Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/109

 and picturesqueness of Oregon scenery are triumphant over the worst of weather. Just then I recalled a few snowless Christmases at home, with dull skies, hard frozen ground, icy winds blowing a gale, and nothing to be seen but streets and houses. I could not but think how infinitely better was this wilder landscape, with its mingled green and grayness shut in by the gray bowl above; and then and there I gave thanks to our Heavenly Pilot for leading us into this wonderful “land o’ glamour.”

When we first came here the scenes and sounds impressed me as vaguely familiar,—almost as if I had lived here in some forgotten time long past. I had a haunting sense of its being some part of my life’s tangle; but such a hopeless snarl it seemed, that I had about concluded to call it a vagary of the imagination, when one day Bert came in, saying, “The torrent roars in the vale; blue mists rise in the hills; dark clouds rest upon the head of Mount Nebo.” These sentences, as soon as heard, solved my mental perplexities. We were living again in Ossian’s land, where in early girlhood I had dwelt in fancy while turning the fascinating pages of an old black-and-gold Russia leather copy of Ossian’s Poems. Bert’s words were like a searchlight turned upon the darkened past. The rosy skies of youth flashed up; in that luminous atmosphere floated many changeful pictures. The blue sea was