All Of The Oregon Waters That Win Their Way To The Sea Are A Tributary
To The Columbia, Save The Short Streams Of The Immediate Coast, And
The Umpqua And Rogue Rivers In Southern Oregon.
These both head in
the Cascade Mountains and find their way to the sea through gaps in
the Coast Range, and both drain large and fertile and beautiful
valleys.
Rogue River Valley is peculiarly attractive. With a fine
climate, and kindly, productive soil, the scenery is delightful.
About the main, central open portion of the basin, dotted with
picturesque groves of oak, there are many smaller valleys charmingly
environed, the whole surrounded in the distance by the Siskiyou,
Coast, Umpqua, and Cascade Mountains. Besides the cereals nearly
every sort of fruit flourishes here, and large areas are being devoted
to peach, apricot, nectarine, and vine culture. To me it seems above
all others the garden valley of Oregon and the most delightful place
for a home. On the eastern rim of the valley, in the Cascade
Mountains, about sixty miles from Medford in a direct line, is the
remarkable Crater Lake, usually regarded as the one grand wonder of
the region. It lies in a deep, sheer-walled basin about seven
thousand feet above the level of the sea, supposed to be the crater of
an extinct volcano.
Oregon as it is today is a very young country, though most of it seems
old. Contemplating the Columbia sweeping from forest to forest,
across plain and desert, one is led to say of it, as did Byron of the
ocean, -
"Such as Creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now."
How ancient appear the crumbling basaltic monuments along its banks,
and the gray plains to the east of the Cascades!
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