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.