and floods and changes of thousands and thousands of years shall have crumbled into dust its rocks and its sands, yield anything worthy of consideration to the support of human life. There are, however, some beautiful exceptions to this general character; bright and blooming valleys, walled with mountains, and surrounded by wastes, which, contrasting so widely with everything about them, are regarded by the lonely traveler as being not only wildly romantic, but surpassingly beautiful. These, however, are rare. The traveler through that dreary region will cling to the summit of many a barren height and traverse many a sun scorched plain ere the green Oasis glads his eyes.
Those who have emigrated to the country have had uncommonly good health. Notwithstanding the great exposures which the Emigrations of 1843 and 1844 were necessarily subjected to in making and after having made a long and toilsome journey through a wild and desert wilderness, in preparing shelters from the rains and obtaining the means of subsistence, there were fewer instances of sickness in either than is common among a like number of people in the most healthy portions of the United States. But to describe the climate of Oregon with the greatest exactness, in the fewest words, is, we think, to compare it to France; which, laying between precisely the same parallels of latitude, and occupying exactly the same position on the Eastern Continent that Oregon does on the Western, boasts a climate which has long since and universally been acknowledged one of the finest on the Globe. The situation of Oregon in regard to commerce every one who knows anything about the geography of the world is already acquainted with. Its location is convenient to all the shores and Islands of the Pacific, the Western portions of South America,and as all the numerous groups of Islands of the great Pacific are ready of
