CHAPTER XVI.
THE WALLAMET PRAIRIES.
The prairies of the Wallamet Valley are not an uninterrupted level, like those of Illinois. In some parts they resemble the "oak openings" of Michigan; again they are quite extensive plains, but nowhere out of sight of large bodies of timber, either on the mountains or along the Wallamet, and its numerous affluents. Ranges of hills and isolated buttes occur frequently enough to save the landscape from monotony, and to furnish variety in soil and location.
Time was when all this valley waved in early summer with luxuriant native grasses, red and white clover, and beautiful wild flowers. When the first herds of California cattle, purchased in that country, and driven over the mountains of Southern Oregon, with great labor, and danger from the hostility of the Indians, to supply the Mission and the earliest settlers, they might wallow through grass breast-high on the prairies, and higher than their heads in the creek-bottoms. These herds increased rapidly; and the country being sparsely settled, they were allowed to roam at will over it.
Stock-raising was an easy and lucrative business in Oregon at an early day: in the first place, because cattle were scarce among the settlers; and next, because after they had become more numerous, they came suddenly into demand as food for the freshly imported mining population with which the gold discovery flooded
