 CHAPTER XXI OF STEEP TRAILS 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 windswept 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 part of the Oregon Territory, abounds in bold, far-reaching contrast as to scenery, climate, soil, and productions. Side by side there is drought 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. Yet while 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 plat, making haste slowly, however, that they may 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 forwarded, 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 Dallas. 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 meantime, with the assistance of the Hudson's Bag 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. Steam ships 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. Oregon 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 signs of human occupation, then did one Defuka 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 offshore are becombed 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 a 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 of 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 oftimes is, then both the sea and the rocks are visible, and the wild, exulting, updashing 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 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 passed 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. Washington 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 6,000 to 7,000 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 230 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 produced 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. In as much 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 Tidewater, was settled first of all and now contains the greater portion of the population and wealth of the state. The climate of the 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 to the people, children ripen well and grow up with limbs of good size and fiber and, unless overworked in the woods, live to be a good old age, hail 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 frost and rains may at long intervals, in some measure, disappoint the hopes of the husbandmen. 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 until 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 noted the direction of the wind, the latter replied that he thought the shower would probably last to about six months, an opinion that, of course, disgusted the fault-finding Britain with the blasted 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 organ in California Railroad were 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 forty-nine style, making their way one half of them from California to Oregon and the other half from Oregon to California. The beautiful Cison 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 these perpetual pioneers comparing notes and seeking information around the campfires. Where are you from? some Oregonian would ask. Dojoking. 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 every regular white man's country. And that, I guess, will be Oregon, if the news be true. Yes, neighbor, you're headed in the right direction for rain, the Oregonian would say. Keep right on to Yamhill, and you'll soon be damp enough. Rain's there more than 12 months in the year, at least no saying, but it will. I've just come from there, plunge round out. 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'd be a horn toad or coyote, the seeker of moisture would reply. And maybe you can stand it. Just keep right on by the Alabama settlement to Tulori, and you can have my place on Big Dry Creek and welcome. You'll be drowned there mighty seldom. The wagon spokes, tires will rattle and tell you when you come to it. All right, partner. We'll swap square, and 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 on 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 like the 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 hang 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 in 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 50 or 55 inches in the Willamette Valley, and along the coast 75 inches, or even more at some points, figures that bring many a dreary night and day to mind however find 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 in poultice with the gray streaming clouds and fogs, night and day, with marvelous constancy. Since the beginning and end of the season a good many bright days occurred 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 and some hollow out of the wind, and one need carry but little provision, not at all of a kind that a wedding would spoil. The colors of the woods are then at their best, and the mighty hosts of the forest every needle tangling in the blast wave and sing in glorious harmony. To a 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 way. While these gracious rains are searching the roots of the lowlands, corresponding snows are busy along the heights of these 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 by a gentle hand and put to rest, not again to see the light remove 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 ground show is unveiled. In the meantime bread may be scarce and less with careful forecast as sufficient supplies been provided and securely placed during the summer. Nonetheless 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 and 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 massive 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 5 to 15 inches, and the thin winter garment of snow seldom lasts more than a month or two, though the temperature in many places falls from 5 to 25 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 wider 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 3,000 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 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 and 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 Mount Pit, Scott, and Tealson, Diamond Peak, the Three Sisters, Mount Jefferson, Hood, St. Ellen's, Adams, Rainier, X, 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 8,000 to 14,400 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 Mount Jefferson, St. Helens, 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 find advantage in the foreground of our main view, sweeping and 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 10 miles below the city. Beyond the Columbia extends the immense breadth of the forest, one dim black mountainous 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 the eastward, from where you stand, is the famous Mount Hood. The distance to it, in a straight line, is about 50 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 Lessons Bute to Mount Baker, a distance of about 600 miles, which once flamed like gigantic watchfires 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 11,000 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 pouring into the sky from burning woods, logging camps, mills, etc., and in the 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, making 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 gaily 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 an 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 air 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 Alpen Glow, looming immensely high, beaming with intelligence, and so impressive that one was over-odd 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-warm ridges between them and the snow-fields 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. What 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, and glowing like accountants 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 there are 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 has reached, fail altogether, stayed by the drought of the interior almost as suddenly as on the western margin there 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. CHAPTER XXII. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Steep Trails by John Muir The Forest of Oregon and Their Inhabitants Like the forests of Washington already described, those of Oregon are in great part made up of the Douglas Spruce, or Oregon Pine, Abbeace du Glossier. A large number of mills are at work upon these species, especially along the Columbia, but these as yet have made but little impression upon its dense masses. The mills here are being small as compared with those of the Puget Sound region. The White Cedar, or Port Orford Cedar, Coupressus lassoniena, or Commasiparis lassoniena, is one of the most beautiful of the evergreens, and produces excellent lumber, considerable quantities of which are shipped to the San Francisco market. It is found mostly about Coos Bay along the Coquille River, and on the northern slopes of the Siskiu Mountains, and extends down the coast into California. The silver furs, the spruces, and the colossal Arborvitae, or White Cedar, Fouya Gigantia, described in the chapter on Washington, are also found here in great beauty and perfection. The largest of these, Piscia grandis louden, Abbeace grandis linley, being confined mostly to the coast region, where it attains a height of three hundred feet, and a diameter of ten or twelve feet. Five or six species of pines are found in the state, the most important of which both as to lumber and as to the part they play in the general wealth and beauty of the forests, are the yellow and sugar pines, Pinus Ponderosa, and Pinus Lambertiana. The yellow pine is most abundant on the eastern slopes of the Cascades, forming there the main bulk of the forest in many places. It is also common along the borders of the open spaces in Willamette Valley. In the southern portion of the state, the sugar pine, which is the king of all pines and the glory of the Sierra Forests, occurs in considerable abundance in the basins of the Umka and Rogue rivers, and it was in the Umka Hills that this noble tree was first discovered by the enthusiastic botanical explorer David Douglas in the year eighteen twenty-six. This is the Douglas for whom the noble Douglas spruce is named, and many a fair blooming plant also, which will serve to keep his memory fresh and sweet as long as beautiful trees and flowers are loved. The Indians of the Lower Columbia River watched him with lively curiosity as he wandered about the woods day after day, gazing intently on the ground or at the great trees, collecting specimens of everything he saw, but unlike all the eager fur-gathering strangers they had hitherto seen, caring nothing about trade. And when at length they came to know him better, and saw that from year to year the growing things of the woods and prairies, meadows and plains, were his only object of pursuit, they called him the Man of Grass, a title of which he was proud. He was a Scotchman and first came to this coast in the spring of eighteen twenty-five under the auspices of the London Horticultural Society, landing at the mouth of the Columbia after a long dismal voyage of eight months and fourteen days. During this first season he chose Fort Vancouver, belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company, as his headquarters, and from there made excursions into the glorious wilderness in every direction, discovering many new species among the trees, as well as among the rich underbrush and smaller herbaceous vegetation. It was while making a trip to Mount Hood this year that he discovered the two largest and most beautiful furs in the world, Piscia amavilus and Piscia nobilus, now called aviace, and from the seeds which he then collected and sent home tall trees are now growing in Scotland. In one of his trips that summer in the lower Willamette Valley he saw in an Indian's tobacco pouch some of the seeds and scales of a new species of pine, which he learned were gathered from a large tree that grew far to the southward. Most of the following season was spent in the upper waters of the Columbia, and it was not until September that he returned to Fort Vancouver about the time of the setting in of the winter rains. Nevertheless, bearing in mind the great pine he had heard of and the seeds of which he had seen, he made haste to set out on an excursion to the headwaters of the Willamette in search of it, and how he fared on this excursion and what dangers and hardships he endured is best told in his own journal, part of which I quote as follows. October 26, 1826. Weather dull, cold and cloudy. When my friends in England are made acquainted with my travels I fear they will think that I have told them nothing but my miseries. I quitted my camp early in the morning to survey the neighbouring country, leaving my guide to take charge of the horses until my return in the evening. About an hour's walk from the camp I met an Indian who, on perceiving me instantly, strung his bow, placed on his left arm a sleeve of raccoon skin, and stood on the defensive. Being quite sure that conduct was prompted by fear and not by hostile intentions, the poor fellow having probably never seen such a being as myself before, I laid my gun at my feet on the ground and waved my hand for him to come to me, which he did slowly and with great caution. I then made him place his bow and quiver of arrows beside my gun and, striking a light, gave him a smoke out of my own pipe and a present of a few beads. With my pencil I made a rough sketch of the cone and pine tree which I wanted to obtain and drew his attention to it. When he instantly pointed with his hand to the hill's fifteen or twenty miles distant towards the south, and when I expressed my intention of going thither, cheerfully set about accompanying me, at midday I reached my long-wished four pines and lost no time in examining them and endeavouring to collect specimens and seeds. New and strange things seldom fail to make strong impressions and are therefore frequently overrated, so that, lest I should never see my friends in England to inform them verbally of this most beautiful and immensely grand tree, I shall here state the dimensions of the largest I could find among several that had been blown down by the wind. At three feet from the ground its circumference is fifty-seven feet, nine inches, and at one hundred and thirty-four feet, seventeen feet, five inches, the extreme length two hundred and forty-five feet, as it was impossible either to climb the tree or hew it down. I endeavour to knock off the cones by firing at them with ball. When the report of my gun brought eight Indians, all of them painted with red earth, armed with bows, arrows, bone-tipped spears, and flint-knives, they appeared anything but friendly. I explained to them what I wanted, and they seemed satisfied and sat down to smoke. But presently I saw one of them string his bow and another sharpen his flint-knife with a pair of wooden pincers, and suspend it on the wrist of his right hand. Their testimony of their intentions was unnecessary. To save myself by flight was impossible, so without hesitation I stepped back about five paces, cocked my gun, drew one of the pistols out of my belt, and holding it in my left hand, the gun in my right, showed myself determined to fight for my life. As much as possible I endeavour to preserve my coolness, and thus we stood looking at one another without making any movements or uttering a word for perhaps ten minutes. Then one at last, who seemed to be the leader, gave a sign that they wished for some tobacco. This I signified they should have if they fetched a quantity of cones. They went off immediately in search of them, and no sooner were they all out of sight than I picked up my three cones and some twigs of the trees and made the quickest possible retreat, hurrying back to my camp, which I reached before dusk. The Indian who last undertook to be my guide to the trees I sent off before gaining my encampment, lest he should betray me. How irksome is the darkness of night to one under such circumstances! I cannot speak a word to my guide, nor have I a book to divert my thoughts which are continually occupied with the dread lest the hostile Indians should trace me hither and make an attack. I now wright lying on the grass with my gun cocked beside me, and penning these lines by the light of my Colombian candle, namely an ignited piece of rosin wood. This named this magnificent species Pinus Lambertiana, in honor of his friend Dr. Lambert of London. This is the noblest pine thus far discovered in the forest of the world, surpassing all others not only in size, but in beauty and majesty. Oregon may well be proud that its discovery was made within her borders, and that, though it is far from abundant in California, she has the largest known specimens. In the Sierra, the finest sugar pine forests lie at an elevation of about five thousand feet. In Oregon they occupy much lower ground, some of the trees being found but little above tide water. No lover of trees will ever forget his first meeting with the sugar pine. In most coniferous trees there is a sameness of form and expression which at length becomes wearsome to most people who travel far in the woods, but the sugar pines are as free from conventional forms as any of the oaks. No two are so much alike as to hide their individuality from any observer. Every tree is appreciated as a study in itself and proclaims in no uncertain terms the surpassing grandeur of the species. The branches, mostly near the summit, are sometimes nearly forty feet long, feathered richly all around with short leafy branchlets and tasseled with cones of a foot and a half long, and when these superb arms are outspread radiating in every direction an immense crown-like mass is formed, which, poised on the noble shaft and filled with sunshine, is one of the grandest forest objects conceivable. But though so wild and unconventional when full grown, the sugar pine is a remarkably regular tree in youth, a strict follower of coniferous fashions, slim, erect, tapering, symmetrical, every branch in place. At the age of fifty or sixty years this shy, fashionable form begins to give way. The branches are thrust out away from the general outlines of the trees and bent down with cones. Henceforth it becomes more and more original and independent in style, pushes boldly aloft into the winds and sunshine, growing evermore stately and beautiful, a joy and inspiration to every beholder. Unfortunately the sugar pine makes excellent lumber. It is too good to live, and is already passing rapidly away before the woodman's axe. Surely out of all of the abounding forest wealth of Oregon a few specimens may be spared to the world, not as dead lumber, but as living trees. A park of moderate extent might be set apart and protected for public use for ever, containing at least a few hundreds of each of these noble pines, spruces, and furs. Happy will be the men who, having the power and the love and benevolent forecast to do this, will do it. They will not be forgotten. The trees and their lovers will sing their praises, and generations yet unborn will rise up and call them blessed. Daunting the prairies and fringing the edges of the great evergreen forest, we find a considerable number of hardwood trees, such as oak, maple, ash, alder, laurel, madrone, flowering dogwood, wild cherry, and wild apple. The white oak, Quercus garyana, is the most important of the Oregon oaks as a timber tree, but not nearly so beautiful as Kellogg's oak, Quercus Kelloggii. The former is found mostly along the Columbia River, particularly about the Dallas, and a considerable quantity of useful lumber is made from it and sold, sometimes for eastern white oak to wagon makers. Kellogg's oak is a magnificent tree and does much for the picturesque beauty of the Umqua and Rogue River valleys where it abounds. It is also found in all the Yosemite valleys of the Sierra, and its acorns form an important part of the food of the Digger Indians. In the Siskiyoo Mountains, there is a live oak, Quercus chrysalopus, wide-spreading and very picturesque in form, but not very common. It extends southward along the western flank of the Sierra, and is there more abundant and much larger than in Oregon, oftentimes five to eight feet in diameter. The maples are the same as those in Washington, already described, but I have not seen any maple groves here equal in extent or in the size of the trees to those on the Snokwami River. The Oregon ash is now rare along the stream banks of western Oregon, and it grows to a good size and furnishes lumber that is for some purposes equal to the white ash of the western states. Nuttall's flowering dogwood makes a brave display with its wealth of show invalucras in the spring along cool streams. Specimens of the flowers may be found measuring eight inches in diameter. The wild cherry, prunus emergenata, variety mollus, is a small handsome tree seldom more than a foot in diameter at the base. It makes valuable lumber and its black astringent fruit furnishes a rich resource as food for the birds. A smaller form is common in the Sierra, the fruit of which is eagerly eaten by the Indians and hunters in time of need. The wild apple, pyrus rivillaris, is a fine, hearty handsome little tree that grows well in rich cool soil along streams and on the edges of beaver meadows, from California through Oregon and Washington to southeastern Alaska. In Oregon it forms dense, tangled thickets, some of them almost impenetrable. The largest trunks are nearly a foot in diameter. When in bloom it makes a fine show with its abundant clusters of flowers, which are white and fragrant. The fruit is very small and savagely acid. It is wholesome, however, and is eaten by birds, bears, Indians, and many other adventurers, great and small. Passing from beneath the shadows of the woods where the trees grow close and high, we step into charming wild gardens full of lilies, orchids, heathwards, roses, et cetera. With colors so gay and forming such sumptuous masses of bloom, they make the gardens of civilization, however lovingly cared for, seem pathetic and silly. Around the great fire mountains above the forest and beneath the snow, there is a flowery zone of marvelous beauty planted with anemones, erythroniums, daisies, bryanthus, chalmaia, vaccinium, cassiope, saxofragus, et cetera. Forming one continuous garden 50 or 60 miles in circumference, and so deep and luxuriant and closely woven, it seems as if nature, glad to find an opening, were economizing space and trying to see how many of her bright-eyed darlings she can get together in one mountain wreath. Along the slopes of the cascades where the woods are less dense, especially about the headwaters of the Willamette, there are miles of rhododendron, making glorious outbursts of purple bloom, and down on the prairies in rich damp hollows, the blue flowered camassia grows in such perfusion that at a little distance its dense masses appear as beautiful blue lakes embedded in the green flowery plains. While all about the streams and the lakes and the beaver meadows and the margins of the deep woods, there is a magnificent tangle of gulteria and huckleberry bushes with their myriads of pink bells, reinforced with hazel, cornel, rubus of many species, wild plum, cherry, and crab-apple, besides thousands of charming bloomers to be found in all sorts of places throughout the wilderness whose mere names are refreshing, such as Linaya, Menciacea, Pyrola, Chimophila, Brodii, Smilacina, Fritillaria, Callicortus, Trillium, Clintonia, Veratrum, Cypropetium, Gutierre, Spearanthus, Habinaria, and the rare and lovely Hydra of the North, Calypso Borealis, to find which is alone a sufficient object for a journey into the wilderness, and besides these there is a charming underworld of ferns and mosses flourishing gloriously beneath all the woods. Everybody loves wild woods and flowers more or less. Seeds of all these Oregon evergreens and of many of the flowering shrubs and plants have been sent to almost every country under the sun, and they are now growing in carefully tended parks and gardens, and now that the ways of approach are open, one would expect to find these woods and gardens full of admiring visitors reveling in their beauty, like bees in a clover field, yet few care to visit them. A portion of the bark of one of the California trees, the mere dead skin, excited the wondering attention of thousands when it was set up in the Crystal Palace in London. As did also a few peeled spars, the shafts of mere saplings from Oregon or Washington. Could one of these great silver furs or sugarpines three hundred feet high have been transplanted entire to that exhibition? How enthusiastic would have been the praises accorded to it? Nevertheless, the countless hosts waving at home beneath their own sky, beside their own noble rivers and mountains, and standing on a flower enameled carpet of mosses, thousands of square miles in extent, attract but little attention. Most travelers content themselves with what they may chance to see from car windows, hotel verandas, or the deck of a steamer on the Lower Columbia, clinging to the battered highways like drowning sailors to a life raft. When an excursion into the woods is proposed, all sorts of exaggerated or imaginary dangers are conjured up, filling the kindly, soothing wilderness with colds, fevers, Indians, bears, snakes, bugs, impassable rivers, and jungles of brush, to which is always added quick and sure starvation. As to starvation, the woods are full of food, and a supply of bread may easily be carried for habit's sake, and replenished now and then at outlying farms and camps. The Indians are seldom found in the woods, being confined mainly to the banks of rivers, where the greater part of their food is obtained. Moreover, the most of them have been either buried since the settlement of the country or civilized into comparative innocence, industry, or harmless laziness. There are bears in the woods, but not in such numbers nor of such unspeakable ferocity as town dwellers imagine, nor do bears spend their lives in going about the country like the devil, seeking whom they may devour. Oregon bears, like most others, have no liking for man, either as meat or as society, and while some may be curious at times to see what manner of creature he is, most of them have learned to shun people as deadly enemies. They have been poisoned, trapped, and shot at until they have become shy, and it is no longer easy to make their acquaintance. Indeed, since the settlement of the country, not withstanding for the greater portion is yet wild, it is difficult to find any of the larger animals that once were numerous and comparatively familiar, such as the bear, wolf, panther, lynx, deer, elk, and antelope. As early as 1843, while the settlers numbered only a few thousands, and before any sort of government had been organized, they came together and held what they called a wolf meeting, at which a committee was appointed to devise means for the destruction of wild animals, destructive to tame ones, which committee in due time begged to report as follows. It being admitted by all that bears, wolves, panthers, etc., are destructive to the useful animals owned by the settlers of this colony, your committee would submit the following resolutions as the sense of this meeting, by which the community may be governed in carrying on a defensive and destructive war on all such animals. Resolved first, that we deem it expedient for the community to take immediate measures for the destruction of all wolves, panthers and bears, and such other animals as are known to be destructive to cattle, horses, sheep, and hogs. Second, that a bounty of fifty cents be paid for the destruction of a small wolf, three dollars for a large wolf, one dollar fifty cents for a lynx, two dollars for a bear, and five dollars for a panther. This center of destruction was in the Willamette Valley. But for many years prior to the beginning of the operations of the wolf organization, the Hudson's Bay Company had established forts and trading stations over all the country, wherever fur gathering Indians could be found, and vast numbers of these animals were killed. Their destruction has since gone on at an accelerated rate from year to year, as the settlements have been extended, so that in some cases it is difficult to obtain specimens enough for the use of naturalists. But even before any of these settlements were made, and before the coming of the Hudson's Bay Company, there was very little danger to be met in passing through this wilderness as far as animals were concerned, and but little, if any, kind as compared with the dangers encountered in crowded houses and streets. When Lewis and Clark made their famous trip across the continent in 1804-5, when all the Rocky Mountain regions were wild, as well as the Pacific Slope, they did not lose a single man by wild animals, nor, though frequently attacked, especially by the grizzlies of the Rocky Mountains, were any of them wounded seriously. Captain Clark was bitten on the hand by a wolf as he lay asleep. That was one bite among more than a hundred men, while traveling through eight to nine thousand miles of savage wilderness. They could hardly have been so fortunate had they stayed at home. They wintered on the edge of the clats up plains on the south side of the Columbia River, near its mouth. In the woods on the side they found game abundant, especially elk, and with the aid of the friendly Indians who furnished salmon and wapatu, the tubers of Sagittaria variabilis, they were in no danger of starving. But on the return trip in the spring they reached the base of the Rocky Mountains when the range was yet too heavily snow-laden to be crossed with horses. Therefore they had to wait some weeks. This elk was at the head of one of the northern branches of the Snake River, and their scanty stock of provisions being nearly exhausted. The whole party was compelled to live mostly on bears and dogs. Deer, antelope, and elk, usually abundant, were now scarce because the region had been closely hunted over by the Indians before their arrival. Lewis and Clark had killed a number of bears and saved the skins of the more interesting specimens, and the variations they found in size, color of the hair, etc., made great difficulty in classification, wishing to get the opinion of the Choppumish Indians, near one of whose villages they were encamped, concerning the various species, the explorers unpacked their bundles and spread out for examination all the skins they had taken. The Indian hunters immediately classed the white, the deep and the pale, grizzly red, the grizzly dark brown, in short all those with the extremities of the hair of a white or frosty color without regard to the color of the ground or foil, under the name of Ho Haast. The Indians assured them that these were all of the same species as the white bear, that they associated together, had longer nails than the others, and never climbed trees. On the other hand, the black skins, those that were black with white hairs intermixed or with a white breast, the uniformed bay, the brown, and the light reddish brown, were classed under the name Yaka'a, and were said to resemble each other in being smaller, and having shorter nails in climbing trees, and being so little vicious that they could be pursued with safety. Lewis and Clark came to the conclusion that all those with white-tipped hair found by them in the basin of the Columbia belong to the same species as the grizzlies of the Upper Missouri, and that the black and reddish brown, etc., of the Rocky Mountains belong to a second species equally distinct from the grizzly and the black bear of the Pacific Coast and the East, which never vary in color. As much as possible should be made by the ordinary traveler of these descriptions, for he will be likely to see very little of any species for himself. Not that bears no longer exist here, but because being shy, they keep out of the way. In order to see them and learn their habits, one must go softly and alone, lingering long in the fringing woods on the banks of the salmon streams, and in the small openings in the midst of thickets, where berries are most abundant. As for rattlesnakes, the other grand dread of town dwellers, when they leave beaten roads, there are two, or perhaps three, species of them in Oregon. But they are nowhere to be found in great numbers. In Western Oregon they are hardly known at all. In all my walks in the Oregon forest I have never met a single specimen, though a few have been seen at long intervals. When the country was first settled by the whites fifty years ago, the elk roamed through the woods and over the plains to the east of the Cascades in immense numbers. Now they are rarely seen except by experienced hunters who know their haunts in the deepest and most inaccessible solitudes in which they have been driven. So majestic an animal forms a tempting mark for the sportsman's rifle. Countless thousands have been killed from mere amusement, and they already seem to be nearing extinction as rapidly as the buffalo. The antelope also is vanishing from the Columbia Plains, before the farmers and the cattlemen. Whether the moose still lingers in Oregon or Washington I am unable to say. On the highest mountains of the Cascade range the wild goat roams in comparative security. Few of his enemies caring to go so far in pursuit and to hunt on ground so high and dangerous. He is a brave, sturdy, shaggy mountaineer of an animal, enjoying the freedom and security of crumbling ridges and overhanging cliffs above the glaciers, oftentimes beyond the reach of the most daring hunter. They seem to be as much at home on the ice and snow fields as on the crags, making their way in flocks from ridge to ridge on the great volcanic mountains by crossing the glaciers that lie between them, traveling in single file, guided by an old experienced leader, like a party of climbers on the Alps. On these ice journeys they pick their way through networks of crevasses and overbridges of snow with admirable skill, and the mountaineer may seldom do better in such places than to follow their trail, if he can. In the rich alpine gardens and meadows they find abundance of food, venturing sometimes well down in the prairie openings on the edge of the timber-line, but holding themselves ever alert and watchful, ready to flee to their highland castles at the faintest alarm. When their summer pastures are buried beneath the winter snows, they make haste to the lower ridges, seeking the wind-beaten crags and slopes, where the snow cannot lie at any great depth, feeding at times on the leaves and twigs of bushes when grass is beyond reach. The wild sheep is another admirable alpine rover, but comparatively rare in the Oregon mountains, choosing rather the drier ridges to the southward on the Cascades and to the eastward among the spurs of the Rocky Mountain chain. Deer give beautiful animation to the forests, harmonizing finely in their color and movements with the gray and brown shafts of the trees and the swaying of the branches, harmonizing finely in their color and movements with the gray and brown shafts of the trees and the swaying of the branches as they stand in groups at rest, or move gracefully and noiselessly over the mossy ground above the edges of beaver meadows and flowery glades, daintily culling the leaves and tips of the mints and aromatic bushes on which they feed. There are three species, the black-tailed, white-tailed, and mule deer, the last being restricted in its range to the open woods and plains to the eastward of the Cascades. They are nowhere very numerous now, killing for food, for hides, or for mere wanton sport, having well-nigh exterminated them in the more accessible regions, while elsewhere they are too often at the mercy of the wolves. Gliding about in their shady forest homes, keeping well out of sight, there is a multitude of sleek, fur-clad animals living and enjoying their clean, beautiful lives. How beautiful and interesting they are is about as difficult for busy mortals to find out as if their homes were beyond sight in the sky. Hence the stories of every wild hunter and trapper are eagerly listened to as being possibly true, or partly so, however thickly clothed in successive folds of exaggeration and fancy. Unsatisfying as these accounts must be, a tourist frightened rush and scramble through the woods yields far less than the hunter's wildest story. While in writing, we can do but little more than to give a few names as they come to mind. Beaver, squirrel, coon, fox, martin, fisher, otter, ermine, wildcat. Only this instead of full descriptions of the bright-eyed furry throng, their snug home nests, their fears and fights and loves, how they get their food, rear their young, escape their enemies, and keep themselves warm and well, and exquisitely clean through all the pitiless weather. For many years before the settlement of the country, the fur of the beaver brought a high price, and therefore it was pursued with wearless ardour. Not even in the quest for gold has a more ruthless, desperate energy been developed. It was in those early beaver days that the striking class of adventurers called free trappers made their appearance. Bold, enterprising men, eager to make money and inclined to the same time to relish the licence of a savage life, would set forth with a few traps and a gun and a hunting-knife, content at first to venture only a short distance up the beaver streams nearest to the settlements, and where the Indians were not likely to molest them. There they would set their traps, while the buffalo, antelope, deer, etc., furnished a royal supply of food. In a few months their pack animals would be laden with thousands of dollars worth of fur. Next season they would venture farther, and again farther, meanwhile growing rapidly wilder, getting acquainted with the Indian tribes, and usually marrying among them. Vents forward no danger could stay them in their exciting pursuit. Wherever they were beaver they would go, however far or wild. The wilder the better, provided their scalps could be saved. Oftentimes they were compelled to set their traps and visit them by night, and lie hid during the day, when operating in the neighbourhood of hostile Indians. Not then venturing to make a fire or shoot game, they lived on the raw flesh of the beaver, perhaps seasoned with wild cresses or berries. Then returning to the trading stations they would spend their hard earnings in a few weeks of dissipation and good time, and go again to the bears and beavers, until at length a bullet or arrow would end all. One after another would be missed by some friend or trader at the autumn rendezvous, reported killed by the Indians, and forgotten. Some men of this class have, from superior skill or fortune, escaped every danger, lived to a good old age and earned fame, and by their knowledge of the topography of the vast west, then unexplored, have been able to render important service to the country. But most of them laid their bones in the wilderness after a few short keen seasons. So great were the perils that beset them, the average length of the life of a free trapper has been estimated at less than five years. From the Columbia waters beaver and beaver men have almost wholly passed away, and the men once so striking a part of the view have left scarcely the faintest sign of their existence. On the other hand, a thousand meadows on the mountains tell the story of the beavers to remain fresh and green for many a century, monuments of their happy industrious lives. But there is a little airy elfin animal on these woods, and in all the evergreen woods of the Pacific coast that is more influential and interesting than even the beaver. This is the Douglas Squirrel, Shiros de Glossi. Go where you will throughout all these noble forests you everywhere find this little squirrel the master existence. Though only a few inches long, so intense in his fiery vigor and restlessness, he stirs every grove with wildlife and makes himself more important than the great bears that shuffle through the berry tangles beneath them. Every tree feels the sting of his sharp feet. Nature has made him master forester and committed the greater part of the coniferous crops to his management. Probably over half of all the ripe cones of the spruces, furs, and pines are cut off and handled by this busy harvester. Most of them are stored away for food through the winter and spring, but apart are pushed into shallow pits and covered loosely, where some of the seeds are no doubt left to germinate and grow up. All the tree squirrels are more or less bird-like in voice and movements, but the Douglas is preeminently so, possessing every squirrelish attribute, fully developed and concentrated. He is the squirrel of squirrels, flashing from branch to branch of his favorite evergreens, crisp and glossy in sound as a sunbeam. He stirs the leaves like a rustling breeze, darting across openings in arowy lines, launching in curves, glinting deftly from side to side in sudden zig-zags, and swirling in giddy loops and spirals around the trunks, now on his haunches, now on his head, yet ever graceful in performing all his feats of strength and skill without apparent effort. One never tires of this bright spark of life, the brave little voice crying in the wilderness. His varied, piney gossip is as savoury to the air as balsam to the palette. Some of his notes are almost flute-like and softness, while other prick and tingle-like thistles. He is the mockingbird of squirrels, barking like a dog, screaming like a hawk, whistling like a blackbird or linnit, while in bluff, audacious noisiness he is a jay, a small thing, but filling and animating all the woods. Nor is there any lack of wings, not withstanding few or to be seen on short noisy rambles. The oozle sweetens the shady glens and canyons where waterfalls abound, and every grove or forest, however silent it may seem, when we chance to pay it a hasty visit, has its singers, thrushes, linnits, warblers, while hummingbirds glint and hover above the fringing masses of bloom, around stream and meadow openings. But few of these will show themselves or sing their songs to those who are ever in haste and getting lost, going in gangs, formidable in color and accoutrements, laughing, hallowing, breaking limbs off the trees as they pass, awkwardly struggling through briaring thickets, entangled like blue bottles and spiderwebs, and stopping from time to time to fire off their guns and pistols for the sake of the echoes, thus frightening all the life about them for miles. It is this class of hunters and travelers who report that there are no birds in the woods or game animals of any kind, larger than mosquitoes. Besides the singing birds mentioned above, the handsome Oregon grouse may be found in the thick woods, also the dusky grouse and Franklin's grouse, and in some places the beautiful mountain partridge or quail, the white-tailed ptarmigan, lives on the lofty snow peaks above the timber, and the prairie chicken and sage-cock, on the broad Columbia Plains from the Cascade Range, back to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The bald eagle is very common along the Columbia River, or wherever fish, especially salmon, are plentiful. While swans, herons, cranes, pelicans, geese, ducks of many species, and waterbirds in general abound in the lake region, on the main streams and along the coast, stirring the waters and sky into fine, lively pictures, greatly to the delight of wandering lovers of wildness. End of Chapter 22 The Forests of Oregon and Their Inhabitants Chapter 23 of Steep Trails This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by John Denison Steep Trails by John Muir Turning from the woods and their inhabitants to the rivers, we find that while the former are rarely seen by travelers beyond the immediate borders of the settlements, the Great River of Oregon draws crowds of enthusiastic admirers to sound its praises. Every summer, since the completion of the first overland railroad, tourists have been coming to it in ever-increasing numbers, showing that in general estimation, the Columbia is one of the chief attractions of the Pacific Coast, and well it deserves the admiration so heartily bestowed upon it. The beauty and majesty of its waters and the variety and grandeur of the scenery through which it flows lead many to regard it as the most interesting of all the Great Rivers of the continent, notwithstanding the claims of the other members of the family to which it belongs and which nobody can measure, the Frasier, McKenzie, Saskatchewan, the Missouri, Yellowstone, Platt, and the Colorado, with their glacier and geyser fountains, their famous canyons, lakes, forests, and vast flowery prairies and plains. These Great Rivers and the Columbia are intimately related. All draw their upper waters from the same high fountains on the broad rugged uplift of the Rocky Mountains, their branches interlacing like the branches of trees, they sing their first songs together on the heights, then collecting their tributaries, they set out on their grand journey to the Atlantic, Pacific, or Arctic Ocean. The Columbia, viewed as one from the sea to the mountains, is like a rugged, broad-topped, picturesque old oak, about six hundred miles long and nearly a thousand miles wide measured across the spread of its upper branches. The main limbs gnarled and swollen with lakes and lake-like expansions, while innumerable smaller lakes shine like fruit among the smaller branches. The main trunk extends back through the coast and Cascade Mountains, in a general easterly direction, for three hundred miles, when it divides abruptly into two grand branches, which bend off to the northeastward and southeastward. The south branch, the longer of the two, called the Snake or Lewis River, extends into the Rocky Mountains as far as the Yellowstone National Park, where its head tributaries interlace with those of the Colorado, Missouri, and Yellowstone. The north branch, still called the Columbia, extends through Washington far into British territory, its highest tributaries reaching back through long parallel spurs of the Rockies, between and beyond the headwaters of the Fraser, Athabasca, and Saskatchewan. Each of these main branches, dividing again and again, spreads a network of channels over the vast complicated mass of the Great Range throughout a section nearly a thousand miles in length, searching every fountain, however small or great, and gathering a glorious harvest of crystal water, to be rolled through forest and plain in one majestic flood to the sea, reinforced on the way by tributaries that drain the Blue Mountains, and more than two hundred miles of the Cascade and Coast ranges. Though less than half as long as the Mississippi, it is said to carry as much water. The amount of its discharge at different seasons, however, has never been exactly measured, but in time of flood its current is sufficiently massive and powerful to penetrate the sea to a distance of fifty or sixty miles from shore, its waters being easily recognized by the difference in color and by the drift of leaves, berries, pine cones, branches, and trunks of trees that they carry. That so large a river as the Columbia, making a teling current so far from shore, should remain undiscovered while one exploring expedition after another sailed past seems remarkable, even after due allowance is made for the cloudy weather that prevails hereabouts, and the broad fence of breakers drawn across the bar. During the last few centuries, when the maps of the world were in great part blank, the search for new worlds was fashionable business, and when such large game was no longer to be found, islands lying unclaimed in the great oceans, inhabited by useful and profitable people to be converted or enslaved, became attractive objects, also new ways to India, seas, straits, alderados, fountains of youth, and rivers that flowed over golden sands. Those early explorers and adventurers were mostly brave, enterprising, and, after their fashion, pious men. In their clumsy sailing vessels they dared to go where no charter lighthouse showed the way, where the set of the currents, the location of sunken, outlying rocks and shoals were all unknown, facing fate and weather, undaunted, however dark the signs, heaving the lead and thrashing the men to their duty and trusting to Providence. When a new shore was found on which they could land, they said their prayers with superb audacity, fought the natives if they cared to fight, erected crosses, and took possession in the names of their sovereigns, establishing claims, such as they were, to everything in sight and beyond, to be quarreled for and battled for, and passed from hand to hand in treaties and settlements made during the intermissions of war. The branch of the river that bears the name of Columbia, all the way to its head, takes its rise in two lakes, about ten miles in length, that lie between the Selkirk and main ranges of the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia, about eighty miles beyond the boundary line. They are called the upper and lower Columbia Lakes, issuing from these the young river holds a nearly straight course for a hundred and seventy miles in a northwesterly direction, to a plain called Boat Encampment, receiving many beautiful affluence by the way from the Selkirk and main ranges, among which are the Beaverfoot, Blackberry, Spilly Michini, and Gold Rivers. At Boat Encampment it receives two large tributaries, the Canoe River from the northwest, a stream about a hundred and twenty miles long, and the Whirlpool River from the north, about a hundred and forty miles in length. The Whirlpool River takes its rise near the summit of the main axis of the range on the 54th parallel and is the northmost of all the Columbia waters. About thirty miles above its confluence with the Columbia, it flows through a lake called the Punch Bowl, and thence it passes between Mounts Hooker and Brown, said to be fifteen thousand and sixteen thousand feet high, making magnificent scenery. Though the height of the mountains thereabouts has been considerably overestimated. From Boat Encampment, the river, now a large clear stream, sent to be nearly a third of a mile in width, doubles back on its original course, and flows southward as far as its confluence with the Spokane in Washington, a distance of nearly three hundred miles in a direct line. Most of the way through a wild, rocky, picturesque mass of mountains, charmingly forested with pine and spruce, though the trees seem strangely small, like second growth saplings to one familiar with the western forests of Washington, Oregon, and California. About forty-five miles below Boat Encampment are the Upper Dallas, or Dallas-Dumore, and thirty miles farther, the Lower Dallas, where the river makes a magnificent uproar and interrupts navigation. About thirty miles below the Lower Dallas, the river expands into Upper Arrow Link, a beautiful sheet of water, forty miles long and five miles wide. Straight is an arrow, and with the beautiful forests of the Selkirk Range rising from its east shore, and those of the Gold Range from the west. At the foot of the lake are the narrows, a few miles in length, and after these rapids are passed, the river enters Lower Arrow Lake, which is like the upper arrow, but is even longer and not so straight. A short distance below the Lower Arrow, the Columbia receives the Kootenay River, the largest affluent thus far on its course, and said to be navigable for small steamers for a hundred and fifty miles. It is an exceedingly crooked stream, heading beyond the Upper Columbia Lakes, and, in its mazy course, flowing to all points of the compass, it seems lost and baffled in the tangle of mountain spurs and ridges it drains. Measured around its loops and bends, it is probably more than five hundred miles in length. It is also rich in lakes, the largest, Kootenay Lake, being upwards of seventy miles in length, and an average width of five miles. A short distance below the confluence of the Kootenay, near the boundary line between Washington and British Columbia, another large stream comes in from the East, Clark's Fork, or the Flathead River. Its upper sources are near those of the Missouri and South Saskatchewan, and in its course, it flows through two large and beautiful lakes, the Flathead and the Pondoree. All the lakes we have noticed thus far would make charming places of summer resort, but Pondoree, besides being surpassingly beautiful, has the advantage of being easily accessible, since it is on the main line of the Northern Pacific Railroad in the territory of Idaho. In the purity of its waters, it reminds one of Tahoe, while its many picturesque islands crowned with evergreens and its winding shores forming an endless variety of bays and promontories, lavishly crowded with spirey spruce and cedar, recall some of the best of the island scenery of Alaska. About 35 miles below the mouth of Clark's Fork, the Columbia is joined by the Nihui al Pitku River from the Northwest. Here, too, are the great Chaudyere, or Kettle Falls, on the main river, with a total descent of about 50 feet. Fifty miles farther down, the Spokane River, a clear dashing stream, comes in from the East. It is about 120 miles long and takes its rise in the beautiful Lake Kurtaline in Idaho, which receives the drainage of nearly 100 miles of the western slopes of the Bitterroot Mountains through the St. Joseph and Kurtaline rivers. The lake is about 20 miles long, set in the midst of charming scenery, and, like Pondoré, is easy of access and is already attracting attention as a summer place for enjoyment, rest and health. The famous Spokane Falls are in Washington, about 30 miles below the lake, where the river is outspread and divided, and makes a grand descent from a level basaltic plateau, giving rise to one of the most beautiful, as well as one of the greatest and most available of water powers in the state. The city of the same name is built on the plateau along both sides of the series of cascades and falls, which, rushing and sounding through the midst, gives singular beauty and animation. The young city is also rushing and booming. It's founded on a rock, leveled and prepared for it, and its streets require no grading or paving. As a power to whirl the machinery of a great city, and at the same time to train the people to a love of the sublime and beautiful as displayed in living water, the Spokane Falls are unrivaled, at least as far as my observation has reached. Nowhere else have I seen such lessons given by a river in the streets of a city, such a glad, exulting, abounding outgush, crisp and clear from the mountains, dividing, falling, displaying its wealth, calling aloud in the midst of the busy throng, and making glorious offerings for every use of utility or adornment. From the mouth of the Spokane, the Columbia, now out of the woods, flows to the westward with a broad, stately current for 120 miles to receive the Okanagan, a large, generous tributary, 160 miles long, coming from the north and drawing some of its waters from the Cascade Range. More than half its course is through a chain of lakes, the largest of which, at the head of the river, is over 60 miles in length. From its confluence with the Okanagan, the river pursues a southerly course for 150 miles, most of the way through a dreary, treeless, parched plain to meet the Great South Fork. The Lewis, or Snake River, is nearly a thousand miles long and drains nearly the whole of Idaho, a territory rich in scenery, gold mines, flowery, grassy valleys, and deserts. While some of the highest tributaries reach into Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada. Throughout a great part of its course, it is countersunk in a black lava plain and shut in by mural precipices a thousand feet high, gloomy, forbidding, and unapproachable, although the gloominess of its canyon is relieved in some manner by its many falls and springs, some of the springs being large enough to appear as the outlets of subterranean rivers. They gush out from the faces of the sheer black walls and descend foaming with brave roar and beauty to swell the flood below. From where the river skirts the base of the Blue Mountains, its surroundings are less forbidding. Much of the country is fertile, but its canyon is everywhere deep and almost inaccessible. Steamers make their way up as far as Lewiston, a hundred and fifty miles, and receive cargos of wheat at different points through chutes that extend down from the tops of the bluffs. But though the Hudson's Bay Company navigated the North Fork to its sources, they depend altogether on pack animals for the transportation of supplies and furs between the Columbia and Fort Hall on the head of the South Fork, which shows how desperately unmanageable a river it must be. A few miles above the mouth of the Snake, the Yakima, which drains a considerable portion of the Cascade Range, enters from the Northwest. It is about a hundred and fifty miles long, but carries comparatively little water, a great part of what it sets out with from the base of the mountains being consumed in irrigated fields and meadows in passing through the settlements along its course, and by evaporation on the parched desert plains. The grand flood of the Columbia, now from half a mile to a mile wide, sweeps on to the westward, holding a nearly direct course until it reaches the mouth of the Willamette, where it turns to the northward and flows fifty miles along the main valley between the coast and Cascade Ranges. Ered again resumes its westward course to the sea. In all its course from the mouth of the Yakima to the sea, a distance of three hundred miles, the only considerable affluent from the northward is the Cowlitz, which heads in the glaciers of Mount Rainier. From the south and east it receives the Walla Walla and Umatilla, rather short and dreary-looking streams, though the plains they pass through have proved fertile, and their upper tributaries in the Blue Mountains, shaded with tall pines, furs, spruces, and the beautiful Oregon Larch, Larix Previfolia, lead into a delightful region. The John Day River also heads in the Blue Mountains and flows into the Columbia, sixty miles below the mouth of the Umatilla. Its valley is in great part fertile, and is noted for the interesting fossils discovered in it by Professor Condon in sections cut by the river through the overlying lava beds. The Deschutes River comes in from the south, about twenty miles below the John Day. It is a large boisterous stream draining the eastern slope of the Cascade Range for nearly two hundred miles, and from the great number of falls on the main trunk, as well as on its many mountain tributaries, well deserves its name. It enters the Columbia with a grand roar of falls and rapids, and at times seems almost arrival the main stream in the volume of water it carries. Near the mouth of the Deschutes are the Falls of the Columbia, where the river passes a rough bar of lava. The descent is not great, but the immense volume of water makes a grand display. During the flood season the falls are obliterated, and skilful boatmen pass over them in safety, while the Dallas, some six or eight miles below, may be passed during low water, but are utterly impassable in flood time. At the Dallas the vast river is jammed together into a long narrow slot of unknown depth cut sheer down in the basalt. This slot, or trough, is about a mile and a half long, and about sixty yards wide at the narrowest place. At ordinary times the river seems to be set on edge and runs swiftly but without much noisy surging with a descent of about twenty feet to the mile. But when the snow is melting on the mountains the river rises here sixty feet, or even more during extraordinary freshettes, and spreads out over a great breadth of massive rocks through which have been cut several other gorges running parallel with the one usually occupied. All these inferior gorges now come into use and the huge roaring torrent, still rising and spreading at length overwhelms the high-jacket rock walls between them, making a tremendous display of chafing, surging, shattered currents, countercurrents, and hallowed whirls that no words can be made to describe. A few miles below the Dallas the storm-tossed river gets itself together again, looks like water, becomes silent, and with stately tranquil deliberation goes on its way out of the gray region of sage and sand into the Oregon woods. Thirty-five or forty miles below the Dallas are the cascades of the Columbia, where the river and passing through the mountains makes another magnificent display of foaming, surging rapids, which form the first obstruction to navigation from the ocean, a hundred and twenty miles distant. This obstruction is to be overcome by locks which are now being made. Between the Dallas and the cascades the river is like a lake, a mile or two wide, lying in a valley or canyon, about three thousand feet deep. The walls of the canyon lean well back in most places and leave here and there small strips or bays of level ground along the water's edge, but towards the cascades and for some distance below the immediate banks are guarded by walls of columnar basalt, which are worn in many places into a great variety of bold and picturesque forms, such as the castle rock, the rooster rock, the pillars of Hercules, Cape Horn, etc. While back of these rise the sublime mountain walls, farce crowned and fringed more or less from top to base with pine, spruce, and shaggy underbrush, especially in the narrow gorges and ravines, where innumerable small streams come dancing and drifting down, misty and white to join the mighty river. Many of these falls on both sides of the canyon of the Columbia are far larger and more interesting in every way than would be guessed from the slight glimpses one gets of them while sailing past on the river or from the car windows. The Moldenoma Falls are particularly interesting and occupy fern-line gorges of marvelous beauty in the basalt. They are said to be about eight hundred feet in height and at times of high water when the mountain snows are melting are well worthy of a place beside the famous falls of Yosemite Valley. According to an Indian tradition, the river of the cascades once flowed through the basalt beneath a natural bridge that was broken down during a mountain war when the old volcanoes, Hood and St. Helens, on opposite sides of the river, hurled rocks at each other, thus forming a dam. That the river has been dammed here to some extent and within a comparatively short time seems probable, to say the least, since great numbers of submerged trees standing erect may be found along both shores, while, as we have seen, the whole river for thirty miles above the cascades looks like a lake or mill pond. On the other hand, it is held by some that the submerged groves were carried into their places by immense landslides. Much of interest in the connection must necessarily be omitted for want of space. About forty miles below the cascades, the river receives the Willamette, the last of its great tributaries. It is navigable for ocean vessels as far as Portland, ten miles above its mouth, and for river steamers, a hundred miles farther. The falls of the Willamette are fifteen miles above Portland, where the river, coming out of dense woods, breaks its way across a bar of black basalt, and falls forty feet in a passion of snowy foam, showing to find advantage against its background of evergreens. Of the fertility and beauty of the Willamette, all the world has heard. It lies between the Cascade and Coast Ranges, and is bound on the south by the Calapuya Mountains, a crossbird that separates it from the valley of the Umqua. It was here the first settlements for agriculture were made, and a provisional government organized, while the settlers, isolated in the far wilderness, numbered only a few thousand, and were laboring under the opposition of the British government and the Hudson's Bay Company. Eager desire in the acquisition of territory on the part of these pioneer state builders was more truly boundless than the wilderness they were in, and their unconscionable patriotism was equaled only by their belligerents. For here, while negotiations were pending for the location of the northern boundary, originated the celebrated Fifty-Four Forty or Fight, about as reasonable a war cry as The North Pole or Fight. Yet sad was the day that brought the news of the signing of the treaty fixing their boundary along the 49th parallel, thus leaving the little land-hungry settlement only a mere quarter million of miles. As the Willamette is one of the most foodful of valleys, so is the Columbia, one of the most foodful of rivers. During the Fisher's harvest time, salmon from the sea come in countless millions, urging their way against falls, rapids, and shallows, up into the very heart of the Rocky Mountains, supplying everybody by the way with most bountiful masses of delicious food, weighing from twenty to eighty pounds each, plump and smooth like loaves of bread ready for the oven. The supply seems inexhaustible, as well it might. Large quantities were used by the Indians as fuel, and by the Hudson's Bay people as manure for their gardens at the forts. Used, wasted, canned, and sent in shiploads to all the world, a grand harvest was reaped every year while nobody sowed. Of late, however, the salmon crop has begun to fail, and millions of young fry are now sown like wheat in the river every year, from hatching establishments belonging to the government. All of the Oregon waters that win their way to the sea are a tributary to the Columbia, save the short streams of the immediate coast and the Umqua and Rogue Rivers in southern Oregon. These both head in the Cascade Mountains and find their way to the sea through gaps in the coast range, and both drain large and fertile and beautiful valleys. Rogue River Valley is peculiarly attractive. With a fine climate and kindly productive soil, the scenery is delightful. About the main, central open portion of the basin, dotted with picturesque groves of oak, there are many smaller valleys charmingly environed. The whole, surrounded in the distance, by the Siskiyou, Coast, Umqua, and Cascade Mountains. Besides, the cereals nearly every sort of fruit flourishes here, and large areas are being devoted to peach, apricot, nectarine, and vine culture. To me, it seems above all others, the Garden Valley of Oregon and the most delightful place for a home. On the eastern rim of the valley, in the Cascade Mountains, about 60 miles from Medford in a direct line, is the remarkable Crater Lake, usually regarded as one grand wonder of the region. It lies in a deep, shear-walled basin about 7,000 feet above the level of the sea, supposed to be the crater of an extinct volcano. Oregon, as it is today, is a very young country, though most of it seems old. Contemplating the Columbia sweeping from forest to forest, across plain and desert, one has led to save it, as did Byron of the ocean, such as creations dawn beheld, thou rollest now. How ancient appear the crumbling basaltic monuments along its banks, and the gray plains to the east of the Cascades. Nevertheless, the river, as well as its basin, in anything like their present condition, are comparatively but of yesterday. Looming no further back in the geological records than the tertiary period, the Oregon of that time looks altogether strange in the few suggestive glimpses we may get of it. Forests in which palm trees wave their royal crowns, and strange animals roaming beneath them, or about the reedy margins of lakes, the Oriadon, the Lofiadon, and several extinct species of the horse and camel and other animals. Then came the fire period, with its darkening showers of ashes and cinders, and its vast floods of molten lava, making quite another Oregon from the fair and fertile land of the preceding era. And again, while yet the volcanic fire shows signs of action in the smoke and flame of the higher mountains, the whole region passes under the dominion of ice, and from the frost and darkness and death of the glacial period, Oregon has but recently emerged to the kindly warmth and life of