Company, which secured an immense grant upon the pretence of constructing a public highway across the central portion of East Oregon, but which forfeited its franchise. The two companies are contesting their claims in the courts, and meanwhile the land in question is withheld from sale. There have been three of these military road projects across East Oregon, the other two being The Dalles Military Road and the Oregon Central Military Road, in the southern part of the State, neither having any just claim to the lands obtained from the government by misrepresentation and political jugglery. The Oregon Pacific will, it is expected, obtain title to the lands in dispute, when no doubt its affairs will brighten. The road passes southeast through Crook and Harney Counties, and makes its way to Snake River through the canon of Malheur River, which, being very rocky and very tortuous, has demanded a heavy outlay in labor and capital. When completed it will work a wonderful transformation in this now remote region.
Grant County, occupying the central portion of East Oregon, and consisting of a series of high plateaux, is chiefly given over to sheep and cattle ranges. There are considerable tracts of pine, fir, and tamarack, and numerous small valleys where grain and fruit yield abundantly. This county formerly contained a greater area than any other in Oregon, being two hundred miles in length and ninety in breadth, but has recently been divided so as to include only the country drained by John Day River. Canyon City is the county-seat. It was first settled in 1862, and incorporated in 1864, when it had two thousand five hundred inhabitants and was the centre of great mining activity. It has to-day a population of eight hundred, having suffered the decline to which mining towns are subject, and having been devastated by fire. It is, however, having a revival of progress, to which it has been stimulated by the prospect of railroad connection with the O. R. and N. line.
Harney County, the territory cut off from Grant, is one hundred and thirty-five miles in extent from north to south, and ninety from west to east. It contains the Harney and Malheur Lakes, and the Christmas or Warner Lakes, of which we have all read in Fremont’s explorations and other government reports. All are more or less impregnated with alkali. Geologically they
