Dull Thunder And
Lightning May Occasionally Be Seen And Heard, But The Imposing
Grandeur Of Great Storms Marching Over The Landscape With Streaming
Banners And A Network Of Fire Is Almost Wholly Unknown.
Crossing the Cascade Range, we pass from a green to a gray country,
from a wilderness of trees to a wilderness of open plains, level or
rolling or rising here and there into hills and short mountain spurs.
Though well supplied with rivers in most of its main sections, it is
generally dry. The annual rainfall is only from about five to fifteen
inches, and the thin winter garment of snow seldom lasts more than a
month or two, though the temperature in many places falls from five to
twenty-five degrees below zero for a short time. That the snow is
light over eastern Oregon, and the average temperature not intolerably
severe, is shown by the fact that large droves of sheep, cattle, and
horses live there through the winter without other food or shelter
than they find for themselves on the open plains or down in the sunken
valleys and gorges along the streams.
When we read of the mountain ranges of Oregon and Washington with
detailed descriptions of their old volcanoes towering snow-laden and
glacier-laden above the clouds, one may be led to imagine that the
country is far icier and whiter and more mountainous than it is. Only
in winter are the Coast and Cascade Mountains covered with snow. Then
as seen from the main interior valleys they appear as comparatively
low, bossy walls stretching along the horizon and making a magnificent
display of their white wealth.
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