their lives in a vain search for weather with which no fault may be

found, keeping themselves and their families in constantmotion, 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 Oregon and California
railroad was built, the overland journey between these States across

the Siskiyou Mountains in the old-fashionedemigrant 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 " 49 style," making their way one half of them from

California to Oregon, the other half from Oregon to California. The
beautiful Sisson 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 those perpetual pioneers comparing notes and seeking information
around the campfires.

"Where are you from?" some Oregonian would ask.
"The Joaquin."

"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 in every reg'lar white man's
country; and that, I guess, will be Oregon, if the news be true."

"Yes, neighbor, you's heading in the right direction for rain," the
Oregonian would say. "Keep right on to Yamhill and you'll soon be

damp enough. It rains there more than twelve months in the year; at
least, no saying but it will. I've just come from there, plumb

drownded out, and 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 be a horned toad or coyote," the seeker of moisture
would reply, "then maybe you can stand it. Just keep right on by the

Alabama Settlement to Tulare and you can have my place on Big Dry
Creek and welcome. You'll be drowned there mighty seldom. The wagon

spokes and tires will rattle and tell you when you come to it."
"All right, partner, we'll swap square, 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-gone 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,
but like 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 whollywanting 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 haying 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 on 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 fifty or fifty-five inches in the

Willamette Valley, and along the coast seventy-five inches, or even
more at some points--figures that bring many a dreary night and day to

mind, however fine 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 and poulticed with the gray, streaming clouds and

fogs, night and day, with marvelousconstancy. Towards the beginning
and end of the season a good many bright days occur 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 infinitedelicacy 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 in some hollow out of the wind, and one need

carry but little provision, none at all of a kind that a wetting would
spoil. The colors of the woods are then at their best, and the mighty

hosts of the forest, every needle tingling in the blast, wave and sing
in glorious harmony.

" T were 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 peculiarsolemnity 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 sway.

While these gracious rains are searching the roots of the lowlands,
corresponding snows are busy along the heights of the 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 as by a gentle hand and put to rest,

not again to see the light or move 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.