Page:All Over Oregon and Washington.djvu/325

Rh the other Sisters, with Diamond Peak, South Peak, Mount Pitt, and, far distant, one which we fancy may be Shasta.

To the east, spread away immense plains, with their river-courses marked as on a map, and bounded by the Blue Mountains. Just below is the Des Chutes, and on the other side of it, not far off, is the extinct crater of a volcano, its remaining walls being only two or three hundred feet high. All around it the country is covered with black cinders, ashes, and scoria. Turning toward the west, we behold the lovely Wallamet Valley, with its numerous small rivers, its hills and plains, and beyond it the blue wall of the Coast Mountains.

We resolve to return to the pine woods to camp, and with to-morrow's dawn to climb once more to the summit, to behold "morning on the mountains." The spectacle compensates for the extra toil. When we arrive, there is a veil of mist hanging between the valley and the mountain-top. We know that they in the valley see nothing of the summits; while we of the summits can discern nothing below this floating sea of vapor. How beautiful! It is as if out of a sea of golden-tinted mist are springing islands of dark-green—some of them crowned with glittering snow—and overhead a cloudless heaven. With every moment some new and beautiful, but almost imperceptible, change comes over the misty ocean in which are bathed those isles whose shores are abrupt mountain-sides; and, in turn, all tints of gold, rose, amber, violet, float before our enchanted eyes.

Not long the scone remains. An August sun quickly disperses the gossamer clouds, unveiling for us the scene of yesterday in its morning sharpness of outline,