lightning or wind, for there is not wind enough now to moove a leaf on a maple tree in front of the house. ...
The Cedar of this country is not like the eastern Cedar, but I believe is equally as good for lumber, or timber, and just about as good for fire wood. Fir is very much like pine only heavyer, and very coarse grained, the leaf is only about an inch long, the wood burns well, but cannot keep fire over night with it. I have seen no water in the country yet but Salt, and Soft water, either river, spring or well water is all soft. There is 3 or 4 wells in town they are something like 20 or 25 feet deep. But people in the country generally build their houses near some spring, which they think is better than wells, and they generally find a plenty of them. I have alwais said that this was the greatest ague hole in Oregon and I suppose it is. I have seen some three or four with it, ... Corn grows here, though perhaps not as well as in Illinois. A Mr Foster,[1] that lives about 15 miles east, nearly under the mountains, has put in about 15 acres, so I have been told, and many others have put in more or less corn this year. We have all the seed planted that we could get, and it looks very well. I cannot tell you what hogs are fatted on, unless it is potatoes, pumpkins, or such things. The Indians have not troubled us any, for there is but a very few here, last fall there was about 60 of the Clackamas Indians,[2] and about 30 died last winter, if they continue to waste away as they have for a few years back, there will not be one in the country in five years.
As for Snakes, I have never seen but one kind and that resembles the garter snake in the east in everything but the stripes, and there is plenty of them. I do not recollect of seeing any Lizzards or toads, though I presume there is a plenty of them.
- ↑ Philip Foster was born at Augusta, Maine, January 29, 1805. He came to Oregon by sea in 1843. During the first four years in Oregon he was in the mercantile business at Oregon City. His farm at Eagle Creek was the first on the Oregon trail in the Willamette Valley, and was for many years a depot of supplies for new settlers. Mr. Foster died in 1884; Scott, Oregon Country, II, 36-37.
- ↑ There had been a great decrease in the Clackamas tribe, as Hodge in his Handbook of American Indians, quotes Lewis and Clark's estimate in 1806 as 1800, and says that their number in 1851 was placed at 88, thus practically agreeing with Mr. Stevens.
