to mention the mines of gold and silver, precious stones, and baser metals with which the hills and mountains are fabulously rich.
The descent of the Ranger company into the now famous Grande Ronde valley was most perilous. It was made long after nightfall, through a precipitous and rocky defile, where a slip of the wagon-wheel or the misstep of an ox would have plunged the adventurous teams, wagons, men, women, children, and all, over sheer bluffs.
Camp was pitched in the edge of the beautiful valley, then a reservation belonging to the Nez Perce Indians. Rye-grass was growing as high as the top of the head of a man on horseback; and at one end of the valley, where now is a famous resort for health and pleasure, a number of hot springs were outlined by great columns of steam, which, rising beneath the arid air, hung low over the foot-hills, and, hanging lower yet in the >;ale below, spread itself like an enormous fleece over a lake of seething water.
XXXI
THROUGH THE OREGON MOUNTAINS
AFTER moving across the Grande Ronde valley through a veritable Eden of untamed verdure, and crossing the Grande Ronde River by ford, our travellers began the ascent of the Blue Mountains.
The air was cool and delicious. The cattle, much refreshed by their luscious feed in the bountiful and beautiful valley, moved more briskly than had been their wont, and were soon in the midst of the grand old forest trees, which, at that time untouched by the woodman's ax, stood in all their native grandeur upon the grass-grown slopes. In the midst of one of these groves of stately whisp
