The preparations which the settlers make for the winter consist mainly in cutting and storing for hay the natural grasses of the country. Fort Harney, which has been until lately a post held by two companies, has stabling for four hundred horses. Five years ago the troops got cut and stacked from the surrounding country nine hundred tons of choice hay. Neither in this valley are the winters very severe. Until railroad communications are provided, the sparse settlers have to abandon themselves to isolation from the outside world, because the snow lies deep on the plateaus and ridges which extend between them and the haunts of civilized man. But within the limits of the valleys the inhabitants enjoy life in winter. The snow does not lie long or deep; and from so many sources that I am forced to credit it comes the information that no one accustomed to American winter in any of the Middle States need have any apprehension in coming to live in any of the valleys I have named. Turning westward from the Snake River and traversing the Malheur Valley and the Harney Lake Valley, the traveler may follow one of the military wagon-roads--that one whose fortunes in the violent and scandalous attempts on the title to its granted lands I have before referred to. From Camp Harney to Prineville, the principal town in the southern portion of Wasco County, the distance is about one hundred and forty-five miles. For between thirty and forty miles the road runs through Silver Creek Valley, or along land watered by its affluent streams. The description I have given of valleys in Eastern Oregon applies to this. The country on either side of the road consists of rolling hills, covered with bunch-grass and sage-brush, and occasionally sparse juniper. Settlement in this valley is very recent. But thirteen families had taken up their residence there previous to and during the fall of 1880, and several more are going in this spring. [Sidenote: _GRINDSTONE CREEK VALLEY._] Then Grindstone Creek Valley is reached. This is one of the head-waters of Crooked River. A perfect network of creeks and streams is passed before the main Crooked River is reached, and each stream and creek brings fertility to the land on either side of it and through which it runs. A farmer named Moppin has the credit of growing the first grain on Grindstone Creek; and there, in the harvest of 1880, he raised six hundred bushels of fine oats on nine acres of land, and grew one hundred and fifty bushels of potatoes on less than two thirds of an acre; several of the potatoes weighed two pounds and upward. Then, following down the course of the Crooked River Valley, we pass through a country which is described in the following terms by a settler of eleven years' experience: