Page:Route Across the Rocky Mountains with a Description of Oregon and California.djvu/66



In the climate of Western Oregon, we find one of the principal advantages which this country, together with the whole Western coast of the Continent, possesses over those portions laying East of the great mountain range, which, extending from within the Arctic circle, along the whole extent of North and South America, to Cape Horn, divides the Continent into two Grand Divisions, different, not only in their geographical features, but also in climate and vegetation. The climate of Western Oregon is milder by several degrees, than it is between the same parallels of latitude in the States. Snow seldom falls in the Valleys South of the Columbia, and during our stay at the Falls of the Willammette, which embraced two Winter seasons, there were only two falls of snow; (with equal and perhaps greater propriety, we might call that portion of the year included between the first or middle of November, and the last of March, the rainy season;) the first of these snows was six or eight inches deep, and remained upon the ground about three days; the second, which continued to fall at intervals, during a week, passed away almost as fast as it fell, never concealing, entirely, the surface of the ground. During the period of our stay, we never saw ice on any of the streams of water; yet, it has been stated that since the location of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Vancouver, the Columbia River has been twice closed over at that place. If this be a fact, it must be owing, in a great measure, to the circumstance that the Columbia has its sources in far Northern latitudes, and in high mountainous regions. On the Willammette which flows from the South, such congelation has never been known. We were informed by persons, long resident in the country, that rains were very frequent through the Winter or rainy season, but that great quantities seldom fell in short times. During the first Winter we were in the country, there were several weeks together, of fine, clear, and most delightful weather, and besides this, several other shorter periods of cessation; but during the second, it rained almost constantly, yet so light were these rains, generally, that in order to convey correct ideas, propriety would seem to demand some other term to designate them. Taking the two seasons together, which we experienced there, we doubt whether a greater quantity of water fell than falls generally in the same length of time, during the same months in the States.—Many have expressed objections to the climate, on account of the rainy seasons, and it cannot be denied that they frequently render it quite disagreeable and gloomy, especially to those who have just emigrated to