rivers, and their tributaries; besides the valleys of numerous creeks falling into the Columbia, near the Dalles—all of which are pretty well settled up. Proceeding north from the Klamath Lakes, we first come into a country interesting chiefly to the geologist; being an immense plain covered with volcanic ashes and tufa, except a small valley of good land on the head-waters of the Des Chutes, in the vicinity of a cluster of beautiful lakes. North of these are the Three Sisters—a beautiful group of snow-peaks, standing out from the range, and covered with snow almost to their bases. For a long distance to the east of these, the country is a waste of volcanic ashes and cinders, into which the legs of a horse sink eighteen or twenty inches. In the midst of this waste is an old crater of a volcano, its walls still standing to a height of between two and three hundred feet; and in its neighborhood lava, scoria, and obsidian are scattered broadcast. About the sources of the Crooked River, an affluent of the Des Chutes, are also numerous boiling springs, indicating the volcanic nature of the country.
Passing the spring before mentioned as discharging into the Des Chutes, and crossing two or three small streams of clear water, cold from the snows of Mount Jefferson, we come to the Warm Springs Reservation, the home of the Des Chutes, Wascopams, and several other tribes of Indians, The reservation takes its name from the boiling springs in its neighborhood, which are curiously near to a stream of ice-cold water. The country here is high, and worthless, except for grazing; and can never be made to support the Indians gathered upon it. In the vicinity of this reservation a bed of moss-agates has lately been discovered which promises to be quite extensive.
