width from 30 to 100 miles. It separates the Klamath Lake country from the Crooked River and Harney Lake basins, is an undulating plain, ridged irregularly with high ledges of volcanic rock, and covered with a stunted growth of sage and juniper, presenting to the eye a picture of desolation seldom seen in our country. It was crossed in July by a scouting party from Camp Gibbs at a point opposite the Three Sisters, when the distance across was found to be thirty miles, the route pursuing the old emigrant trail of 1845. Southeast of this trail the desert becomes wider and more impassable. From Silver Lake to Mountain Springs by the Yreka trail it is seventy-two miles, and from Saline Lake to Pleasonton's Butte, by the Red Bluff trail, it is ninety miles in width. Another trail crosses it from Goose Lake to Owyhee. The distance across by this route I did not learn, but it is much reduced below the distance by the other routes. These trains are traveled by people emigrating from California and Southern Oregon to the Bojse and Owyhee countries. As routes of travel they are practicable for loose stock only, except the first and last named, which may become practicable routes of transportation. It is said by some parties of prospectors somewhat familiar with that country that the route by Pleasonont's Butte can be improved by a slight deviation to the west, thus touching at some small brackish lakes that occur somewhere near the middle of the desert. Since the return of the expedition information has been received that leads me to believe that a route could be found from the Des Chutes River, twenty miles above the Three Sisters, to intersect, the military road at Spring Valley twenty miles south of Camp Maury. This supposition is based upon the fact that a small stream empties into the Des Chutes twenty miles above the Three Sisters from the east. It is probable that from the head of this stream not more than twenty-five or thirty miles of desert would have to be crossed to the chain of hills south of Crooked River. This if found correct would afford a route of communication from the Willamette Valley to all points east of the mountains, nearer than any now known. Should a military force be sent into that country the ensuing summer an examination of this part of the desert with a view of the opening of this route, if it exists, would be altogether practicable, and attended with but little expense.

Next to the desert the Harney Lake basin naturally presents itself to our consideration as a feature worthy of notice in a description of the country. Inclosed on the north and east by some rambling spurs of the Blue Mountains, on the southeast by the Snow Mountains, and on the west by a chain of ridges and isolated peask that rise out of the desert, the basin is simply a depression on the very apex of a large district of highlands, circular in form, witha diameter of fifty or sixty miles and no outlest; with its sterile, rocky slopes cut into chasms and gorges by volcanic action; with its wide tracts of sage desert and general want of everything that renders a new country attractive, if forms a fitting climax to a most worthless part of our country. The two lakes, which for some unaccountable reason are called the Malheur Lakes on all the old maps of the country, are near the center of the basin and separated from each other by a narrow sand bank. Lake Harny, the smallest of the two, is about ten miles long and four or five miles wide; its watters are clear, but brackish from evaporation. Tule Lake, the most easterly of the two, is a little than Lake Harney, and communicates with it by means of a channel or slough. Its waters are shallow and muddy. It is in reality nothing more than the sink of Cricket Creek, a stream that ha its source in the high peaks near