We were rather weak from want of nourishment, and some suffered from
sunburn, notwithstanding the partial protection of glasses and veils;
otherwise, all were unscathed and well. The view we enjoyed from the
summit could hardly be surpassed in sublimity and grandeur; but one
feels far from home so high in the sky, so much so that one is
inclined to guess that, apart from the acquisition of knowledge and the
exhilaration of climbing, more pleasure is to be found at the foot of
the mountains than on their tops. Doubly happy, however, is the man to
whom lofty mountain tops are within reach, for the lights that shine
there illumine all that lies below.

XXI. The Physical and Climatic Characteristics of Oregon

Oregon is a large, rich, compact section of the west side of the
continent, containing nearly a hundred thousand square miles of deep,
wet evergreen woods, fertile valleys, icy mountains, and high, rolling
wind-swept plains, watered by the majestic Columbia River and its
countless branches. It is bounded on the north by Washington, on the
east by Idaho, on the south by California and Nevada, and on the west by
the Pacific Ocean. It is a grand, hearty, wholesome, foodful wilderness
and, like Washington, once a part of the Oregon Territory, abounds
in bold, far-reaching contrasts as to scenery, climate, soil, and
productions. Side by side there is drouth on a grand scale and
overflowing moisture; flinty, sharply cut lava beds, gloomy and
forbidding, and smooth, flowery lawns; cool bogs, exquisitely plushy and
soft, overshadowed by jagged crags barren as icebergs; forests seemingly
boundless and plains with no tree in sight; presenting a wide range of
conditions, but as a whole favorable to industry. Natural wealth of
an available kind abounds nearly everywhere, inviting the farmer, the
stock-raiser, the lumberman, the fisherman, the manufacturer, and the
miner, as well as the free walker in search of knowledge and wildness.
The scenery is mostly of a comfortable, assuring kind, grand and
inspiring without too much of that dreadful overpowering sublimity and
exuberance which tend to discourage effort and cast people into inaction
and superstition.

Ever since Oregon was first heard of in the romantic, adventurous,
hunting, trapping Wild West days, it seems to have been regarded as the
most attractive and promising of all the Pacific countries for farmers.
While yet the whole region as well as the way to it