younger fish of their own species; do not run in schools, but solitary and alone, devouring the small ones. I have caught them with the tails of little fish sticking in their mouths. Brook trout may be found in the smaller streams; they are identical with those of New England.
The wild game consists of deer and elk, which are still abundant and furnish subsistence; and, until these people sold their birthrights and received in exchange therefor clothing and blankets,—a mere mess of pottage,—afforded material for warming their bodies. These sources of supply, together with the wild fowls, which congregate in innumerable quantities, all go to make up a country well adapted to wild Indian life, requiring but reasonable exertion to secure subsistence and clothing.
Although the country is high and cold, and the major portion covered in winter with deep snows, there are small valleys and belts of country where snow never lies on the ground for any considerable length of time, and the stock cattle and horses live through the winter without care.
When the railroad shall have been built, connecting the lake country with the outside world, it will afford large supplies of fish, game, wild fowls, eggs, feathers, ice, and lumber of the choicest kinds. Already has the keen eye of the white man discovered its many inducements and tempting offers of business.
Big Klamath lake is twenty miles wide and forty miles long; a most beautiful sheet of water, dotted with small islands. Its average depth is, perhaps, forty feet, surrounded on two sides with heavy forests of timber; on the others, with valleys of sure and
productive soil, when once science shall have taught the people how to accommodate the agriculture to the climate. This lake has a connection with those below, called Link river, a short stream of but four miles, through which vast volumes of water find outlet, over sweeping rapids, falling at the rate of one hundred feet to the mile.
The power that wastes itself in Link river would move machinery that would convert the immense forests into merchandise, and put music into a million spindles, giving employment to thousands of hands who are willing to toil for reward.
Nature has also favored this wonderful country with steam-power beyond comparison; great furnaces under ground, fed by invisible hands, send the steam through rocky fissures or escape-pipes to the surface. Near Link river, two of these escape-pipes emit the stifling steam constantly. Approaching cautiously, a sight may be had of the boiling waters beneath. Lower down the hill it arises in a stream, sufficient to run a saw-mill, coming out boiling hot, and flowing away in rippling current. Along the banks of this stream flowers bloom the year round, and vegetation is ever green for several rods from the banks. The scene from the ridge on the north that overlooks Link valley is one of rare beauty.
Standing in snow two feet deep, on a cold morning in December, 1869, my eyes first took in the landscape. Surrounded by lofty pines, and, looking southward, we caught sight of the Lost river county, the home of the Modocs, bathed in sunshine, clear, cold sunshine; the almost boundless tracts of sage-brush land, stretching away to the foot of the Cascade mountains on the
right, until sage-brush plain was lost in pine-wood forest. On the left front we caught sight of Tu-le lake, lying calmly beneath its crystal covering of glittering ice; and, still left, Lost-river mountains, and beside them the stream whose water drank up the blood of many battles in times past. Following its line toward its source, we see a mountain cleft in twain to make passage for the waters of Clear lake, after they have tunnelled Saddle mountains for ten miles, and come again to human sight.