In The Pleasant Weather Of Summer, After The Rainy Season Is Past And
Only Occasional Refreshing Showers Fall, Washing The
Sky and bringing
out the fragrance of the flowers and the evergreens, then one may
enjoy a fine, free walk
All the way across the State from the sea to
the eastern boundary on the Snake River. Many a beautiful stream we
should cross in such a walk, singing through forest and meadow and
deep rocky gorge, and many a broad prairie and plain, mountain and
valley, wild garden and desert, presenting landscape beauty on a grand
scale and in a thousand forms, and new lessons without number,
delightful to learn. Oregon has three mountain ranges which run
nearly parallel with the coast, the most influential of which, in
every way, is the Cascade Range. It is about six thousand to seven
thousand feet in average height, and divides the State into two main
sections called Eastern and Western Oregon, corresponding with the
main divisions of Washington; while these are again divided, but less
perfectly, by the Blue Mountains and the Coast Range. The eastern
section is about two hundred and thirty miles wide, and is made up in
great part of the treeless plains of the Columbia, which are green and
flowery in spring, but gray, dusty, hot, and forbidding in summer.
Considerable areas, however, on these plains, as well as some of the
valleys countersunk below the general surface along the banks of the
streams, have proved fertile and produce large crops of wheat, barley,
hay, and other products.
In general views the western section seems to be covered with one
vast, evenly planted forest, with the exception of the few snow-clad
peaks of the Cascade Range, these peaks being the only points in the
landscape that rise above the timberline. Nevertheless, embosomed in
this forest and lying in the great trough between the Cascades and
coast mountains, there are some of the best bread-bearing valleys to
be found in the world. The largest of these are the Willamette,
Umpqua, and Rogue River Valleys. Inasmuch as a considerable portion
of these main valleys was treeless, or nearly so, as well as
surpassingly fertile, they were the first to attract settlers; and the
Willamette, being at once the largest and nearest to tide water, was
settled first of all, and now contains the greater portion of the
population and wealth of the State.
The climate of this section, like the corresponding portion of
Washington, is rather damp and sloppy throughout the winter months,
but the summers are bright, ripening the wheat and allowing it to be
garnered in good condition. Taken as a whole, the weather is bland
and kindly, and like the forest trees the crops and cattle grow plump
and sound in it. So also do the people; children ripen well and grow
up with limbs of good size and fiber and, unless overworked in the
woods, live to a good old age, hale and hearty.
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