The Descent Was Accomplished Without Disaster, Though Several Of The
Party Had Narrow Escapes.
One slipped and fell, and as he shot past
me seemed to be going to certain death.
So steep was the ice slope no
one could move to help him, but fortunately, keeping his presence of
mine, he threw himself on his face and digging his alpenstock into the
ice, gradually retarded his motion until he came to rest. Another
broke through a slim bridge over a crevasse, but his momentum at the
time carried him against the lower edge and only his alpenstock was
lost in the abyss. Thus crippled by the loss of his staff, we had to
lower him the rest of the way down the dome by means of the rope we
carried. Falling rocks from the upper precipitous part of the ridge
were also a source of danger, as they came whizzing past in successive
volleys; but none told on us, and when we at length gained the gentle
slopes of the lower ice fields, we ran and slid at our ease, making
fast, glad time, all care and danger past, and arrived at our beloved
Cloud Camp before sundown.
We were rather weak from want of nourishment, and some suffered from
sunburn, notwithstanding the partial protection of glasses and veils;
otherwise, all were unscathed and well. The view we enjoyed from the
summit could hardly be surpassed in sublimity and grandeur; but one
feels far from home so high in the sky, so much so that one is
inclined to guess that, apart from the acquisition of knowledge and
the exhilaration of climbing, more pleasure is to be found at the foot
of the mountains than on their tops. Doubly happy, however, is the
man to whom lofty mountain tops are within reach, for the lights that
shine there illumine all that lies below.
XXI
The Physical and Climatic Characteristics of Oregon
Oregon is a large, rich, compact section of the west side of the
continent, containing nearly a hundred thousand square miles of deep,
wet evergreen woods, fertile valleys, icy mountains, and high, rolling
wind-swept plains, watered by the majestic Columbia River and its
countless branches. It is bounded on the north by Washington, on the
east by Idaho, on the south by California and Nevada, and on the west
by the Pacific Ocean. It is a grand, hearty, wholesome, foodful
wilderness and, like Washington, once a part of the Oregon Territory,
abounds in bold, far-reaching contrasts as to scenery, climate, soil,
and productions. Side by side there is drouth on a grand scale and
overflowing moisture; flinty, sharply cut lava beds, gloomy and
forbidding, and smooth, flowery lawns; cool bogs, exquisitely plushy
and soft, overshadowed by jagged crags barren as icebergs; forests
seemingly boundless and plains with no tree in sight; presenting a
wide range of conditions, but as a whole favorable to industry.
Natural wealth of an available kind abounds nearly everywhere,
inviting the farmer, the stock-raiser, the lumberman, the fisherman,
the manufacturer, and the miner, as well as the free walker in search
of knowledge and wildness. The scenery is mostly of a comfortable,
assuring kind, grand and inspiring without too much of that dreadful
overpowering sublimity and exuberance which tend to discourage effort
and cast people into inaction and superstition.
Ever since Oregon was first heard of in the romantic, adventurous,
hunting, trapping Wild West days, it seems to have been regarded as
the most attractive and promising of all the Pacific countries for
farmers. While yet the whole region as well as the way to it was
wild, ere a single road or bridge was built, undaunted by the
trackless thousand-mile distances and scalping, cattle-stealing
Indians, long trains of covered wagons began to crawl wearily
westward, crossing how many plains, rivers, ridges, and mountains,
fighting the painted savages and weariness and famine. Setting out
from the frontier of the old West in the spring as soon as the grass
would support their cattle, they pushed on up the Platte, making haste
slowly, however, that they might not be caught in the storms of winter
ere they reached the promised land. They crossed the Rocky Mountains
to Fort Hall; thence followed down the Snake River for three or four
hundred miles, their cattle limping and failing on the rough lava
plains; swimming the streams too deep to be forded, making boats out
of wagon-boxes for the women and children and goods, or where trees
could be had, lashing together logs for rafts. Thence, crossing the
Blue Mountains and the plains of the Columbia, they followed the river
to the Dalles. Here winter would be upon them, and before a wagon
road was built across the Cascade Mountains the toil-worn emigrants
would be compelled to leave their cattle and wagons until the
following summer, and, in the mean time, with the assistance of the
Hudson's Bay Company, make their way to the Willamette Valley on the
river with rafts and boats.
How strange and remote these trying times have already become! They
are now dim as if a thousand years had passed over them. Steamships
and locomotives with magical influence have well-nigh abolished the
old distances and dangers, and brought forward the New West into near
and familiar companionship with the rest of the world.
Purely wild for unnumbered centuries, a paradise of oily, salmon-fed
Indians, Oregon is now roughly settled in part and surveyed, its
rivers and mountain ranges, lakes, valleys, and plains have been
traced and mapped in a general way, civilization is beginning to take
root, towns are springing up and flourishing vigorously like a crop
adapted to the soil, and the whole kindly wilderness lies invitingly
near with all its wealth open and ripe for use.
In sailing along the Oregon coast one sees but few more signs of human
occupation than did Juan de Fuca three centuries ago. The shore
bluffs rise abruptly from the waves, forming a wall apparently
unbroken, though many short rivers from the coast range of mountains
and two from the interior have made narrow openings on their way to
the sea.
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