times, is suggestive that this line of water is really the outcropping of a long, subterranean stream. The amount of water is apparently more than the natural drainage of the country adjacent; and the outline of a great river channel is distinctly traceable to the lakes of Harney and Malheur. The latter, however, are strongly tinctured with the alkaline soil surrounding them."
Thus does the observing traveller confirm the views of the student of geological science. The southern half of East Oregon retains yet some of the features of the undrained lake districts of Oregon and Washington.
That portion of Oregon and Washington which lies west of the Cascades is part of a great trough, extending from the Straits of Fuca to the Bay of San Francisco. It is not, like East Oregon, elevated above the original sea-bed by immense deposits of volcanic matter; but its older rocks are buried from sight by deposits of the Tertiary and post-Tertiary periods.
There is a curious glimpse into the prehistoric record of man given by the fossils of the Wallamet Valley. For instance, the teeth and tusks of the elephant have been found in Linn, Polk, and Clackamas Counties, at no great depth below the surface,—as in three instances they were discovered by men engaged in digging mill-races, probably from eight to twelve feet in depth. Side by side with this fact is the one that at a similar depth some rude stone carvings have been discovered, buried in the alluvial soil of the Lower Wallamet, about two miles above its junction with the Columbia, in Columbia County. Stranger still, there has been discovered at a place just at the northern end of Multnomah County, the remains of a camp-fire, with the half-burnt brands lying in position, as if the fire had but just gone out, and buried under twenty-seven feet of alluvial deposit. Equally curious is the fact that in the Nehalem Valley, eight miles back from the coast, and twenty-five feet below the surface, in a place where there is no suggestion even of a possible land-slide, was lately discovered a large knife of pure copper, with a stone handle. Here is a souvenir of the stone and copper age! Shall we ever be able to collect any facts concerning these ancient Oregonians? The paleontologists have here a splendid field to delve in.
The work of the volcanoes is also very evident in West Ore-
