money to build a capitol at Salem, and refused to recognize any other place.

Oregon City is nine miles south of Portland, at the falls of the Willamette River. It has a great water-power, and bids fair to become an important manufacturing point. The other chief centers of population and wealth in Willamette Valley are Lafayette, Dayton, Santiam, Albany, and Eugene City.

Astoria is situated on the Columbia River, nine miles from the ocean, at a point where the river is from three to four miles wide. It has a custom-house and several saw-mills. The country east, southeast, and south from Astoria is hilly, covered with dense timber, and almost uninhabited. Astoria was at one time looked upon as one of the most promising towns on the coast; but nearly all the import and export trade of the State is done at Portland, whither the ocean steamers run regularly, scarcely stopping at Astoria save to take on or put off a pilot.

"The Dalles," or Dalles, so named from rapids in the Columbia River, to which Canadians in the Hudson's Bay Company gave that name, is a prosperous town on the south bank of the Columbia, about 175 miles from its mouth. The town owes its importance to the rapids in the river, which at this point has a descent of forty feet, thus interrupting the navigation, and requiring passengers and freight to be transported by land for a distance of six or eight miles. The growth of the town will keep pace with the development of the upper Columbia, the trade of which must, for some time to come at least, principally go down the river. It is, at present, the entrepot for the scattered mines in eastern Oregon, and also to a considerable extent for the Boise and Owyhee mines, in Idaho. The miners come to The Dalles in winter, send their earnings there, and buy many of their supplies there. Two million dollars in gold-dust came to The Dalles from eastern Oregon and Idaho in the single month of June, 1865.

In the valley of the Umpqua River are the towns of Winchester, Roseburg, Scottsburg, and Gardner. In the auriferous region of the valley of the Rogue River are Jacksonville and Althouse, the two principal mining towns in the State. On the coast, about latitude 43° 20′, is the village of Randolph, whose inhabitants are chiefly engaged in beach mining.

HISTORY.-Oregon seems to have been first trodden by European feet about 1775, when a Spanish navigator visited Juan de Fuca Straits. Cook coasted along its shores in 1778. The Columbia River is believed to have first been made known to the civilized world in 1791, by Captain Gray, of the ship Columbia, of Boston, United States, who saw the mouth of the river, but did not enter it till May of the next year, when he gave it the name of his ship. From this time up to 1804, the coast of Oregon was occasionally visited by British and American fur-traders. In that year President Jefferson sent out an exploring party, under Lewis and Clarke, who passed the winter of 1805-6 at the mouth of the Columbia. This expedition was successful, and collected much valuable information. In 1811, the American Fur Company, of which John

Jacob Astor was the leader, established a trading-post at the mouth of the Columbia River, calling it Astoria; but it was very soon sold to the North-west Fur Company, a British association, to save it being taken during the war with Great Britain which ensued. Great Britain claimed all Oregon until 1846, when the boundary treaty was made with the United States. The emigration of Americans to Oregon commenced in 1839, and the population of the country continued to increase till in 1848, and the two subsequent years, in consequence of the California gold excitement, Oregon lost many of her citizens. In 1850 Congress passed the "donation law," giving, without cost, 320 acres of public land to every person settled on such land before December of that year, and 320 acres more to his wife; and to those persons who should settle between December 1, 1850, and December 1, 1853, 160 acres to each man, and 160 to his wife. Under this law 8,000 claims were registered in Oregon. It was a condition of these grants that the settler should reside on the land for four years. This donation induced nearly all the inhabitants of Oregon to remain, and led many of the young people to marry. As the men much exceeded the women in number, girls, even as young as fourteen, were in great demand; and for several years after the "donation law" took effect, the Territory had a large proportion of very young wives and juvenile mothers.

Oregon was formally organized as a Territory on the 14th of August, 1848, previous to which it had been under a provisional government, with the capital at Oregon City. On the 2d of March, 1853, the Territory of Washington was established out of the northern part of Oregon. In the summer of 1857 a Constitutional Convention was held in Oregon. It drew up a State Constitution, which was submitted to the people November 9, 1857. At the same time two questions were also submitted: whether slavery should be legalized in the new State, and whether free negroes should be permitted to reside in it. The result was, that the popular vote was in favor of the Constitution, but against slavery and free negroes. The State was admitted into the Union under the Constitution adopted in 1857, by act of Congress passed February 14, 1859. But in admitting Oregon into the Union as a State, Congress cut off from its eastern end nearly one-third of its extent as a territory, adding to Washington Territory the district between the Owyhee River and the Rocky Mountains. This district has since been taken from Washington, and now forms a part of Idaho Territory.

NAVIGATION OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER.-The Oregon Navigation Company, organized in 1861, to open the navigation of the Columbia River and its branches, which drain a country of immense extent, had in 1865 over twenty steamboats running, and by means of short railroads built around the Cascades and the Dalles, and wagon roads from the Dalles, from Umatilla and from Wallula, had established the cheapest and quickest route for travel or freight from all parts of the coast to the rich mines of Boise and Owyhee in Idaho. Between 1861 and 1865 their boats carried to the upper Columbia upwards of 65.000 tons of freight and 100,000 passengers. Measures

were in progress in 1865 to push their communications by means of the navigation of the Snake River, into the heart of the Idaho gold regions, and on beyond toward Utah.

EARTHQUAKE AT FORT KLAMATH.-We take from the "Oregon Sentinel" the following letter, dated Fort Klamath, Oregon, January 8, 1867, giving the particulars of a fearful earthquake in that locality:

"We have singular, if not serious, news to send by the express just leaving. This morning at daylight we were startled from sleep by the precipitate shock of an earthquake, immediately followed by the noise of a distant thunder. But in a little while quiet reigned; every one was conversing and laughing heartily over the singular phenomenon, but our countenance soon underwent a serious change, for it began to grow dark; the whole heavens were full of a very black smoke or cloud; the air had a sulphureous smell, and ashes of a brownish color fell as fast as I ever saw it snow. We had to use candles in the messroom. The most of us went into breakfast, but had only got fairly into our seats when, horror upon horror! the earth seemed rolling like waves on the ocean. Every one was thrown to the floor, and only regained their feet to be placed in the same situation. With the rattling of dishes, crashing of window-glass, crackling of timbers of the building, and the screams of frightened boys, you could not imagine a more perfect chaos. Some of us gained the door, and such a sight as met our gaze!

"The tall pines around the fort seemed lashing themselves into fury. The wagons in front of the stable were engaged in pitched battle; horses and cattle lying crouched upon the ground, uttering most pitiful moans; dogs howling, and the unearthly yells of the Klamath Indians encamped near the fort, completed the scene. We imagined we were amid the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds. The sutler's store was thrown about twenty feet from its former position. There were no lives lost, and no serious accidents to any one; there were quite a number with bruised shins and skinned noses. No serious damage to any of the buildings, all being log and frame houses; but I do not think there is a whole pane of glass left at the post.

"There are many speculations as to the cause of this most singular freak of nature, but most of us are of the opinion that a volcano has broken loose near the Klamath marsh, as a continuous dark volume of smoke is seen ascending in that direction. Some of the soldiers have volunteered to go up and find out if we have a monster vomiting fire near us or not. There was about half an hour between the first and second shocks; the first was only perceptible; the second lasted, as near as can be judged from various opinions, from two to three minutes."

KANSAS.

KANSAS, one of the central States of the American Union, is bounded on the north by Nebraska, on the east by Missouri, on the south by the Indian Territory, and on the west by Colorado. It lies between the parallels of 37 and 40 degrees of north latitude, and 94 and 102 degrees of longitude west from Greenwich. It has an area of 80,000 square miles, or 51,200,000 acres. The Missouri River washes it on the north-east, and the Kansas and Osage, tributaries of the Missouri, and the Arkansas and its affluents, drain it. It was admitted into the Union as a State in 1861.

The land in Kansas has generally a limestone basis; and the soil, consisting of a dark vegetable mold, far superior to the ordinary prairie soil, is exceedingly fertile, and of great depth. It is represented as having an average depth of four feet, which, with its calcareous quality, and freedom from stone, makes it most desirable for agricultural purposes. The bottom lands along the bottoms of the rivers are equal to any in the world. The upland is composed of a continual succession of ridges and valleys, rising and falling with the regularity of ocean waves. The general direction of the ridges is north and south, except where their uniformity is broken by the courses of the streams, and the rivers are belted with timber. The upland country, diversified with hills and valleys, is rendered picturesque by groves, scattered unevenly and irregularly over the surface, sometimes on the hill-sides, but oftener in the valleys, consisting, in the former case, of the stately cotton-woods, and in the latter, of elms. Clumps of oak are found in some places. The timber of the bottom lands consists of oak, ash, elm, white and sugar-maple, and hickory. This country was formerly known among the overland travelers to Oregon and California as the region of "tall grass." The blade is coarse and rough at the edges, like the grass of Illinois. It ordinarily attains to the height of three feet, toward the close of summer; but where the land is moist, it grows more luxuriantly, and is said to become "tall enough to hide from view horse and rider." In June those rolling prairie lands are covered with gaudy flowers. The small streams are quite numerous, having their sources in springs; and though they may not entirely dry up, they are, nevertheless, "dry weather streams," showing little more in September than pebbly beds, but swelled full, muddy, and turbulent in the spring. These streams have cut their channels down deep in the soil, forming ravines difficult to cross; but with their borders fringed with timber, and winding through the country in all directions, they add very much to the beauty of the landscape.

Immediately contiguous to the fertile plains of eastern Kansas is a narrow belt, averaging twenty miles in width, of an entirely different

eharacter, having a sandstone basis. The country is not so rolling Spring-water is rarely found, but there are many large rivers, together with their head streams, which flow through this tract. As a general thing, the soil would be considered too light and sandy for profitable cultivation. The traveler will observe that the hickory timber has entirely disappeared, and the few trees which he will find "are mostly the blackjack, elm, cotton-wood, ash, and willow." This region, however, is said to possess some attractions for the tourist. It has been thus described: "Here the finest patches of buffalo-grass intermingle with stinted meads of tall grass and beds of pale-green moss, long and slender, which, with the oxlip, blue and white violet, and, near the streams, a sensitive plant of yellow-cup dotted with jet, and many another of the floral sisterhood, fragile and aromatic as the field-flowers of the Atlantic, all blooming in the lively green of the vernal season, form a mosaic as agreeably contrasted as any garden of art."

Further to the westward is a region which possesses considerable interest, and affords some advantages for keeping flocks and herds. It is not a belt of country stretching, like the other two, across the State, but consists rather of long reaches of fertile and well-watered land, lying upon the banks of the tributaries of the Arkansas River, and of the Smoky Hill Fork of the Kansas. The valleys of these streams are much depressed below the level of the surrounding and intervening plains. The river bluffs often sweep away from the banks in semieircular walls, to a distance of three and four miles, inclosing narrow sections of fertile bottom lands, covered with vegetable mold to the depth of many feet. These are studded with groves of willow and cotton-wood, and sometimes of ash, and, along the Arkansas, but rarely, groups of oak and mezquit. These alluvial lands are highly producive, but the plains are supposed to be worthless for cultivation, though finely adapted to pasturage, being covered with the buffalo-grass, "which has been described 66 as a soft, slender, and a very nutritious blade, seven inches high when in perfection, but nearly every-where so eropped down by herds of buffalo and antelope as to look like a lawn over which the scythe has lately passed."

Beyond this is the vast tract known as the American Desert, extending from Nebraska through Kansas into Texas and New Mexico. There are no small streams, and but few rivers, flowing through this desolate region. The surface is almost a dead, uniform level, sweeping in every direction to the horizon, and is composed of a heavy gray and yellow clay, destitute of rocks and stone, with not a single tree, only here and there a grease-bush, or knob of cactus, and a few juiceless blades of bitter and unpalatable grass. The desert terminates to the westward in a range of hills composed of marl and limestone, which rise abruptly from the plain, and have precipitous sides and flat tops. This narrow belt of hill country is known as the range of "buttes."

Probably the choicest lands within the borders of Kansas are those which lie along the river from which the State has taken its name. Mr. Greene, in his interesting book on the Kansas Region, gives the following description of the river: "The Kansas River at its delta is