milk enough to put in their tea or coffee. Milk is worth $1. pr gallon.
Last month was very disagreeable, being very rainy and harder winds than we have known since we have been in oregon, but the last week has been very pleasant, with little rain. This morning the Thermometer stood at 54 at sunrise, and we have had our doors open a most of the time for the last 3 or 4 days. ...
As for settleing on the coast in sight of the Ocean, I would say that there is any amount of places of that discription, but I would not like to live on them. Claims can be had a most all of the way from Cape Disappointment to the mouth of Shoal Water bay, but there is any amount of water on them, with Cranberries marshes, &c on them. In the summer season the wind blows from the North all of the time which makes it foggy cold and very damp, but in the winter season it is much warmer than up this way. Bakers Bay faces the Ocean, yet the land all around the Bay is taken up and most of them are in full view of the Ocean, but they are some ten or fifteen miles from the Barr, and the Ocean winds does not effect them so very much. There is a number of bays, south of the Columbia, where it is said good pleasant situations can be had, and a harbor about 20 miles south of Rogue River that is very large with no bar, and that any sized vessel can go in, and that there is a large amount of good land on two rivers that emty into the bay, and that there is Oister beds in the bay, has been lately discovered. The country is said to be large enough to support a very large town, and that they can get a good road to the mining country on Rogue River. If these reports are true, it would be a more desirable situation, We think than on Pugets sound,
It is said that there is good country around Port Orford, and good gold mines there.[1]
Your idea of the face of the country near the rivers generally is correct, so much so that you can make but few settlements near unless it is near the heads of the streams. The prairies are not underlaid with gravel as you suppose, but they are more
- ↑ "On the coast about Port Orford, some miners are doing exceedingly well, but a majority of them are not making anything;" Oregonian, December 10, 1853.
