{299} The Cowelitz farm is also in the western section. The produce of wheat is good—about twenty bushels to the acre. The ground, however, has just been brought under cultivation. The Company have here six hundred acres, which are situated on the Cowelitz river, about thirty miles from the Columbia, and on the former are erecting a saw and grist mill. The farm is finely situated, and the harvest of 1841 produced seven thousand bushels of wheat.[109]
Several Canadians are also established here, who told me that they succeeded well with but little work. They have erected buildings, live comfortably, and work small farms of fifty acres.
I was told that the stock on these farms did not thrive so well as elsewhere. There are no low prairie grounds on the river in this vicinity, and it is too far for them to resort to the Kamas plains, a fine grazing country, but a few miles distant. The wolves make sad depredations with the increase of their flock, if not well watched.
The hilly portion of the country, although its soil in many places is very good, is yet so heavily timbered as to make it, in the present state of the country, valueless: this is also the case with many fine portions of {300} level ground. There are, however, large tracts of fine prairie, suitable for cultivation, and ready for the plough.
The Willamette valley is supposed to be the finest portion of the country, though I am of opinion that many parts of the southern portion of the territory will be found far superior to it. The largest settlement is in the northern part of the valley, some fifteen miles above the falls. About sixty families are settled there, the industrious of whom appear to be thriving. They are composed of American missionaries, trappers, and Canadians, who were formerly servants of the Hudson’s Bay Company. All of them appeared to be doing well; but I was on the whole disappointed, from the reports that had been made to me, not to find the settlement in a state of greater forwardness, considering the advantages the missionaries have had.
In comparison with our own country, I would say that the labour necessary in this territory to acquire wealth or subsistence is in the proportion of one to three; or in other words, a man must work through the year three times as much in the United States, to gain the like competency. The care of stock, which occupies so much time {301} with us, requires no attention there, and on the increase only a man might find support.
The wheat of this valley yields thirty-five to forty bushels for one sown, or twenty to thirty bushels to the acre; its quality is superior to that grown in the United States, and its weight nearly four pounds to the bushel heavier. The above is the yield of new land; but it is believed it will greatly exceed this after the third crop, when the land has been broken up and well tilled.
After passing into the middle section, the climate undergoes a decided change; in place of the cool and moist atmosphere, one that is dry and arid is entered, and the crops suffer from drought.
The only wood or bush seen, is the wormwood, (artimesia), and this only in places. All cultivation has to be more or less carried on by irrigation.
The country bordering the Columbia, above the Dalles, to the north and south of the river, is the poorest in the territory, and has no doubt led many to look upon the middle section as perfectly useless to man. Twenty or thirty miles on either side of the river are so; but beyond that a fine grazing country exists, and in very many places there are portions of it that might be advantageously {302} farmed. On the banks of the Wallawalla, a small stream emptying into the Columbia, about twenty-five miles from the Company’s post, a missionary is established who raises very fine wheat on the low bottoms, by using its waters for the purpose of irrigation. This is also the case at the mission station at Lapwai, on the Koos-koos-ke, where fine crops are raised; grains, vegetables and some fruits thrive remarkably well. In the northern part of this section, at Chimekaine, there is another missionary station. Near the Spokan, and at Colville, the country is well adapted for agriculture, and it is successfully carried on. Colville supplies all the northern posts, and the missionaries in its vicinity are doing well. The northern part of this section will be able to supply the whole southern part with wood. At Colville the changes of temperature are great during the twenty-four hours, but are not injurious to the small grain. The cultivation of fruit has been successful.