CHARACTERISTICS OF OREGON 



in beautiful curves around rich, leafy islands, 

 its banks fringed with willows. 



A few miles beyond the Willamette flows 

 the renowned Columbia, and the confluence 

 of these two great rivers is at a point only 

 about ten miles below the city. Beyond the 

 Columbia extends the immense breadth of 

 the forest, one dim, black, monotonous field, 

 with only the sky, which one is glad to see 

 is not forested, and the tops of the majestic 

 old volcanoes to give diversity to the view. 

 That sharp, white, broad-based pyramid on 

 the south side of the Columbia, a few degrees 

 to the south of east from where you stand, is 

 the famous Mount Hood. The distance to 

 it in a straight line is about fifty miles. Its 

 upper slopes form the only bare ground, bare 

 as to forests, in the landscape in that direction. 

 It is the pride of Oregonians, and when it is 

 visible is always pointed out to strangers as 

 the glory of the country, the mountain of 

 mountains. It is one of the grand series of 

 extinct volcanoes extending from Lassen's 

 Butte 1 to Mount Baker, a distance of about 

 six hundred miles, which once flamed like 

 gigantic watch-fires along the coast. Some of 

 them have been active in recent times, but 

 no considerable addition to the bulk of Mount 



1 Lassen Peak on recent maps. [Editor.] 

 293 



