CHAPTER XIX.
ROGUE RIVER VALLEY.
Rogue River Valley, like the Umpqua, extends from the Cascade Range to the sea; embracing all the country drained by Rogue River and its tributaries. It has the Umpqua Mountains on the north, the Siskiyou Mountains on the south, and is the most southern division of "Western Oregon. This valley, like the Umpqua, is an aggregation of smaller valleys, divided by rolling hills, and the whole encircled by elevated mountain ranges. The Rogue River is not navigable any great distance from its mouth, owing to the numerous rapids and falls with which it abounds; but for the same reason furnishes abundant water-power. Ocean steamers can enter and carry freight as far up as Ellensburg. It is a stream of unsurpassed beauty, with water as blue as a clear sky, and banks overhung, in some places, with wild trees, shaggy cliffs, and in others by thickets of grape-vines and blossoming shrubbery.
About half a mile off the road to Jacksonville is a fall one hundred and fifty feet in height, down which the river plunges, between rocky cliffs, into a basin in the gorge below, and then rushes roaring over its rocky bed, for some distance, through a deep and narrow ravine—the whole forming one of the most beautiful of the many beautiful wild scenes in this altogether picturesque country.
