[The following facts concerning Oregon, from a statement prepared by Mr. John W. Drake, secretary of the Board of Statistics and Immigration of Portland, Oregon, are indorsed by Hon. H. W. Corbett, United States Senator from that State, and inserted at his request.]

Of the entire area of the State, about 25,000,000 acres are adapted to agriculture, and about the same quantity to grazing purposes, the remainder being mountain land, valuable only for its immense forests of timber. Of the agricultural and grazing lands, not over 6 per cent. has passed from the Government into the hands of private parties, and the quantity under cultivation would not exceed 2 per cent.

The Cascade range of mountains, crossing the State from north to south, divides it into two main divisions—the eastern and western, each division having its own distinct peculiarities of climate, soil, and topography. In the western division, lying at the base of, and in a general parallel direction with, the Cascade range, are three large fertile valleys, separated from each other and from the sea-coast by low ranges of mountains. Taken together these valleys form a continuous chain of settlements from Northern California to the Columbia River, the northern boundary of Oregon. The Willamette Valley, the largest of the three, occupies the northern part of the western division, with its waters flowing into the Columbia, and navigable the entire length of the valley. The Rogue River Valley lies in the southern part, and the Umpqua Valley between the two. The waters of the Rogue River and the Umpqua break through the Coast range, discharging into the ocean. Rogue River is not navigable, but the Umpqua is navigable, for light-draught vessels, to Scottsburg, 25 miles from its mouth. The valley of the Willamette, containing the oldest settlements in Oregon, is 125 miles long, has a breadth of about 40 miles; and, in view of its advantages of soil, climate, and market facilities, is considered to be the finest and best agricultural region of the Pacific slope. The area of its arable lands is sufficient for the support of a million of people. The river flowing through its center, with its innumerable tributaries and rivulets, furnish the valley with a constant supply of the best mountain water for agricultural purposes, and with motive power for the use of mills. The Umpqua and Rogue River Valleys are equally well watered, but are much smaller and of more irregular surface.

Western Oregon, throughout its mountain ranges and along the coast, is heavily timbered, while the valleys consist of alternate stretches of timber and prairie. Cedar, pine, fir, hemlock, spruce, oak, ash, alder, soft maple, and balm, or cottonwood, are the principal varieties of timber adapted to the farmer's use.

Eastern Oregon is on an elevated plateau, intersected with numerous water-courses flowing in a general northerly direction into the Columbia.

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Soil and Products.—Wheat and oats are the leading grain crops of Western Oregon; the climate and soil seem to have a special adaptation to their growth, and to the maturity and perfection of the grain. Corn and barley are cultivated to some extent, and good crops of both have been raised in the valleys; but with exceptions in favor of a fine localities, they are tot regarded as being adapted to the climate. In Rogue River Valley, however, barley makes a good crop, yielding 30 to 50 bushels per acre, and corn is grown every year in some parts of the Willamette and Umpqua Valleys. In the Willamette Valley rye and buckwheat are raised to it small extent. The yield per acre is from 25 to 30 bushels for rye, and 40 to 50 for buckwheat.

Wheat is a sure crop anywhere in Western Oregon. It is free from the ravages of insects, rust, blight, and other deleterious influences common to some sections of the United States. Several varieties of both winter and spring wheat are cultivated, and do well. Winter wheat is put in the ground in October or November, and spring wheat from February to May, according to season, condition of ground, &c. The yield per acre, ordinarily, ranges from 20 to 40 bushels, many farmers claiming that with reasonably good cultivation an average of 30 bushels, one year with another, can be depended on. In the history of the white settlement of Western Oregon—a period of about thirty years—there has never been a failure of the wheat crop. The quality of the grain is superior, attaining to more than the ordinary weight per bushel, and making a quality of flour that commands the highest prices in San Francisco and New York. A cargo of wheat shipped in the spring of 1869 by a business firm of Portland to Liverpool, entered into competition with wheat from all parts of the world, and brought the highest price current at the time.

Oats are the principal grain raised for feed, particularly in the Umpqua and Willamette Valleys. Always a sure crop, the yield is from 50 to 100 bushels per acre. A large quantity is shipped every year to San Francisco, which sells from 10 to 15 cents per 100 pound higher than those produced in California.           _{^{*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *}}

In the Willamette Valley the cultivation of flax is beginning to engage the attention of farmers. The seed used is the Bombay variety, yielding a large crop of seed, but producing a fiber small in quantity and of inferior quality. The yield ranges from 25 to 30 bushels per acre. The California oil-mills have contracted this year for the product of six thousand acres in Linn County, the seed to be delivered at 2½ cents per pound; while at the oil-mills at Salem, in this State, the same price is to be paid for the product of three thousand acres.

Fruit is raised with unusual success. The trees come into full bearing in three years from transplanting, and with very little care or cultivation yield heavy crops of fruit of the finest quality. Apples, pears, plums, quinces, cherries, currants, and all descriptions of small fruits and berries have a special adaptation to the moist climate and sea air of Western Oregon. Peaches, apricots, grapes, and that class of fruits requiring a hot, dry climate, do not succeed so well in the northern part of the Willamette Valley and along the coast; but in Rogue River Valley, and the hilly country west of it, where the climate is hotter and dryer, more nearly approaching that of California, that class of fruit is successfully cultivated. Thus far fruit trees in Oregon have been entirely exempt from the diseases incident to their cultivation in the majority of the older States.

Among the grasses, timothy, blue grass, and clover are the kinds mostly cultivated; the former to a large extent as a hay crop. On the swales and ash bottoms it yields two to three tons per acre, very often without any cultivation, except to sow the seed after the ground has been cleared of brush and burnt over. The abundant growth of wild grass renders unnecessary any extensive cultivation of grass for pasturing purposes.

Garden vegetables of all kinds and the various root crops are cultivated very successfully in all parts, particularly so on the timber lands and creek bottoms, where the yield of these products is very large. Except in a few instances for gardening purposes, irrigation of the soil is not practiced in Western Oregon. The abundant rains of spring and early summer together with the fertility of the soil render it unnecessary.

Eastern Oregon consists of high table land and rolling prairies, with a number of valleys along its water courses, of considerable extent. Taken as a whole, it is especially adapted to grazing purposes, although its valleys contain farming lands equal is productiveness to those of any country; and in many places the high prairies have produced excellent crops of grain. North of the Blue Mountains, or what is known as the great plain or the Columbia, the soil of the high lands is a sandy loam, producing in its natural state a heavy growth of wild bunch-grass of the most nutritious quality. In the central and southern portions of this division of the State, the high lands are rugged and broken, the surface of the country, sometimes for miles in extent, being covered with broken trap-rock ; still, with the exception of a few barren spots, the growth of bunch-grass is undiminished, either in quantity or quality. It springs up fresh and green in the first warm days of early spring, and in a few weeks stock begin to fatten on it. By burning over the ground a full growth is produced, which by the middle of October makes good grazing, and lasts through the short winter of that section of the country. It was the custom of the Indians of Oregon in former years to raise large herds of horses without providing for them any feed for the winter. The settlers and stock-raisers there now raise and fatten every year thousands of cattle, grazing them the year round. Fat beef-cattle, wintered and fattened on the "range," have been shipped down to Columbia, and thence to Victoria, on Vancouver's Island, to market, as early in the spring as the middle of March.

The valleys of Eastern Oregon have a rich soil of black loam, producing wheat, oats, barley, corn, vegetables, and fruits. Wheat succeeds equally as well as in Western Oregon, while barley does much better, often yielding as high as sixty to eighty bushels per acre. Corn makes a good crop in many of the valleys, the warm, dry summer weather of this region being adapted to its growth and maturity. Some of the tender fruits and vegetables, as peaches, grapes, melons, tomatoes, and sweet-potatoes, are being cultivated with good success. Tobacco has succeeded well in several instances. In a general sense, the range of farm products varies very little from that of Western Oregon, making due allowance for the different adaptabilities of a dry climate. Irrigation is resorted to occasionally for the better production of garden vegetables and fruits; but thus far it has not been found necessary in the cultivation of any kind of grain crops. It is claimed by the people of Eastern Oregon that for productiveness its valleys cannot be excelled on the Pacific slope. The absence of timber in the valleys is, of course, a disadvantage, but the neighboring mountains afford an inexhaustible supply. Water of good quality is plentiful in all the valleys, but the number of springs and running brooks is much less than in Western Oregon.

Climate.—The various influences of mountain ranges, extended plains, contiguity to the sea, the prevailing winds, and other causes, operate to make a climate as varied as are the peculiarities of its numerous localities. Latitude of the northwest coast of America is no index to the character of the climate. Astoria, at the mouth of the Columbia River, situated on nearly the same degree of latitude as Quebec, has a summer temperature 8° cooler, and a winter temperature 30_^° warmer than that place. It is only in the high altitudes of the mountain ranges that deep snows and harsh winters have any existence in Oregon.

The first thing that impresses a stranger in passing from Western into Eastern Oregon is the very decided change noticeable everywhere in the atmosphere, vegetation, and general aspect of the country. This is due chiefly to the difference in the climate of the two sections. Western Oregon has a wet climate, while the eastern part has a dry one.

The winter of Eastern Oregon, though of short duration, generally brings with it several inches of snow on the table lands and in the valleys. The weather is usually dry, but quite cold. Snow remains from three to six weeks, in the months of December and January, some seasons; in others only a few days. The spring begins in February and lasts to the end of May, with warm, pleasant weather, and rain sufficient for vegetation. The summers are hot and dry, but not sultry or oppressive. It is very seldom that rain falls in summer or early fall; still the freshness of the mountain air renders the days pleasant and the nights cool and refreshing. The range of the thermometer is rather above the summer temperature of Western Oregon, sometimes reaching to 100_^°, but only at rare intervals. Ordinarily the thermometer indicates 90_^° as about the highest summer temperature, and 10_^° as the lowest for winter, although these limits may not mark the extremes in the case of an uncommonly hard winter or warm summer, occurring once in from five to eight years.

The amount of rain-fall in Western Oregon is regarded by some as an objection to the climate; but, though large, it has been generally over-rated. Western Oregon has strictly but two seasons, the wet and dry. An ordinary rainy season begins early in November, and continues to the 1st of April, usually, with intermissions of good weather in January and February of a few days' or a few weeks' duration. These intervals are generally accompanied by a few inches of snow, raw, cold weather, and sharp frosts, constituting the only approach to actual winter to which the country is subject. From April to the end of June the weather is usually warm, pleasant, and showery. The dry season proper commences about the 1st of July and continues to the end of October, interrupted by a week's rainy weather in September. The prevailing wind is from the northwest, .a sea breeze that keeps the temperature down. The nights are cool and refreshing to men who do outdoor work, although the effect is not beneficial so far as corn-raising is concerned. The extremes of heat and cold in Western Oregon may be put at 14_^° for the lowest and 82° as the highest range of the thermometer, although a few instances have occurred in which these limits were passed.

Although a rainy country, Oregon is not subject to high tempests, terrific hailstorms, earthquakes, or other like phenomena, so common and destructive in some States. Observations made by Government officers show that in twenty-one years Oregon had only three winds moving at the rate of 45 miles an hour, with a force of 10 pounds to the square foot.

Market Facilities.—The Columbia River forms the northern boundary of Oregon, and is navigable to the Willamette, 100 miles from the sea, at all seasons of the year, for sea-going vessels. Above the Willamette it is navigable by regularly established lines of river steamers to Wallula, a distance of 240 miles, with two interruptions, one of 6 miles at the Cascades, and one of 14 miles at the Dalles, where portages are made by means of railroads forming connections with the boats. Above Wallula the Columbia and one of its tributaries, the Snake River, is navigated to Lewiston during periods of high water—a point in Idaho Territory at the base of the Bitter Root Mountains, and over 400 miles from the ocean.

The Willamette River is navigable to Portland, 12 miles from its month, for ocean steamers and sea-going vessels; and above Portland for river steamers as high as Harrisburg at all seasons, and during high water as far as Eugene City, a distance of 200 miles from Portland by the course of the river. The Yam Hill and Tualatin Rivers, tributary to the Willamette, flowing from the west, are navigable during periods of high water to the interior of large agricultural districts situated in Yam Hill and Washington Counties.

The business of that part of Oregon drained by these waters employs about thirty river steamboats. All points of the Columbia, from the Dalles down, and on the Willamette, from Salem down, are in daily communication with Portland. San Francisco is the principal market for the products of the Willamette Valley, although a large trade exists with British Columbia and the lumbering districts of Puget Sound, and cargoes of wheat, flour, and other Oregon products are often shipped to the Sandwich Islands, China, Australia, South America, New York, and Liverpool, direct from Portland. Farmers, as it rule, dispose of their crops to the mills located in their own neighborhoods. or to dealers in Portland, who ship to foreign markets on their own account.　

In Eastern Oregon the farmers have a home market in their own mining camps and new settlements and those of the Territories of Idaho and Montana. Consequently, prices rule higher than in Western Oregon, except in live stock, in which there is very little, if any, difference. Live stock finds a market not only in the mining districts, but in the neighboring States and Territories, andl in British Columbia.

Price of Farming Lands.—In Western Oregon farms are of large size—generally 640 acres, often twice that size—a natural result of the policy adopted by the General Government toward the early settlers. The settlements of the Willamette Valley cover an area about equal to the State of Connecticut, but its population is only about 75,000 or 80,000. As a matter of course, only a small proportion of the land is under cultivation. Land is cheap, because there is so much of it in proportion to population.

In Eastern Oregon the amount of Government land still vacant is very large. The section of country known as the Klamath Lake region, in the southwestern corner of Eastern Oregon, is as large as the State of Rhode Island. About half of it is the finest kind of arable prairie land; the remainder goal grazing and timber lands, all well watered. This entire section of country does not now contain over 40 or 50 settlers. In the northern part of Eastern Oregon is a strip of high, rolling prairie land, 10 or 15 miles wide, skirting the northern base of the Blue Mountains, and extending from the Cascade Mountains to the eastern line of the State, a distance of 150 miles. It is reasonably well watered; timber convenient on the adjacent mountains, and well adapted to grain-growing, grazing, and dairy purposes. Its present number of settlers is very small.

Mineral Resources._^—Gold mines were discovered in Grant and Baker Counties, in Eastern Oregon, in 1861, and have been worked continuously every year since then. Like the mines of Southern Oregon, they are mostly placers located on the bars, banks, and in the beds of streams, and depend on heavy snows in the mountains and an abundance of water for successful working. They furnish constant employment to about 2,000 men.

Coal-mining is carried on at Coos Bay to a considerable extent. The principal vein at that point extends along a ridge bordering the bay, convenient of access for 12 or 15 miles, and is being worked at present by two companies. The coal is a good quality of soft or bituminous coal, and finds ready sale in San Francisco. Vessels are constantly loading at the mines, and departing for that market. The coal deposit has been worked about fifteen years, and promises to be inexhaustible. Coal of the same variety has been found in large quantities at several other points on the coast.

Extensive beds of iron ore exist at several points in the northwestern part of the State. At Oswego, six miles above Portland, on the banks of the Willamette River, the Oregon Iron Company has erected works for reducing the ore of an extensive deposit in that neighborhood. The works of this company, although of small capacity, have supplied the foundries of the State with pig iron for the past three years, and also shipped considerable quantities to San Francisco. The iron is of very fine compact grain, superior for most kinds of work to the best Scotch pig.

Lumbering Resources.—It has already been stated that the mountain ranges of Oregon are heavily timbered. The principal lumbering establishments are located on the Columbia River, below the junction of the Willamette, and at various points on the coast, where inlets, bays, and arms of the sea provide safe anchorage for small craft, and where the forests are easy of access from navigable waters. In the interior of the State are many small mills erected for the purpose of supplying their own immediate neighborhoods, conducted solely with reference to that object.

The varieties of timber adapted to general lumbering purposes are the red, white, and yellow fir, cedar, spruce, hemlock, and in some parts of the interior pine and larch. The yellow fir is the main dependence for all purposes requiring strength and elasticity. Cedar is used for posts, and in foundations where it will come in contact with the ground, on account of its durable qualities in such situations. An excellent quality of ash is obtained along the streams and on the lowlands in Western Oregon, suitable for various mechanical purposes; but there is no hickory or other timber suitable for wagon or carriage work. Lumber, like other Oregon products, finds its principal market at San Francisco and in the southern part of California. On the Columbia River, below the junction of the Willamette, there are a number of small mills in operation. Two of the largest have a capacity of 15,000 feet per day each. The others average from 3,000 to 10,000 feet per day. One is now in course of construction at the month of the river calculated to cut from 40,000 to 50,000 feet every ten hours. A small part of the lumber made on the Lower Columbia is consumed at Portland; the bulk of it goes to San Francisco, China, South America, the Sandwich Islands, and Mexico.

Schools.—The school fund of this State is under the management of a board of commissioners, who loan it at the rate of ten per cent. per annum interest, secured by mortgage on real estate. This fund amounted in 1868 to $242,228, bringing an annual interest of $24,222, to be distributed by law to the several counties for common school purposes, the amount to which each county is entitled being determined by a census of it children of the prescribed age. Each county levies a tax yearly for common school purposes, and each school district is authorized by law to levy a tax, in addition, sufficient to make the schools free to all and to keep them open the entire year. This is the case in all of the larger towns and most populous districts.

Emigrant Routes to Oregon.—From all parts of the country on the Atlantic sea board there are two practicable routes of travel to Oregon.

1st. By railway, across the continent. This is the more expeditions route of the two, and for emigrants for any point in the Western States is preferable to the other. Through tickets to San Francisco can he purchased at all the large cities of the Atlantic States, making the connection with the main line of road at Chicago or Omaha. The usual time consumed in making the trip to San Francisco is about seven days from New York and six from Chicago. From San Francisco to Portland, Oregon, the trip is made by ocean steamer in about four days; distance, 640 miles.

2d. From New York to San Francisco by ocean steamer, via Panama. The steamers of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company leave New York on the 5th and 21st of each month; time to San Francisco, twenty-two days. The line by this route is somewhat subject to fluctuation, but always lower than the fare by railway. Passengers by this route are allowed a larger quantity of baggage free than by railway, and would not have to pay as high rates on extra baggage.