It has been proposed to run the California extension of the Oregon and California Railroad through the gap between Upper and Lower Klamath Lakes. Should that long-talked-of project ever be realized, the manufacturing facilities of this splendid water-power will no longer be suffered to lie dead. Passing eastward, the great Klamath Indian reservation is reached--a tract I only know by hearsay as a land of hills and streams, of gullies and water-courses, of lava-beds and barrenness intermixed with quiet vales and dells of wondrous beauty--a land where Indian superstitions cluster thickly. The Indians are few and scattered, and this country, no doubt, ere long will be thrown open to the white traveler and hunter, to be quickly followed by the herdsman and the settler. The great snowy pyramids of the Southern Cascades stand on guard. Mount Scott (8,500 feet), Mount Pitt (9,250), and Mount Thielsen (9,250) are placed there, thirty miles apart, forbidding passage between the warm valleys of Jackson County and the open plains east of the mountains. But here, too, the hardy pioneers have found their way. I have talked with several men who are herding sheep and cattle on these plains. The merino thrives here even better than in Northeastern Oregon, and many thousand pounds of wool are raised. They describe the country as one of open plain and rocky hillside, of scarce water and abundant sage-brush; resembling in general features the tract fifty miles to the north, but, alas! containing scarcely any of the creeks \and streams which give life and fertility to Middle Oregon. [Sidenote: _THE IDAHO BOUNDARY._] Eastward again of Stein's Mountains you strike the head-waters of the Owyhee, an important tributary of the Snake, and at once recur the common features of fertility and consequent settlement. And thus the Idaho boundary is reached. CHAPTER XXII.