the southern portion of the State. The stock-owner put his brand on his herd, and turned them out to "summer and winter" themselves on the abundance of the virgin prairies. In course of time this indiscriminate pasturing injured the grasses, and reduced them to a shorter growth; though it is said that when the land is permitted to lie idle under fence they recover their old luxuriance. We have seen a species of wild timothy growing four or five feet high on the Tualatin Plains, in Washington County.
The lives of the early settlers of Oregon, though not luxurious, were easy and care-free. The genial climate and the kindly soil rendered constant or excessive labor unnecessary. If they were stock-raisers, comparative wealth was easily attained, when one hundred cows were worth ten thousand dollars. To mount his horse, and ride about to look after his cattle, was a pastime for the stock-raiser; good riding, good shooting, and knowing how to throw the lasso, popular accomplishments. Clad in his buckskin suit, and booted and spurred in true vaquero style, it was his pleasure to scour the prairies day after day on any errand whatever. And well it might be—unless some of his wild California stock "got after him," when a sharp race was sure to ensue, which not unfrequently ended in the herdsman being "treed."
This free-and-easy life, in a country so beautiful, had many charms which are easily understood. Nor is the Oregon of to-day so densely populated as to be without much of the same romantic freedom. Although most of the open or prairie land in Western Oregon is owned by donation claimants, locators, and others, comparatively little of it is cultivated. The uncultivated prairie lauds, together with the half-wooded bench
