CHAPTER XXX.
AMONG THE MOUNTAINS.
No great and general forms of Nature impress themselves upon the memory or imagination more than mountains. The ocean alone rivals them in this respect. Those nations, like the Swiss, who have been born and bred in the shadow of, or even in sight of, cloud-piercing heights, never take kindly to countries of a smoother aspect. In a few generations, Oregon will undoubtedly possess, for this reason, a people distinguished for patriotism.
We have found the Oregon mountains everywhere, west of the summit of the Cascade Range,, densely covered with forest, even up to the line of perpetual snow. Considering the impenetrable nature of the forest, this would alone render a passage through them very difficult. Yet this difficulty is not the only one. From the summit of the Cascades to the open country at their base, is a distance of from forty to sixty miles. Not, indeed, a smooth descent, nor a succession of parallel ridges; but a bewildering chaos of mountains, thrown together in such confusion that engineering is dismayed at the task of finding a pass among them.
Yet all the earliest roads into Western Oregon were surveyed by the hardy pioneers, who knew very little of scientific engineering. With a bravery and perseverance most heroic, they struggled with and overcame the obstacles that met them on the last portion of a
