Читать книгу In the Oregon Country - George Palmer Putnam - Страница 12

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REGON—the old Oregon Territory of yesterday and the State of to-day—is our very own. It was neither bought, borrowed, nor stolen from another nation. It is of the United States because our fathers came here first, carved out homes from the wilderness, and unfurled their flag overhead; through the most fundamental of rights—that of discovery, coupled with possession and development.

The New England States we inherited from Britain, although the will was sorely contested. For Louisiana we paid a price. Texas and California we annexed from Mexico, and purchased New Mexico and Arizona. Alaska was bought from Russia for a song. Alone of all the United States the old Oregon Territory became ours by normal acquisition.

Thence, perhaps, is the compelling attraction for the native-born of Oregon to-day. Mayhap a touch of historic romance clings about the country; or it may be simply the feeling of bigness, the broad expansiveness of the views, the mightiness of mountains, the splendor of the trees, and the air's crisp vitality that make Oregon life so worth while.

Whatever the explanation, it is assuredly a pleasant place in which to live, this land of Oregon, and the transplanted Easterner cannot but be conscious of its attractions, just as he is of the myriad delights of the entire Coast country. A land of delight it is, from Puget Sound to the riviera of California, from the snow mountains to the sagebrush plains, where rose the dust of immigrants' "prairie schooners" not so many years ago.

The guardian of Oregon's southern gateway is Shasta, and close beside its gleaming flanks rolls the modern trail of steel whereon the wayfarer from San Francisco passes over the Siskiyous into the valleys of the Rogue and the Umpqua.

Shasta displays its attractions surpassingly well. An appreciative nature placed this great white gem in a wondrously appropriate setting of broken foothills and timbered reaches that billow upward to the snow line from the south and west, with never a petty rival to break the calm dominance of the master peak, and nothing to mar the symmetry of the cool green woodlands. For Shasta stands alone, and from its isolation is doubly impressive. One sees it all at once, as the train clambers up the grades towards Oregon, not a mere peak among many of a range, but an individual cone, neighborless and inspiring. Shasta has a volcanic history, and but a few hundred years ago bestirred itself titanically, casting forth balls of molten lava which to-day are encountered for scores of miles roundabout, weird testimonials to the latent strength now seemingly so reposeful beneath the calm crust of the earth.

Up and still up, into the timbered mountains, you are borne, until the very heart of the tousled Siskiyous is about you. Then all at once the divide lies behind and with one locomotive instead of several the train swings downward and northward into Oregon, winding interminably, and twisting and looping along hillsides and about the heads of little streams, which grow into goodly rivers as you follow them. Slowly the serried mountains iron out into gentler slopes dimpled with meadows, and here and there are homes and cultivated fields, and steepish roads of many ruts. Then the rushing Rogue River is companion for a space, and orchards and towns dot the wayside. More rough country follows, the Rogue and the Umpqua are left behind in turn, and the rails bear you to the regions of the Willamette.