ss was divorced years ago from the simple pleasures
of the out-of-doors.

Portland is a city of prosperity. That fact strikes home to the most
casual observer. Blessed above all else--especially in the eyes of an
Easterner--is its freedom from poverty. There are no slums, no "lower
east side" like New York's rabbit warrens, no Whitechapel hell holes. It
is a clean, youthful city, delightfully located on either side of its
river and rising on surrounding hills of rare beauty. Its metropolitan
maturity, indeed, is all the more remarkable for its youth, as seventy
years ago the site of the town was a howling wilderness, set in the
midst of a territory peopled at best by a few score whites.

It was in 1845 that the first settler, Overton by name, made his home
where now is Portland. Close after him came Captain John H. Couch, who
located a donation land claim where is now the northern portion of the
city. And from that beginning gradually grew the city of to-day which
in the California gold rush of the early fifties received her first
notable impetus through her position as a commanding supply point for
the fast-crowding and lavishly opulent sister State to the south.

Born at the hands of pioneers and weaned with the gold of California,
the city was sturdily founded, and to-day the strength of the pioneer
blood and the glow of the golden beginnings are still upon her.

The fairest of fair Portland is seen from her show hilltop, Council
Crest. The days are not all sunny, but when they are and neither "Oregon
mist"--which is a local humor for downright rain--nor clouds obscure the
outlook, the easterly skyline from Council Crest is a superbly pleasing
introduction to the State. Over the mists of the lowlands you see Mount
Hood, and to have seen Mount Hood, even from afar, is to have tasted the
rarest visual delight of all the Northwest land. Shasta, to the south,
was an imposing welcomer to the empire of surpassing views, but Hood
outdoes Shasta and its snow-crowned neighbors of the old Oregon country
as completely as the pinnacles of Switzerland overshadow their lesser
companions of the Italian Alps. Hood, somehow, breathes the very spirit
of the State it stands for; its charm is the essence of the beauty of
its surroundings, its stateliness the keynote of the strength of the
sturdy West. It is a white, chaste monument of hope, radiantly setting
for its peoples roundabout a mark of high attainment.

A city of destiny it