Page:Oregon Literature by Horner.djvu/127

Rh against the rocky sides and icy glaciers of Mount Adams, whose peaks glowed in unclouded light above the swift beat of the storm. The hour was auspicious, as if chosen of God, in which to greet the footsteps of mortal where few but the Immortal had ever trod before. It was a glorious welcome to this colossal masterpiece of His creation.

Yonder, two hundred miles to the north, the huge, rugged, inverted icicles of Mount Baker pierce the snowy drifts fallen around their base, while in the intervals between are deep ravines, vast gorges, and rude, craggy peaks, as if the earthquakes had taken this whole western world in their frenzied arms and tossed its mightiest rocks in wild disorder across the plains. South, another hundred miles, over the deep chasms of rivers, and the dread blackness of vast lava-piles frozen into rock by the winter of ages, Diamond Peak seems almost a rival to the mountain on which I stand. Eastward, in the foreground, sweep far away the golden plains of the Des Chutes, John Day and Umatilla rivers, enframed within the piney crests of the great Blue Mountain range, a hundred and fifty miles distant. On the west the evergreen summits of the Coast range cut clear against the blue sky, with the Willamette valley, unsurpassed MI beauty on the earth, a hundred miles in length, sleeping in quiet loveliness at their feet. The broad, silver belt of the Columbia, without a peer in grandeur and purity on the continent, winds