This road was built by men who were sent out from Albany, and spent years in the work, rifles by their side; for the country fourteen years ago was not the safe domain it has now become. The first idea was to use the pass through the Cascades (which is the lowest and safest in Oregon, so far as I can learn), to build a road to open the plains of Eastern Oregon to the Willamette Valley. After a good deal of the work had been accomplished, a suggestion was made to the owners of the road that if they would undertake to extend it clear across the State to the Idaho boundary, a distance from Albany of some four hundred and fifty miles by the necessary deviations from a straight line, a land grant might probably be procured from Congress to aid the work. Whatever may be said of the general policy of granting the national lands to corporations to aid wagon-road and railroad enterprises, there may surely be cases where the effect is not only to secure the execution of the work, but also to encourage the settling up of a district, and the consequent increase of the population and wealth of a State. Here was the state of affairs in Eastern Oregon prior to 1866: A vast country, adapted for the gradual settlement and ultimate habitation of a prosperous race, was lying at the mercy of a few roving bands of Indians, who made the lives and property of even casual travelers their speculation and sport. What was the value then of all that country? Could any purchaser for it have been then found, at even a few cents an acre? [Sidenote: _BUILDING OF THE ROAD._] The projectors of the road took their lives in their hands when they ventured forth to work. They risked themselves, their horses and equipments. Every pound of food consumed had to be brought in wagons from their starting-point. As they progressed, their danger and difficulty increased with every mile they traversed; and the last section of the road was built by men who had suffered themselves to be snowed in and shut off from families and friends, and to give up every chance of succor in distress, that the work might not stand still. And it was no light work, even judged by us who travel the road at ease, and have hardly a passing glance for the rocky grade, the deep cutting, the ponderous lava-block, the huge black trunk. How appalling must the undertaking have appeared to those who had first to face the dangers and difficulties of a mountain-chain, to plan for and survey out the most favorable route among heavy timber and rocky precipice, beside rushing waters and through deep gorges; and then across those wide and then silent plains, where the timid antelope ranged by day, and the skulking wolf by night made solitude hideous with his melancholy howl! No roadside farms to welcome them, no little towns to mark, as now, the stages of their journey, but farther and farther into the wilderness, till four hundred miles lay between the workers and the valley-homes they had left months before.