This conversation was, perhaps, an extreme one; but it is absolutely true to facts. All that we talked to were equally hopeful, and few much better instructed as to their course. Certainly no people in the world could be better qualified to make a little go far, to take cheerily all the inevitable discomforts of both the long journey and the new home, and to make the best use of every advantage they found or made. Only a few were going to this Spokane country, away north in Washington Territory; the rest were bound for Eastern Oregon, which is being settled up marvelously fast, when the difficulties of getting there, and of getting their produce out from there, are taken into account.
The stretch of burned timber country ended about the Upper Soda. All round it, and on from there eastward, grew miles upon miles of magnificent fir, hemlock, spruce, and cedar-trees, averaging three feet through, and, I judged, a hundred and fifty feet in height. I measured several of the dead trees on the ground, which ran from two hundred and twenty to two hundred and fifty feet in length, and the tops of all of them were gone.
A few miles farther on eastward are Fish Lake and Clear Lake. The former merits its name from the abundance of trout from one to three and four pounds in weight. In summer the water shrinks away to little more than a stream in the middle of the depression which forms the lake, and a growth of rich, succulent grass follows the subsidence of the waters. Clear Lake, some four miles off, is vastly different. It evidently occupies the place of a great and sudden depression of timber-covered country, for, looking down into the deep, clear water, the great firs are seen still standing erect on the bottom, far, far below. Fly-fishing on this lake is wonderfully good. Throw the flies on to the still water, oh! so quietly, and there let them lie motionless; in a moment or two a dim form shines deep down, rising with a quick, vibrating motion, and up comes your friend: with a greedy snatch he takes the fly, and bolts downward with it, to be speedily checked and brought to book.
Soon begins the descent, much more gradual than the ascent, and not so prolonged, since all Eastern Oregon is a kind of plateau, elevated from one to two thousand feet above sea-level.