle over those rolling plains; in the bachelor life of freedom, where home was just where night found him, and where his comrades had made their fire and picketed their horses; and, though last not least, where the wealthy stockmen had started from the exact point where he stood, their capital good health, readiness to rough it, and a determination to get on.

But a few years ago this was what life east of the mountains meant.

Then men found that sheep paid better than cattle; and the sheep-herder, with his band of merinos, took possession of the rocky hill-sides, on which the thick bunch-gra.s.s was already beginning to fail to hold its first vigor and abundance, and his peaceful but not unresisted invasion pushed the cattle-men farther into the wilderness.

The loathing and contempt of the stockmen for these encroaching sheep!

Some of them actually encouraged, and refused to permit the slaughter of, the prairie-wolves, which did not molest the cattle, but waged war on the flocks. But the tide would not be turned back, and mile after mile the sheep pushed on.

The bunch-gra.s.s which the cattle lived on, and which only overstocking injured, gave way before the sheep; for these eat out the hearts of the young gra.s.s, and their range grew wider as the feed became more spa.r.s.e.

And then the farmer followed the sheep-herder, and the eaten pastures were turned up by the plow. True, the soil was alkaline in many places, and rocky and stony to an extent strange to the eyes of the valley farmer, who hardly ever sees a stone. But there were streams on many a hill-side which only needed a little work to be turned on to and to irrigate the soil below; and many a valley was explored, whose level land gave promise of numberless farms.

Even if the land were bare and desolate-looking to a degree, and the farmhouse stood naked and unattractive, yet it was found that apples and pears would grow, and even that peaches would ripen well in a hotter and drier summer climate than is found elsewhere in Oregon.

And when the results of the first experiments were disclosed, and it was found that wheat yielded thirty, forty, and even fifty bushels to the acre on these very lands, the tide turned.

[Sidenote: _EASTERN OREGON._]

Men who had decried Eastern Oregon as a desert, fit only to pasture a few cattle and scattering bands of sheep, suddenly changed their tone, and nothing was heard from them but advice to leave the worn-out lands of the Willamette Valley, and go to this, which was the coming country.

And advantage was at once taken of this state of things to prepare the public mind for, and then to take up vast sums of money to provide, railroad and increased steamboat accommodation to bring the products of these eastern plains within reach of Portland and the seaboard.

What is this country like? The Columbia bounds the north, the Snake River the east of Oregon--the one running east and west, the other north and south. Nearly midway between the Cascade Mountains and the Snake River, the Blue Mountains run, roughly speaking, north and south.

This range is much less elevated than the Cascades, but very wide, and rises gradually from far-reaching foot-hills about the center of the State.

Between the Blue Mountains and the Cascades lies a great stretch of open, rolling country--bare, rocky hills, not a tree and hardly a bush to be seen; until lately covered with bunch-gra.s.s and some sage-brush.

This is some of the country to which the change of purpose applies which I have just described.

The prevailing color of the country is a reddish-brown, except when in spring a tinge of living green spreads with the growing gra.s.s.

Near the Cascade Mountains are wide tracts covered with fine volcanic lava-dust. Where there is moisture to be found, this soil supports a good growth of gra.s.s, and the pine timber stretches to its edge. But joining it come the bare alkaline plains. Their natural vegetation is the bunch-gra.s.s and the sage-brush (_Artemisia_).

The chief const.i.tuents in the alkaline formation are chlorides of sodium and pota.s.sium--demanding irrigation as the remedy for the excess of alkali, while beet-root is recommended as a first crop to absorb the surplus salt. Excellent crops are raised in the Ochico Valley, on this land; and there is no doubt that a very large portion of the tracts now being abandoned by the cattle- and sheep-herder will prove of enormous productiveness in wheat.

East of the Blue Mountains is found, among others, the Powder River Valley. This is in the western part of Baker County and partly in Union County. On the north and east a steep hill-side separates it from the Grand Ronde Valley; on the south and west rises the spur of the Blue Mountain range. The valley is about twenty-four miles long by twelve wide, thus covering two hundred and ninety square miles.

The lands in this valley may be taken as a type of similar valleys in Eastern Oregon. They may be divided into three cla.s.ses. First, the bottom-lands pure and simple. These consist of alluvial soil of abundant depth and richness; the only question an intending settler need ask is whether they are subject to inundation from the overflow of the river, which invariably is found running through the whole length.

Above the bottom-lands, and far exceeding them in extent, are the foothills, yielding in this instance fully one hundred and eighty square miles of excellent grain-producing lands, and adapted in all respects to farming purposes. And above these again rise the hills for pasturage, and only useful for grain-growing where facilities for irrigation can be found. The character of bareness does not apply to these hill-sides; the alkaline soil does not extend to them, and a richer vegetation, in which other native gra.s.ses and spreading plants come to the aid of the predominating bunch-gra.s.s, affords food to sheep and cattle all the summer through.

[Sidenote: _SNAKE RIVER AND ITS TRIBUTARIES._]