Page:Atlantis Arisen.djvu/192

168 Des Chutes River on the east. At the head of McKenzie's Fork of the Wallamet is the remarkable group of snow-peaks called the Three Sisters, with Black Butte and Snow Butte eighteen or twenty miles farther north, and feeding streams on the eastern slope of the range.

At the head of the Santiam River is Mount Jefferson,—it should be Mount Thomas Jefferson,—named by Lewis and Clarke in 1806, and standing well east of the centre of the range. This is a very interesting mountain, and evidently has been much higher than at present, which is equally true of all the snow-peaks.

Mount Hood is situated about twenty-five miles south of the Columbia River, and sixty miles east of the Wallamet, rising, like Jefferson, from the eastern side of the main axis of the range. The western view of it is that of a massive pyramid, with some slight variations from exact lines; but from the Dalles its rugged features are more distinctly seen, and its outline is broken into separate peaks and ridges. It was named after Lord Hood by Vancouver's lieutenant, Broughton, October 20, 1792. The early Oregon settlers, or some of them, wished to change the name to Washington, and to call the Cascades the Presidents' Range, but custom prevailed, and Hood it remains. The height of Mount Hood has never been satisfactorily ascertained. The measurements taken have varied from eighteen thousand to eleven thousand feet, but later estimates make it about twelve thousand. Half its height is covered with perpetual snow,—that is, it towers more than a mile above the range into the region of clouds and storms of which the dwellers in the valley know nothing,—its venerable head buffeted by icy blasts even in summer.

About seventy miles north and a little east of Hood is Mount Adams, nine thousand five hundred and seventy feet in height, named after President J. Q. Adams. It belongs to Washington, but is one of the five peaks visible from all parts of Northern Oregon. It is not so high as Hood or St. Helen, but it has a noble outline, and reminds me of a sleeping lion. One of the curiosities of Mount Adams is a series of ice-caves, lying at an elevation of four thousand feet, the trail to which leads up the White Salmon River, which comes into the Columbia opposite