Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/53

2 and Nevada, and so called from the turmoil of the Columbia in passing through them; while the eastern portion is cut transversely by the Blue Mountains—in popular parlance blue, from the contrast of their violet shadows with the tawny plain. Another and lower range rims the seaboard from Lower California and along the Oregon frontage to the Russian possessions; the high spurs thrown out by the Coast and Cascade ranges separate the valleys thus formed in southern Oregon by barriers as insurmountable as those in Greece.

Besides mountains and rivers there are forests, not spread over broad areas of level surface as they were back of the English Plantations; beneficent nature has for the good of civilized man confined them to the mountain sides and to the low lands along the streams. On the mountains different species of pine, fir, and spruce prevail, while near the streams grow deciduous trees, oak, maple, ash, alder, cotton-wood, and willow. This distribution of forest and prairie gives a charming diversity to the landscape in the western portion of the territory, from California northward; and singularly attractive is the valley of the Willamette with its infinite variety of forms, the richness of verdure, and the frequent small rivers with their fertile and wooded borders.

In western Oregon there is scarcely a spot, and few places in the eastern part, where there is not visible some lofty snow-clad peak of the Cascade Range, standing as sentinel of the centuries, and forming a landmark and guide. In many places three or five of these glistening heights may be seen at once. Hardly less striking are the purpled summits of the continuous range, silvered with snow in spring and autumn, and glowing during the afternoons of summer under a rosy violet mist. Eastern Oregon seems less prolific of natural beauties than the country west of the Cascade Range, where the Columbia River provides not only uninterrupted navigation from the sea to the