They Are, In Fact, A Part Of A Long Chain,
Which Stretches Over A Great Extent Of Country, And Includes In
Its Links The Snake River Mountains.
The day was somewhat advanced before the travellers left the
shady banks of the Umatilla.
Their route gradually took them
among the Blue Mountains, which assumed the most rugged aspect on
a near approach. They were shagged with dense and gloomy forests,
and cut up by deep and precipitous ravines, extremely toilsome to
the horses. Sometimes the travellers had to follow the course of
some brawling stream, with a broken, rocky bed, which the
shouldering cliffs and promontories on either side obliged them
frequently to cross and recross. For some miles they struggled
forward through these savage and darkly wooded defiles, when all
at once the whole landscape changed, as if by magic. The rude
mountains and rugged ravines softened into beautiful hills, and
intervening meadows, with rivulets winding through fresh herbage,
and sparkling and murmuring over gravelly beds, the whole forming
a verdant and pastoral scene, which derived additional charms
from being locked up in the bosom of such a hard-hearted region.
Emerging from the chain of Blue Mountains, they descended upon a
vast plain, almost a dead level, sixty miles in circumference, Of
excellent soil, with fine streams meandering through it in every
direction, their courses marked out in the wide landscape by
serpentine lines of cotton-wood trees, and willows, which fringed
their banks, and afforded sustenance to great numbers of beavers
and otters.
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