Sketches of the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. 1001 
ration of the Oregon desert. Of this I may have something to say 
at another time. I found unexpected assistance in this exploration 
through Mr. Charles Whittaker, son of the Governor of the State, 
who kindly placed his time and conveyance at my disposal, and 
accompanied me to Fossil Lake, and the sandy region beyond. 
We returned via Silver Lake, and took the main road for the 
Dalles. This road runs north along the western edge of the sage- 
brush and the eastern border of the valley of the Des Chutes river. 
There is nothing to obstruct the view of the Cascade range from 
this road, and as the greatest elevation of the range is at its eastern 
border, the view of it from this road is the finest that can be ob- 
tained. At a point twenty to twenty-five miles south of Prineville, 
nearly half the length of the Oregonian portion of the range is 
included in the panorama, at a least distance of seventy-five miles. 
From the line of forest-covered mountains rise five magnificent 
snow-peaks to heights varying from 10,000 to nearly 15,000 feet 
above sea level. To the north is Hood; then succeeds Jefferson ; 
then Condon, Cope, and the Batchelor. As these mountains do not 
rise from a plateau as do those of Colorado, the effect they produce 
is more impressive than that of mountains of greater elevation in 
the latter region. The wedge of Hood and the cone of Jefferson 
only find their counterparts in the celebrated volcanoes of the Cor- 
dilleras, whose praises have been often celebrated ; but nowhere can 
five Cotopaxis be seen at one view, but in the Cascades of Oregon. 
They are ideal mountains, grandly simple, whose outlines, rising from 
base tosummit, are on ly interrupted by vast precipices. They pierce the 
blue sky with a vertical mile and more of purest white “as no fuller 
can white,” save where the crags are too steep for the snow to cling. 
When I first saw Mount Hood, nothing but its cone was visible, 
an island of light, floating in a sea of clouds. When I saw it last, 
clouds had again separated its summit from the earth, and the rays 
of the sun gave it an Alpengliihn which resembled the red glow of 
a furnace, rather than the cold sheen of the ice-peak. Mount 
Condon is a double mountain, consisting of two peaks with sharp 
Summits, connected by a high saddleback. Its outlines are as steep 
_as those of the others, and it presents an immense surface of snow. 
Mount Cope is twenty miles south. Its summit is an obtuse 
cone surrounded by impassible precipices. It is next to Mount 
