IN GREEN ALASKA 



Devils and the Wallowas. Reappearing at the 

 mouth of the Clearwater, it bends westerly and cuts 

 another long canyon across the high plateau of 

 eastern Oregon and Washington. It does not trav- 

 erse any flat country until it finally emerges on the 

 sand plains near its junction with the Columbia. 



Our train made a long detour through Oregon 

 and Washington, and put us down at Lewiston in 

 Idaho, that we might have a steamboat ride down 

 Snake River to its mouth in the Columbia. I had 

 somehow got the impression that we should see great 

 forests in Washington and Oregon, but we missed 

 them. They are on the moist Pacific slope west of 

 the Cascade Range. We sailed 150 miles that after- 

 noon down the Snake, amid mountains two thou- 

 sand or more feet high, as smooth and as treeless 

 as the South Downs of England; very novel, very 

 beautiful, their lower slopes pink in places with a 

 delicate flower called Clarkia, in others blue-purple 

 like the cheek of a plum. I say mountains, but they 

 are only the sides of the huge canyon through which 

 the Snake flows. How the afternoon sun brought 

 out their folds and dimples and clinging, delicate 

 tints ! The green of the higher slopes was often like 

 a veil of thin green gauze, dropped upon them. The 

 effects were all new to me, and pleasing beyond 

 words, — wild, aboriginal, yet with such beauty 

 and winsome gentleness and delicacy. The river 

 is nearly half the width of the Hudson, and much 



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