STEEP TRAILS 



How ancient appear the crumbling basaltic 

 monuments along its banks, and the gray 

 plains to the east of the Cascades! Neverthe- 

 less, the river as well as its basin in anything 

 like their present condition are comparatively 

 but of yesterday. Looming no further back 

 in the ; geological records than the Tertiary 

 Period, the Oregon of that time looks alto- 

 gether strange in the few suggestive glimpses 

 we may get of it — forests in which palm trees 

 wave their royal crowns, and strange animals 

 roaming beneath them or about the reedy 

 margins of lakes, the oreodon, the lophiodon, 

 and several extinct species of the horse, the 

 camel, and other animals. 



Then came the fire period with its darkening 

 showers of ashes and cinders and its vast 

 floods of molten lava, making quite another 

 Oregon from the fair and fertile land of the 

 preceding era. And again, while yet the vol- 

 canic fires show signs of action in the smoke 

 and flame of the higher mountains, the whole 

 region passes under the dominion of ice, and 

 from the frost and darkness and death of the 

 Glacial Period, Oregon has but recently 

 emerged to the kindly warmth and life of 

 to-day. 



