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About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 1, 1880)
THE WEST SHORE. November, i6o: THE liLVE KIUOE OK OREGON. V T. I. MM XV, The illuhtratcd press of the Eastern Mates hut, from time to time, sparkled With glowing sketches of the Appitla chian range, while the Sierra of Cal' ifornia have furnished a fruitful theme aliko for the wierd poetry of Miller and Bayard Taylor, and the graphic iwiiciU ot Hierstadt, Hill, Mungcr, But man and Hush. But, when the mil of July warn the denizen of the crowded city away to purer air and cooler water, how few heed, if they hear, of a fairer Hummer land than either of these, nest led away in the vast seclusion of our own Oregon. I refer to the liluc Mountain, the fairest Augut garden on earth. Thi range hegin somewhere in the great deert at the southern end of Wasco county and run northeasterly toward the mouth of the Grande Ronde, where Snake river nap in two the ever verdant chain. The range doc not run anything like parallel to the Columhia river. At Weston, it is leu than fifty mile from the great Hlver of the West, while at Camp WaUon,in Grant county, it i 13S milca away. Of all mountain ridge between the two ocean it pleatc the tense best. It loftier than the Green Mountain range of' Vermont and greener than either the Cuuilierluud of Tennessee or Omk ridge of Missouri. Lower than the Sierra or the Rockies, it ha a grate of outline and a luster of foliage unknown to cither. My own idea of a summer' J,,It Jar muntt wa never fully realised till I had ient two month in the Hlue Ridge of Oregon. There 1 a sniff of ozone right In the hottest of noontide, a Ulin of inspiration In the purple and gold of twilight, and a dreamy dropping oil to tleep at dark, such a would have charmed Sancho 1'aiua himself. No other fair land of earth ever before lulled my tense to a dreamiest slum ber, or awoke me to a giant' strength for the morning' chase. It has invited for year untold the weak-kneed crip, pie and the sour-faced dyspeptic; it hat Kuml forth ill dewy Incense and called in vain to the invalid of Ore gon to come and drink in the new life that luiks in it crystal ttrramt; and it ha waved the branches of it conse crated pine, (for the grove are Mill own templet,) and will ever! wave them a they drop their fragrant needle on the toil's sod carpet, calling in vain to the dweller amid soulless bricks and mortnr, to come and be born anew. Nestled away in th e heart of this pine-crowned range where the deer bounds in hit peerless grace, lies Lake Wallowa, mirrorintr on its calm and tranquil bosom the soft tints of the cloudless sky. Above it rise steep ba saltic walls and above them, in turn, the saw-tooth ncak of the ridirc. niercini? the azure clouds and crowned with the tempests of centuries untold. Floatincr on the unruflled breast of this rock- walled sea, which is six miles lone and three-quarter of a mile wide, you wonder, as the fleecy cloudlets sail slowly past you, whether it is sea or sky on which noats your tiny canoe; tor whether Aurora eilds the sullen crags above you, or midnight hovers in the skies and mirrors every star on the lake, you realize the presence of the Infinite. Heaven rears the throne of silence over you in cither case, and a portion of God s domain seems to encir. clc you as the crystal dome of skyland dip its edges in the placid flood. The lake is very deep and seems like a vast crater whose smouldcrinir fires were long since forced to yield to the supremacy of the floods. It debouches into a large river of the same name, and it, in turn, mingle with the waters of the Grand Ronde, and the twn their identity in the tortuous mazes of the hnokc. It water are clearer smoother and deeper, than those of the' Saiatoga lake where the favored Ml,.. and curled darlings of fashion sport their figures, while I drift out ii.m ,h. silence of this sequestered mountain sea and selfishly behold a lovelier pic ture than ever greeted their narrow and unscarchinir eaze. A sr.rr,..u om below me are trout that weigh twelve pounds, while the salmo Jontinalis or brook-trout is to be found in every rivulet that trickle, down these grassy h. And here dwells my Lord .uiuai, ioo, me mysterious red-fish found only in four luk- nf a.: ' one in Oregon, two in Idaho, and one in British Columbia. Apart from I,.,- you must search for him in llumrarJ and Toland alone. ' It would be a tresniM tlnn ,u. tience of th rr..l.r ..i . 1 long-winded ditcustion of thi.Th and his habits. It is enough to know that he is of the salmon family and rarely bites at a hook, but you will find him in his mantle of red in August, fat and lazv as his prototype that basks in the galleries of the Vatican and mur murs, " When Leo dies what ?" I am no savant, no taxidermist. I loved Agassiz because Agassiz loved Nature, not because men called him great hence I refuse to enter into the learned contest over the habits of this fish, now going on in the Forest and Stream, in which genial Charley Bendire more than gains the mastery over the East ern piscatorial knights who have en tered into this vexatious joust. Over the bosom of that crystal lake I will plow next August in a quaint craft that my own fancy has modeled and my own hands shall hew from out the forest gloom. She is to be of the "Catamaran" style, two hulls decked over, and a big mainsail. She will be light as the bolsa of the Chincha Islands and swift as the flying proa of the swar thy Malay. Then I shall revel in my retreat at the sequestered Lake Wal lowa, where peace descends upon man kind with the slanting shadows that fall as the day declines " Few know its quiet shelter none like me Do seek it out with such fond desire j Poring in idlest mood on flower and tree, And listening as the voiceless leaves respire Where the wayworn breeze, done wandering Sloops adown to rest his weary wing." But, says yon scented Belgravian, who cannot tolerate a summer away from Leasington or Brighton, where arc your springs? My answer. is, eve rywhere. Famed, as is Virginia, for the abundance of her native mineral fountains, the western slope of Oregon's Blue Mountains is fully cquul to them in abundance and diversity. At the northwest corner-stone of the Malheur Reservation is a soda spring, strongly tempered with magnesia and chaly beate of iron. It effervesces slightly and is a most palatable drink in the dog days. For my own part, I greatly pre fer it to the famed Apollinaris, as a di uretic. If you want sulphur baths, I can only say, in Pike parlance, that me woods is full of 'em." There is one in John Day valley, about twelve miles below Canyon City, and another alwut twenty-four miles above it, be tween Prairie City and Strawberry aney. un Indian creek, (..nd, by the wayjthat it the very finest trout stream.
