OREGON BOUND 1853 153
of mules are employed on it. Trains are constantly passing. And this multitude, winter and summer, subsist solely on grass. Potatoes and other coarse products are secured when ripe without regard to seasons. The potatoes are not yet all dug though they ought to be. These things are secured against frost, by putting them into houses about as close as a good log house. The mildness of the winter is a very great ad- vantage to this country. The rains and fogs render it an unpleasant season, but far less than you in that country sup- pose. The rains came on this year about the middle of No- vember. It rained more than half the time for ten or twelve days, since that, for eighteen days, we have had two storms, and enough to keep the ground very wet that is all. This is the busy time of the year. Last summer and fall they had rains out of their season, and many suppose they may be looked for henceforth but I apprehend there is no good ground for such a hope. We met these rains on the road and they were called unprecedented. The wet weather is from the south westward brought by a tropical sea wind, I take it to be a diverted west- ern monsoon, ranging along the region of mountains forming the whole western coast couuntry of the continent, and it comes warm like a summer shower. We have no cold rain storms.
Hogs do but indifferently. If I were coming here again, I would bring two or three full blood grass breed pigs. On the clover they would do as well as the bears and cattle but those that subsist on roots and mast have a poor time of it. I should think the hogs of the valley were of Spanish stock but mean and miserable as they are, a pig is worth an ounce of gold. With such as they are the country will soon be supplied and a better breed be called for. The breed of cattle cannot be improved. Every thing of the kind becomes Durham in a year after it gets here. The Umpqua valley, between here and the Willamet, (pronounced Wil-/aw*-et) is said to be best for hogs. Hens may be obtained here for about $2.00 a pair. A family in our train took out a pair, with little trouble. I have
