the john muir exhibit - writings - steep_trails - chapter 21
Chapter 21
The Physical and Climatic Characteristics of Oregon
Oregon is a large, rich, compact section of the west side of the
continent, containing nearly a hundred thousand square miles of deep,
wet evergreen woods, fertile valleys, icy mountains, and high, rolling
wind-swept plains, watered by the majestic Columbia River and its
countless branches. It is bounded on the north by Washington, on the
east by Idaho, on the south by California and Nevada, and on the west
by the Pacific Ocean. It is a grand, hearty, wholesome, foodful
wilderness and, like Washington, once a part of the Oregon Territory,
abounds in bold, far-reaching contrasts as to scenery, climate, soil,
and productions. Side by side there is drouth on a grand scale and
overflowing moisture; flinty, sharply cut lava beds, gloomy and
forbidding, and smooth, flowery lawns; cool bogs, exquisitely plushy
and soft, overshadowed by jagged crags barren as icebergs; forests
seemingly boundless and plains with no tree in sight; presenting a
wide range of conditions, but as a whole favorable to industry.
Natural wealth of an available kind abounds nearly everywhere,
inviting the farmer, the stock-raiser, the lumberman, the fisherman,
the manufacturer, and the miner, as well as the free walker in search
of knowledge and wildness. The scenery is mostly of a comfortable,
assuring kind, grand and inspiring without too much of that dreadful
overpowering sublimity and exuberance which tend to discourage effort
and cast people into inaction and superstition.
Ever since Oregon was first heard of in the romantic, adventurous,
hunting, trapping Wild West days, it seems to have been regarded as
the most attractive and promising of all the Pacific countries for
farmers. While yet the whole region as well as the way to it was
wild, ere a single road or bridge was built, undaunted by the
trackless thousand-mile distances and scalping, cattle-stealing
Indians, long trains of covered wagons began to crawl wearily
westward, crossing how many plains, rivers, ridges, and mountains,
fighting the painted savages and weariness and famine. Setting out
from the frontier of the old West in the spring as soon as the grass
would support their cattle, they pushed on up the Platte, making haste
slowly, however, that they might not be caught in the storms of winter
ere they reached the promised land. They crossed the Rocky Mountains
to Fort Hall; thence followed down the Snake River for three or four
hundred miles, their cattle limping and failing on the rough lava
plains; swimming the streams too deep to be forded, making boats out
of wagon-boxes for the women and children and goods, or where trees
could be had, lashing together logs for rafts. Thence, crossing the
Blue Mountains and the plains of the Columbia, they followed the river
to the Dalles. Here winter would be upon them, and before a wagon
road was built across the Cascade Mountains the toil-worn emigrants
would be compelled to leave their cattle and wagons until the
following summer, and, in the mean time, with the assistance of the
Hudson's Bay Company, make their way to the Willamette Valley on the
river with rafts and boats.
How strange and remote these trying times have already become! They
are now dim as if a thousand years had passed over them. Steamships
and locomotives with magical influence have well-nigh abolished the
old distances and dangers, and brought forward the New West into near
and familiar companionship with the rest of the world.
Purely wild for unnumbered centuries, a paradise of oily, salmon-fed
Indians, Oregon is now roughly settled in part and surveyed, its
rivers and mountain ranges, lakes, valleys, and plains have been
traced and mapped in a general way, civilization is beginning to take
root, towns are springing up and flourishing vigorously like a crop
adapted to the soil, and the whole kindly wilderness lies invitingly
near with all its wealth open and ripe for use.
In sailing along the Oregon coast one sees but few more signs of human
occupation than did Juan de Fuca three centuries ago. The shore
bluffs rise abruptly from the waves, forming a wall apparently
unbroken, though many short rivers from the coast range of mountains
and two from the interior have made narrow openings on their way to
the sea. At the mouths of these rivers good harbors have been
discovered for coasting vessels, which are of great importance to the
lumbermen, dairymen, and farmers of the coast region. But little or
nothing of these appear in general views, only a simple gray wall
nearly straight, green along the top, and the forest stretching back
into the mountains as far as the eye can reach.
Going ashore, we find few long reaches of sand where one may saunter,
or meadows, save the brown and purple meadows of the sea, overgrown
with slippery kelp, swashed and swirled in the restless breakers. The
abruptness of the shore allows the massive waves that have come from
far over the broad Pacific to get close to the bluffs ere they break,
and the thundering shock shakes the rocks to their foundations. No
calm comes to these shores. Even in the finest weather, when the
ships off shore are becalmed and their sails hang loose against the
mast, there is always a wreath of foam at the base of these bluffs.
The breakers are ever in bloom and crystal brine is ever in the air.
A scramble along the Oregon sea bluffs proves as richly exciting to
lovers of wild beauty as heart could wish. Here are three hundred
miles of pictures of rock and water in black and white, or gray and
white, with more or less of green and yellow, purple and blue. The
rocks, glistening in sunshine and foam, are never wholly dry -- many of
them marvels of wave-sculpture and most imposing in bulk and bearing,
standing boldly forward, monuments of a thousand storms, types of
permanence, holding the homes and places of refuge of multitudes of
seafaring animals in their keeping, yet ever wasting away. How grand
the songs of the waves about them, every wave a fine, hearty storm in
itself, taking its rise on the breezy plains of the sea, perhaps
thousands of miles away, traveling with majestic, slow-heaving
deliberation, reaching the end of its journey, striking its blow,
bursting into a mass of white and pink bloom, then falling spent and
withered to give place to the next in the endless procession, thus
keeping up the glorious show and glorious song through all times and
seasons forever!
Terribly impressive as is this cliff and wave scenery when the skies
are bright and kindly sunshine makes rainbows in the spray, it is
doubly so in dark, stormy nights, when, crouching in some hollow on
the top of some jutting headland, we may gaze and listen undisturbed
in the heart of it. Perhaps now and then we may dimly see the tops of
the highest breakers, looking ghostly in the gloom; but when the water
happens to be phosphorescent, as it oftentimes is, then both the sea
and the rocks are visible, and the wild, exulting, up-dashing spray
burns, every particle of it, and is combined into one glowing mass of
white fire; while back in the woods and along the bluffs and crags of
the shore the storm wind roars, and the rain-floods, gathering
strength and coming from far and near, rush wildly down every gulch to
the sea, as if eager to join the waves in their grand, savage harmony;
deep calling unto deep in the heart of the great, dark night, making a
sight and a song unspeakable sublime and glorious.
In the pleasant weather of summer, after the rainy season is past and
only occasional refreshing showers fall, washing the sky and bringing
out the fragrance of the flowers and the evergreens, then one may
enjoy a fine, free walk all the way across the State from the sea to
the eastern boundary on the Snake River. Many a beautiful stream we
should cross in such a walk, singing through forest and meadow and
deep rocky gorge, and many a broad prairie and plain, mountain and
valley, wild garden and desert, presenting landscape beauty on a grand
scale and in a thousand forms, and new lessons without number,
delightful to learn. Oregon has three mountain ranges which run
nearly parallel with the coast, the most influential of which, in
every way, is the Cascade Range. It is about six thousand to seven
thousand feet in average height, and divides the State into two main
sections called Eastern and Western Oregon, corresponding with the
main divisions of Washington; while these are again divided, but less
perfectly, by the Blue Mountains and the Coast Range. The eastern
section is about two hundred and thirty miles wide, and is made up in
great part of the treeless plains of the Columbia, which are green and
flowery in spring, but gray, dusty, hot, and forbidding in summer.
Considerable areas, however, on these plains, as well as some of the
valleys countersunk below the general surface along the banks of the
streams, have proved fertile and produce large crops of wheat, barley,
hay, and other products.
In general views the western section seems to be covered with one
vast, evenly planted forest, with the exception of the few snow-clad
peaks of the Cascade Range, these peaks being the only points in the
landscape that rise above the timberline. Nevertheless, embosomed in
this forest and lying in the great trough between the Cascades and
coast mountains, there are some of the best bread-bearing valleys to
be found in the world. The largest of these are the Willamette,
Umpqua, and Rogue River Valleys. Inasmuch as a considerable portion
of these main valleys was treeless, or nearly so, as well as
surpassingly fertile, they were the first to attract settlers; and the
Willamette, being at once the largest and nearest to tide water, was
settled first of all, and now contains the greater portion of the
population and wealth of the State.
The climate of this section, like the corresponding portion of
Washington, is rather damp and sloppy throughout the winter months,
but the summers are bright, ripening the wheat and allowing it to be
garnered in good condition. Taken as a whole, the weather is bland
and kindly, and like the forest trees the crops and cattle grow plump
and sound in it. So also do the people; children ripen well and grow
up with limbs of good size and fiber and, unless overworked in the
woods, live to a good old age, hale and hearty.
But, like every other happy valley in the world, the sunshine of this
one is not without its shadows. Malarial fevers are not unknown in
some places, and untimely frosts and rains may at long intervals in
some measure disappoint the hopes of the husbandman. Many a tale,
good-natured or otherwise, is told concerning the overflowing
abundance of the Oregon rains. Once an English traveler, as the story
goes, went to a store to make some purchases and on leaving found that
rain was falling; therefore, not liking to get wet, he stepped back to
wait till the shower was over. Seeing no signs of clearing, he soon
became impatient and inquired of the storekeeper how long he thought
the shower would be likely to last. Going to the door and looking
wisely into the gray sky and noting the direction of the wind, the
latter replied that he thought the shower would probably last about
six months, an opinion that of course disgusted the fault-finding
Briton with the "blawsted country," though in fact it is but little if
at all wetter or cloudier than his own.
No climate seems the best for everybody. Many there be who waste
their lives in a vain search for weather with which no fault may be
found, keeping themselves and their families in constant motion, like
floating seaweeds that never strike root, yielding compliance to every
current of news concerning countries yet untried, believing that
everywhere, anywhere, the sky is fairer and the grass grows greener
than where they happen to be. Before the Oregon and California
railroad was built, the overland journey between these States across
the Siskiyou Mountains in the old-fashioned emigrant wagon was a long
and tedious one. Nevertheless, every season dissatisfied climate-seekers,
too wet and too dry, might be seen plodding along through the
dust in the old " 49 style," making their way one half of them from
California to Oregon, the other half from Oregon to California. The
beautiful Sisson meadows at the base of Mount Shasta were a favorite
halfway resting place, where the weary cattle were turned out for a
few days to gather strength for better climates, and it was curious to
hear those perpetual pioneers comparing notes and seeking information
around the campfires.
"Where are you from?" some Oregonian would ask.
"The Joaquin."
"It's dry there, ain't it?"
"Well, I should say so. No rain at all in summer and none to speak of
in winter, and I'm dried out. I just told my wife I was on the move
again, and I'm going to keep moving till I come to a country where it
rains once in a while, like it does in every reg'lar white man's
country; and that, I guess, will be Oregon, if the news be true."
"Yes, neighbor, you's heading in the right direction for rain," the
Oregonian would say. "Keep right on to Yamhill and you'll soon be
damp enough. It rains there more than twelve months in the year; at
least, no saying but it will. I've just come from there, plumb
drownded out, and I told my wife to jump into the wagon and we should
start out and see if we couldn't find a dry day somewhere. Last fall
the hay was out and the wood was out, and the cabin leaked, and I made
up my mind to try California the first chance."
"Well, if you be a horned toad or coyote," the seeker of moisture
would reply, "then maybe you can stand it. Just keep right on by the
Alabama Settlement to Tulare and you can have my place on Big Dry
Creek and welcome. You'll be drowned there mighty seldom. The wagon
spokes and tires will rattle and tell you when you come to it."
"All right, partner, we'll swap square, you can have mine in Yamhill
and the rain thrown in. Last August a painter sharp came along one
day wanting to know the way to Willamette Falls, and I told him:
Young man, just wait a little and you'll find falls enough without
going to Oregon City after them. The whole dog-gone Noah's flood of a
country will be a fall and melt and float away some day.'" And more to
the same effect.
But no one need leave Oregon in search of fair weather. The wheat and
cattle region of eastern Oregon and Washington on the upper Columbia
plains is dry enough and dusty enough more than half the year. The
truth is, most of these wanderers enjoy the freedom of gypsy life and
seek not homes but camps. Having crossed the plains and reached the
ocean, they can find no farther west within reach of wagons, and are
therefore compelled now to go north and south between Mexico and
Alaska, always glad to find an excuse for moving, stopping a few
months or weeks here and there, the time being measured by the size of
the camp-meadow, conditions of the grass, game, and other indications.
Even their so-called settlements of a year or two, when they take up
land and build cabins, are only another kind of camp, in no common
sense homes. Never a tree is planted, nor do they plant themselves,
but like good soldiers in time of war are ever ready to march. Their
journey of life is indeed a journey with very matter-of-fact thorns in
the way, though not wholly wanting in compensation.
One of the most influential of the motives that brought the early
settlers to these shores, apart from that natural instinct to scatter
and multiply which urges even sober salmon to climb the Rocky
Mountains, was their desire to find a country at once fertile and
winterless, where their flocks and herds could find pasture all the
year, thus doing away with the long and tiresome period of haying and
feeding necessary in the eastern and old western States and
Territories. Cheap land and good land there was in abundance in
Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Iowa; but there the labor of
providing for animals of the farm was very great, and much of that
labor was crowded together into a few summer months, while to keep
cool in summers and warm in the icy winters was well-nigh impossible
to poor farmers.
Along the coast and throughout the greater part of western Oregon in
general, snow seldom falls on the lowlands to a greater depth than a
few inches, and never lies long. Grass is green all winter. The
average temperature for the year in the Willamette Valley is about 52
degrees, the highest and lowest being about 100 degrees and 20
degrees, though occasionally a much lower temperature is reached.
The average rainfall is about fifty or fifty-five inches in the
Willamette Valley, and along the coast seventy-five inches, or even
more at some points -- figures that bring many a dreary night and day to
mind, however fine the effect on the great evergreen woods and the
fields of the farmers. The rainy season begins in September or
October and lasts until April or May. Then the whole country is
solemnly soaked and poulticed with the gray, streaming clouds and
fogs, night and day, with marvelous constancy. Towards the beginning
and end of the season a good many bright days occur to break the
pouring gloom, but whole months of rain, continuous, or nearly so, are
not at all rare. Astronomers beneath these Oregon skies would have a
dull time of it. Of all the year only about one fourth of the days
are clear, while three fourths have more or less of fogs, clouds, or
rain.
The fogs occur mostly in the fall and spring.
They are grand, far-reaching affairs of two kinds,
the black and the white, some of the
latter being very beautiful, and the infinite delicacy and tenderness
of their touch as they linger to caress the tall evergreens is most
exquisite. On farms and highways and in the streets of towns, where
work has to be done, there is nothing picturesque or attractive in any
obvious way about the gray, serious-faced rainstorms. Mud abounds.
The rain seems dismal and heedless and gets in everybody's way. Every
face is turned from it, and it has but few friends who recognize its
boundless beneficence. But back in the untrodden woods where no axe
has been lifted, where a deep, rich carpet of brown and golden mosses
covers all the ground like a garment, pressing warmly about the feet
of the trees and rising in thick folds softly and kindly over every
fallen trunk, leaving no spot naked or uncared-for, there the rain is
welcomed, and every drop that falls finds a place and use as sweet and
pure as itself. An excursion into the woods when the rain harvest is
at its height is a noble pleasure, and may be safely enjoyed at small
expense, though very few care to seek it. Shelter is easily found
beneath the great trees in some hollow out of the wind, and one need
carry but little provision, none at all of a kind that a wetting would
spoil. The colors of the woods are then at their best, and the mighty
hosts of the forest, every needle tingling in the blast, wave and sing
in glorious harmony.
"T were worth ten years of peaceful life,
one glance at this array."
The snow that falls in the lowland woods is usually soft, and makes a
fine show coming through the trees in large, feathery tufts, loading
the branches of the firs and spruces and cedars and weighing them down
against the trunks until they look slender and sharp as arrows, while
a strange, muffled silence prevails, giving a peculiar solemnity to
everything. But these lowland snowstorms and their effects quickly
vanish; every crystal melts in a day or two, the bent branches rise
again, and the rain resumes its sway.
While these gracious rains are searching the roots of the lowlands,
corresponding snows are busy along the heights of the Cascade
Mountains. Month after month, day and night the heavens shed their
icy bloom in stormy, measureless abundance, filling the grand upper
fountains of the rivers to last through the summer. Awful then is the
silence that presses down over the mountain forests. All the smaller
streams vanish from sight, hushed and obliterated. Young groves of
spruce and pine are bowed down as by a gentle hand and put to rest,
not again to see the light or move leaf or limb until the grand
awakening of the springtime, while the larger animals and most of the
birds seek food and shelter in the foothills on the borders of the
valleys and plains.
The lofty volcanic peaks are yet more heavily snow-laden. To their
upper zones no summer comes. They are white always. From the steep
slopes of the summit the new-fallen snow, while yet dry and loose,
descends in magnificent avalanches to feed the glaciers, making
meanwhile the most glorious manifestations of power. Happy is the man
who may get near them to see and hear. In some sheltered camp nest on
the edge of the timberline one may lie snug and warm, but after the
long shuffle on snowshoes we may have to wait more than a month ere
the heavens open and the grand show is unveiled. In the mean time,
bread may be scarce, unless with careful forecast a sufficient supply
has been provided and securely placed during the summer.
Nevertheless, to be thus deeply snowbound high in the sky is not
without generous compensation for all the cost. And when we at length
go down the long white slopes to the levels of civilization, the pains
vanish like snow in sunshine, while the noble and exalting pleasures
we have gained remain with us to enrich our lives forever.
The fate of the high-flying mountain snow-flowers is a fascinating
study, though little may we see of their works and ways while their
storms go on. The glinting, swirling swarms fairly thicken the blast,
and all the air, as well as the rocks and trees, is as one smothering
mass of bloom, through the midst of which at close intervals come the
low, intense thunder-tones of the avalanches as they speed on their
way to fill the vast fountain hollows. Here they seem at last to have
found rest. But this rest is only apparent. Gradually the loose
crystals by the pressure of their own weight are welded together into
clear ice, and, as glaciers, march steadily, silently on, with
invisible motion, in broad, deep currents, grinding their way with
irresistible energy to the warmer lowlands, where they vanish in glad,
rejoicing streams.
In the sober weather of Oregon lightning makes but little show. Those
magnificent thunderstorms that so frequently adorn and glorify the sky
of the Mississippi Valley are wanting here. Dull thunder and
lightning may occasionally be seen and heard, but the imposing
grandeur of great storms marching over the landscape with streaming
banners and a network of fire is almost wholly unknown.
Crossing the Cascade Range, we pass from a green to a gray country,
from a wilderness of trees to a wilderness of open plains, level or
rolling or rising here and there into hills and short mountain spurs.
Though well supplied with rivers in most of its main sections, it is
generally dry. The annual rainfall is only from about five to fifteen
inches, and the thin winter garment of snow seldom lasts more than a
month or two, though the temperature in many places falls from five to
twenty-five degrees below zero for a short time. That the snow is
light over eastern Oregon, and the average temperature not intolerably
severe, is shown by the fact that large droves of sheep, cattle, and
horses live there through the winter without other food or shelter
than they find for themselves on the open plains or down in the sunken
valleys and gorges along the streams.
When we read of the mountain ranges of Oregon and Washington with
detailed descriptions of their old volcanoes towering snow-laden and
glacier-laden above the clouds, one may be led to imagine that the
country is far icier and whiter and more mountainous than it is. Only
in winter are the Coast and Cascade Mountains covered with snow. Then
as seen from the main interior valleys they appear as comparatively
low, bossy walls stretching along the horizon and making a magnificent
display of their white wealth. The Coast Range in Oregon does not
perhaps average more than three thousand feet in height. Its snow
does not last long, most of its soil is fertile all the way to the
summits, and the greater part of the range may at some time be brought
under cultivation. The immense deposits on the great central uplift
of the Cascade Range are mostly melted off before the middle of summer
by the comparatively warm winds and rains from the coast, leaving only
a few white spots on the highest ridges, where the depth from drifting
has been greatest, or where the rate of waste has been diminished by
specially favorable conditions as to exposure. Only the great
volcanic cones are truly snow-clad all the year, and these are not
numerous and make but a small portion of the general landscape.
As we approach Oregon from the coast in summer, no hint of snowy
mountains can be seen, and it is only after we have sailed into the
country by the Columbia, or climbed some one of the commanding
summits, that the great white peaks send us greeting and make telling
advertisements of themselves and of the country over which they rule.
So, also, in coming to Oregon from the east the country by no means
impresses one as being surpassingly mountainous, the abode of peaks
and glaciers. Descending the spurs of the Rocky Mountains into the
basin of the Columbia, we see hot, hundred-mile plains, roughened here
the there by hills and ridges that look hazy and blue in the distance,
until we have pushed well to the westward. Then one white point after
another comes into sight to refresh the eye and the imagination; but
they are yet a long way off, and have much to say only to those who
know them or others of their kind. How grand they are, though
insignificant-looking on the edge of the vast landscape! What noble
woods they nourish, and emerald meadows and gardens! What springs and
streams and waterfalls sing about them and to what a multitude of
happy creatures they give homes and food!
The principal mountains of the range are Mounts Pitt, Scott, and
Thielson, Diamond Peak, the Three Sisters, Mounts Jefferson, Hood, St.
Helen's, Adams, Rainier, Aix, and Baker. Of these the seven first
named belong to Oregon, the others to Washington. They rise singly at
irregular distances from one another along the main axis of the range
or near it, with an elevation of from about eight thousand to fourteen
thousand four hundred feet above the level of the sea. From few
points in the valleys may more than three or four of them be seen, and
of the more distant ones of these only the tops appear. Therefore,
speaking generally, each of the lowland landscapes of the State
contains only one grand snowy mountain.
The heights back of Portland command one of the best general views of
the forests and also of the most famous of the great mountains both of
Oregon and Washington. Mount Hood is in full view, with the summits
of Mounts Jefferson, St. Helen's, Adams, and Rainier in the distance.
The city of Portland is at our feet, covering a large area along both
banks of the Willamette, and, with its fine streets, schools,
churches, mills, shipping, parks, and gardens, makes a telling picture
of busy, aspiring civilization in the midst of the green wilderness in
which it is planted. The river is displayed to fine advantage in the
foreground of our main view, sweeping in beautiful curves around rich,
leafy islands, its banks fringed with willows.
A few miles beyond the Willamette flows the renowned Columbia, and the
confluence of these two great rivers is at a point only about ten
miles below the city. Beyond the Columbia extends the immense breadth
of the forest, one dim, black, monotonous field with only the sky,
which one is glad to see is not forested, and the tops of the majestic
old volcanoes to give diversity to the view. That sharp, white,
broad-based pyramid on the south side of the Columbia, a few degrees
to the south of east from where you stand, is the famous Mount Hood.
The distance to it in a straight line is about fifty miles. Its upper
slopes form the only bare ground, bare as to forests, in the landscape
in that direction. It is the pride of Oregonians, and when it is
visible is always pointed out to strangers as the glory of the
country, the mountain of mountains. It is one of the grand series of
extinct volcanoes extending from Lassen's Butte
31
to Mount Baker, a
distance of about six hundred miles, which once flamed like gigantic
watch-fires along the coast. Some of them have been active in recent
times, but no considerable addition to the bulk of Mount Hood has been
made for several centuries, as is shown by the amount of glacial
denudation it has suffered. Its summit has been ground to a point,
which gives it a rather thin, pinched appearance.
It has a wide-flowing base, however, and is fairly well proportioned.
Though it is eleven thousand feet high,
it is too far off to make much show under
ordinary conditions in so extensive a landscape. Through a great part
of the summer it is invisible on account of smoke poured into the sky
from burning woods, logging camps, mills, etc., and in winter for
weeks at a time, or even months, it is in the clouds. Only in spring
and early summer and in what there may chance to be of bright weather
in winter is it or any of its companions at all clear or telling.
From the Cascades on the Columbia it may be seen at a distance of
twenty miles or thereabouts, or from other points up and down the
river, and with the magnificent foreground it is very impressive. It
gives the supreme touch of grandeur to all the main Columbia views,
rising at every turn, solitary, majestic, awe-inspiring, the ruling
spirit of the landscape. But, like mountains everywhere, it varies
greatly in impressiveness and apparent height at different times and
seasons, not alone from differences as to the dimness or transparency
of the air. Clear, or arrayed in clouds, it changes both in size and
general expression. Now it looms up to an immense height and seems to
draw near in tremendous grandeur and beauty, holding the eyes of every
beholder in devout and awful interest. Next year or next day, or even
in the same day, you return to the same point of view, perhaps to find
that the glory has departed, as if the mountain had died and the poor
dull, shrunken mass of rocks and ice had lost all power to charm.
Never shall I forget my first glorious view of Mount Hood one calm
evening in July, though I had seen it many times before this. I was
then sauntering with a friend across the new Willamette bridge between
Portland and East Portland for the sake of the river views, which are
here very fine in the tranquil summer weather. The scene on the water
was a lively one. Boats of every description were gliding, glinting,
drifting about at work or play, and we leaned over the rail from time
to time, contemplating the gay throng. Several lines of ferry boats
were making regular trips at intervals of a few minutes, and river
steamers were coming and going from the wharves, laden with all sorts
of merchandise, raising long diverging swells that make all the light
pleasure craft bow and nod in hearty salutation as they passed. The
crowd was being constantly increased by new arrivals from both shores,
sailboats, rowboats, racing shells, rafts, were loaded with gayly
dressed people, and here and there some adventurous man or boy might
be seen as a merry sailor on a single plank or spar, apparently as
deep in enjoyment as were any on the water. It seemed as if all the
town were coming to the river, renouncing the cares and toils of the
day, determined to take the evening breeze into their pulses, and be
cool and tranquil ere going to bed.
Absorbed in the happy scene, given up to dreamy, random observation of
what lay immediately before me, I was not conscious of anything
occurring on the outer rim of the landscape. Forest, mountain, and
sky were forgotten, when my companion suddenly directed my attention
to the eastward, shouting, "Oh, look! look!" in so loud and excited a
tone of voice that passers-by, saunterers like ourselves, were
startled and looked over the bridge as if expecting to see some boat
upset. Looking across the forest, over which the mellow light of the
sunset was streaming, I soon discovered the source of my friend's
excitement. There stood Mount Hood in all the glory of the alpenglow,
looming immensely high, beaming with intelligence, and so impressive
that one was overawed as if suddenly brought before some superior
being newly arrived from the sky.
The atmosphere was somewhat hazy, but the mountain seemed neither near
nor far. Its glaciers flashed in the divine light. The rugged,
storm-worn ridges between them and the snowfields of the summit, these
perhaps might have been traced as far as they were in sight, and the
blending zones of color about the base. But so profound was the
general impression, partial analysis did not come into play. The
whole mountain appeared as one glorious manifestation of divine power,
enthusiastic and benevolent, glowing like a countenance with ineffable
repose and beauty, before which we could only gaze in devout and lowly
admiration.
The far-famed Oregon forests cover all the western section of the
State, the mountains as well as the lowlands, with the exception of a
few gravelly spots and open spaces in the central portions of the
great cultivated valleys. Beginning on the coast, where their outer
ranks are drenched and buffeted by wind-driven scud from the sea, they
press on in close, majestic ranks over the coast mountains, across the
broad central valleys, and over the Cascade Range, broken and halted
only by the few great peaks that rise like islands above the sea of
evergreens.
In descending the eastern slopes of the Cascades the rich, abounding,
triumphant exuberance of the trees is quickly subdued; they become
smaller, grow wide apart, leaving dry spaces without moss covering or
underbrush, and before the foot of the range is reached, fail
altogether, stayed by the drouth of the interior almost as suddenly as
on the western margin they are stayed by the sea. Here and there at
wide intervals on the eastern plains patches of a small pine (Pinus
contorta) are found, and a scattering growth of juniper, used by the
settlers mostly for fence posts and firewood. Along the stream
bottoms there is usually more or less of cottonwood and willow, which,
though yielding inferior timber, is yet highly prized in this bare
region. On the Blue Mountains there is pine, spruce, fir, and larch
in abundance for every use, but beyond this range there is nothing
that may be called a forest in the Columbia River basin, until we
reach the spurs of the Rocky Mountains; and these Rocky Mountain
forests are made up of trees which, compared with the giants of the
Pacific Slope, are mere saplings.
[Back to chapter 20]
·
[Forward to chapter 22]