The descent was accomplished without disaster, though several of the
party had narrow escapes. One slipped and fell, and as he shot past

me seemed to be going to certain death. So steep was the ice slope no
one could move to help him, but fortunately, keeping his presence of

mine, he threw himself on his face and digging his alpenstock into the
ice, gradually retarded his motion until he came to rest. Another

broke through a slim bridge over a crevasse, but his momentum at the
time carried him against the lower edge and only his alpenstock was

lost in the abyss. Thus crippled by the loss of his staff, we had to
lower him the rest of the way down the dome by means of the rope we

carried. Falling rocks from the upper precipitous part of the ridge
were also a source of danger, as they came whizzing past in successive

volleys; but none told on us, and when we at length gained the gentle
slopes of the lower ice fields, we ran and slid at our ease, making

fast, glad time, all care and danger past, and arrived at our beloved
Cloud Camp before sundown.

We were rather weak from want of nourishment, and some suffered from
sunburn, notwithstanding the partialprotection 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, fertilevalleys, icy mountains, and high, rolling
wind-swept plains, watered by the majestic Columbia River and its

countless branches. It is bounded on the north by Washington, on the
east by Idaho, on the south by California and Nevada, and on the west

by the Pacific Ocean. It is a grand, hearty, wholesome, foodful
wilderness and, like Washington, once a part of the Oregon Territory,

abounds in bold, far-reaching contrasts as to scenery, climate, soil,
and productions. Side by side there is drouth on a grand scale and

overflowing moisture; flinty, sharply cut lava beds, gloomy and
forbidding, and smooth, flowery lawns; cool bogs, exquisitely plushy

and soft, overshadowed by jagged crags barren as icebergs; forests
seemingly boundless and plains with no tree in sight; presenting a

wide range of conditions, but as a whole favorable to industry.
Natural wealth of an available kind abounds nearly everywhere,

inviting the farmer, the stock-raiser, the lumberman, the fisherman,
the manufacturer, and the miner, as well as the free walker in search

of knowledge and wildness. The scenery is mostly of a comfortable,
assuring kind, grand and inspiring without too much of that dreadful

overpowering sublimity and exuberance which tend to discourage effort
and cast people into inaction and superstition.

Ever since Oregon was first heard of in the romantic, adventurous,
hunting, trapping Wild West days, it seems to have been regarded as

the most attractive and promising of all the Pacific countries for
farmers. While yet the whole region as well as the way to it was

wild, ere a single road or bridge was built, undaunted by the
trackless thousand-mile distances and scalping, cattle-stealing

Indians, long trains of covered wagons began to crawl wearily
westward, crossing how many plains, rivers, ridges, and mountains,

fighting the painted savages and weariness and famine. Setting out
from the frontier of the old West in the spring as soon as the grass

would support their cattle, they pushed on up the Platte, making haste
slowly, however, that they might not be caught in the storms of winter

ere they reached the promised land. They crossed the Rocky Mountains
to Fort Hall; thence followed down the Snake River for three or four

hundred miles, their cattle limping and failing on the rough lava
plains; swimming the streams too deep to be forded, making boats out

of wagon-boxes for the women and children and goods, or where trees
could be had, lashing together logs for rafts. Thence, crossing the

Blue Mountains and the plains of the Columbia, they followed the river
to the Dalles. Here winter would be upon them, and before a wagon

road was built across the Cascade Mountains the toil-worn emigrants
would be compelled to leave their cattle and wagons until the

following summer, and, in the mean time, with the assistance of the
Hudson's Bay Company, make their way to the Willamette Valley on the

river with rafts and boats.
How strange and remote these trying times have already become! They

are now dim as if a thousand years had passed over them. Steamships
and locomotives with magical influence have well-nigh abolished the

old distances and dangers, and brought forward the New West into near
and familiar companionship with the rest of the world.

Purely wild for unnumbered centuries, a paradise of oily, salmon-fed
Indians, Oregon is now roughly settled in part and surveyed, its

rivers and mountain ranges, lakes, valleys, and plains have been
traced and mapped in a general way, civilization is beginning to take

root, towns are springing up and flourishing vigorously like a crop
adapted to the soil, and the whole kindly wilderness lies invitingly

near with all its wealth open and ripe for use.
In sailing along the Oregon coast one sees but few more signs of human

occupation than did Juan de Fuca three centuries ago. The shore
bluffs rise abruptly from the waves, forming a wall apparently

unbroken, though many short rivers from the coast range of mountains
and two from the interior have made narrow openings on their way to

the sea. At the mouths of these rivers good harbors have been
discovered for coasting vessels, which are of great importance to the

lumbermen, dairymen, and farmers of the coast region. But little or
nothing of these appear in general views, only a simple gray wall

nearly straight, green along the top, and the forest stretching back
into the mountains as far as the eye can reach.

Going ashore, we find few long reaches of sand where one may saunter,
or meadows, save the brown and purplemeadows of the sea, overgrown

with slippery kelp, swashed and swirled in the restless breakers. The
abruptness of the shore allows the massive waves that have come from

far over the broad Pacific to get close to the bluffs ere they break,
and the thundering shock shakes the rocks to their foundations. No

calm comes to these shores. Even in the finest weather, when the
ships off shore are becalmed and their sails hang loose against the

mast, there is always a wreath of foam at the base of these bluffs.
The breakers are ever in bloom and crystal brine is ever in the air.

A scramble along the Oregon sea bluffs proves as richly exciting to
lovers of wild beauty as heart could wish. Here are three hundred

miles of pictures of rock and water in black and white, or gray and
white, with more or less of green and yellow, purple and blue. The

rocks, glistening in sunshine and foam, are never wholly dry--many of
them marvels of wave-sculpture and most imposing in bulk and bearing,

standing boldly forward, monuments of a thousand storms, types of
permanence, holding the homes and places of refuge of multitudes of

seafaring animals in their keeping, yet ever wasting away. How grand
the songs of the waves about them, every wave a fine, hearty storm in

itself, taking its rise on the breezy plains of the sea, perhaps
thousands of miles away, traveling with majestic, slow-heaving

deliberation, reaching the end of its journey, striking its blow,
bursting into a mass of white and pink bloom, then falling spent and

withered to give place to the next in the endless procession, thus
keeping up the glorious show and glorious song through all times and

seasons forever!
Terribly impressive as is this cliff and wave scenery when the skies

are bright and kindly sunshine makes rainbows in the spray, it is
doubly so in dark, stormy nights, when, crouching in some hollow on

the top of some jutting headland, we may gaze and listen undisturbed
in the heart of it. Perhaps now and then we may dimly see the tops of

the highest breakers, looking ghostly in the gloom; but when the water
happens to be phosphorescent, as it oftentimes is, then both the sea

and the rocks are visible, and the wild, exulting, up-dashing spray
burns, every particle of it, and is combined into one glowing mass of

white fire; while back in the woods and along the bluffs and crags of
the shore the storm wind roars, and the rain-floods, gathering

strength and coming from far and near, rush wildly down every gulch to
the sea, as if eager to join the waves in their grand, savage harmony;

deep calling unto deep in the heart of the great, dark night, making a
sight and a song unspeakablesublime and glorious.

In the pleasant weather of summer, after the rainy season is past and
only occasionalrefreshingshowers 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