Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/507

Rh But no extended trip can be taken without committing oneself to the wilderness delights of sleeping with star-dials for roof and flickering camp-fire for hearth. And what healthy human being would exchange those for the feverish, pampered life of the modern house? Let us have the barbarism, and with it the bounding pulses and exuberant life of the wilderness.

But now, with stomachs and knapsacks filled, and with that pervasive sense of contentment which characterises the successful hunter and angler, we must get up our cayuse ponies from their pastures on the rich grass of the open woods, saddle up, and then off for the mountain, whose giant form now overtops the very clouds. About two miles from Trout Lake the trail crosses the White Salmon, and we find ourselves at the foot of the mountain. For eight miles we follow a trail through open woods, park-like, with huge pines at irregular intervals, and vivid grass and flowers between, a fair scene, the native home of every kind of game.

As we journey on delightedly through these glades, rising, terrace after terrace, we can read the history of the mountain in the rock beneath our feet and the expanding plains and hills below. All within the ancient amphitheatre is volcanic. There are four main summits, a central dome, vast, symmetrical, majestic, pure-white against the blue-black sky of its unsullied height. The three other peaks are broken crags of basalt, leaning as for support against the mighty mass at the centre. Around the snow-line of the mountain many minor cones have been blown up. These have the most gaudy and brilliant colouring, mainly yellow and vermilion. One on the south-east is es-