at is to
come. Pioneering is along different lines than in the old days, but it
still is pioneering, and the call of it is as insistent for ears
properly tuned.

I hear the tread of pioneers
Of cities yet to be,
The first low wash of waves where soon
Will roll a human sea.

The waves have wet the shores, but their true advance has scarce begun.

CHAPTER II

The Valley of Content

Oregon--the old Oregon Territory of yesterday and the State of
to-day--is our very own. It was neither bought, borrowed, nor stolen
from another nation. It is of the United States because our fathers came
here first, carved out homes from the wilderness, and unfurled their
flag overhead; through the most fundamental of rights--that of
discovery, coupled with possession and development.

The New England States we inherited from Britain, although the will was
sorely contested. For Louisiana we paid a price. Texas and California we
annexed from Mexico, and purchased New Mexico and Arizona. Alaska was
bought from Russia for a song. Alone of all the United States the old
Oregon Territory became ours by normal acquisition.

Thence, perhaps, is the compelling attraction for the native-born of
Oregon to-day. Mayhap a touch of historic romance clings about the
country; or it may be simply the feeling of bigness, the broad
expansiveness of the views, the mightiness of mountains, the splendor of
the trees, and the air's crisp vitality that make Oregon life so worth
while.

Whatever the explanation, it is assuredly a pleasant place in which to
live, this land of Oregon, and the transplanted Easterner cannot but be
conscious of its attractions, just as he is of the myriad delights of
the entire Coast country. A land of delight it is, from Puget Sound to
the riviera of California, from the snow mountains to the sagebrush
plains, where rose the dust of immigrants' "prairie schooners" not so
many years ago.

The guardian of Oregon's southern gateway is Shasta, and close beside
its gleaming flanks rolls the modern trail of steel whereon the wayfarer
from San Francisco passes over the Siskiyous into the valleys of the
Rogue and the Umpqua.

Shasta displays its attractions surpassingly well. An appreciative
nature placed this great white gem in a wondrously appropriate setting
of broken foothills and timbered reaches that billow upward to the snow
line from the south and west, with never a petty rival to break the calm
dominanc