Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/55

4 Willamette Valley and the Puget Sound region, has been favorably spoken of by successive explorers, until its spreading fame agitates the question of ownership. Little is yet known of agricultural and mineral resources, but its mild and equable climate, affecting as it does the quality and value of furs, and being in itself so peculiar considering the latitude, is better understood. The winters of western Oregon are so mild that little ice forms; but they are wet, and cloudy of sky. The rains begin about mid-autumn and continue with greater or less constancy till May, after which fleeting showers occur until the June rise of the Columbia begins to decline. This excessive moisture comes in a measure from the Japan current, and is more immediately owing to the south-west winds of autumn and winter, driving inland the evaporations of ocean, which being arrested by the Cascade Range are precipitated on its seaward sides. Hence the peculiarities of the Oregon climate; the mountains wall the moisture from their eastern slopes, rendering that region arid. The dense growth of the western forests are of those trees that live on the moisture of the atmosphere, but do not like it about their roots. The evergreens of Oregon, the firs especially, refuse to grow on land that is subject to overflow, and their foliage protects the roots from rain. Spruce, yew, hemlock, and cedar grow on lower lands than firs and pines. It may seem anomalous that trees which avoid water should thrive in a so-called moist climate, and also that, while the climate is so wet, Oregon's atmosphere is remarkably dry, as evidenced by the fact that wet articles exposed to the air, but protected, from the rain, dry quickly even in the rainy season. Observing this, the early Oregonians call their ordinary rains 'mists,' and maintain that they do not wet people; and by a further stretch of imagination their descendants may fancy themselves not affected by the December and January mists.

But even if the winters are unpleasantly rainy, the