lands of the foot-hills, make a large extent of country still in its primeval condition as to cultivation. One may ride, barring occasional fences, almost at his pleasure from one end of the Wallamet Valley to the other; though for greater convenience he would probably keep to the traveled road. A very pleasant ride it would be, too, if he were fond of equestrian exercise, and by far the best method of obtaining correct notions of the resources of the valley.
It seems at first a remarkable condition of things, that a population of 82,000 people should have appropriated the largest portion of the agricultural lands of Western Oregon—a country 275 miles by forty or fifty in extent. But a large proportion of the open prairie lands were taken up under the Donation Law, which gave 320 acres to a married man, 320 more to his wife, and the same amount to every white male citizen, widow, or head of a family, who would occupy the same according to the requirements of the Act. It is reported of the Oregonians that while the Act was in force, very early marriages were the fashion; and even that the courting which preceded it was sometimes accomplished at the door of a farmer's house, while the would-be husband sat on his "cayuse," and the not unwilling bride of thirteen or fourteen summers stood on the door-step—the object of both being to secure a partner in a mile square of land. Large families who "took up" in this way adjoining "miles" were able to call whole townships their own.
So much land, though gladly accepted from Government as compensation for the toils, privations, and dangers of first settling the country, has proved any thing but a blessing to the owners, by preventing close settlement, and the efficient working of a free-school
