The City Of Portland Is At Our Feet, Covering A Large Area Along Both
Banks Of The Willamette, And, With Its Fine Streets, Schools,
Churches, Mills, Shipping, Parks, And Gardens, Makes A Telling Picture
Of Busy, Aspiring Civilization In The Midst Of The Green Wilderness In
Which It Is Planted.
The river is displayed to fine advantage in the
foreground of our main view, sweeping in beautiful curves around rich,
leafy islands, its banks fringed with willows.
A few miles beyond the Willamette flows the renowned Columbia, and the
confluence of these two great rivers is at a point only about ten
miles below the city. Beyond the Columbia extends the immense breadth
of the forest, one dim, black, monotonous field with only the sky,
which one is glad to see is not forested, and the tops of the majestic
old volcanoes to give diversity to the view. That sharp, white,
broad-based pyramid on the south side of the Columbia, a few degrees
to the south of east from where you stand, is the famous Mount Hood.
The distance to it in a straight line is about fifty miles. Its upper
slopes form the only bare ground, bare as to forests, in the landscape
in that direction. It is the pride of Oregonians, and when it is
visible is always pointed out to strangers as the glory of the
country, the mountain of mountains. It is one of the grand series of
extinct volcanoes extending from Lassen's Butte[31] to Mount Baker, a
distance of about six hundred miles, which once flamed like gigantic
watch-fires along the coast.
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