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About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 1, 1880)
November, 1880. THE WEST SHORE. a 85 for fly-fishing that I have whipped, in a residence of twenty-seven years on this coast,) there is a warm spring of lime. I also found a hot lake on the road between Union and La Grande, which is superb for anything like rheu-, matism or skin diseases. For the lat ter, it is not a whit behind the far-famed Schlangen Bad in Bavaria; but I would advise no one to go up there before Au gust 10th, as the mosquitos are apt to be troublesome. There is an August-like fitness in the location of these countless sanitary fountains where Nature invites you to come and regain her lost gifts of health and strength. Far from the busy haunts oi men, amid cloisters of pine and aisles of tamarack, they bubble up at the beck and call of II) gia to nerve anew the shattered frame of man and restore what dissipation or neglect has filched from him. Far from the hoarse cough of the panting steamer, the rum ble of the clattering car, or the whirr of the busy spindles, they pour forth their sparkling treasures amid the balmy perfumes of the pines and cedars, amid the scarlet of the rhododendron and the creamy tinted blossoms of the syringa. ' How long are you to let pass unneeded the lesson of Nature? How long will you go before you learn that there is something to live for in the world beside money ? Granting, for the nonce that you are not an invalid, but an ardent sportsman loving the chase, you can find nothing to exceed the wild sports on the head waters of the John Day. On the Mid dle Fork, there are elk, bear, mule deer and antelope, bounding in "suspended impulse of their flectness" through canyons wilder than the Trosach's glen. There are cold springs there, too, that trickle from glaciers of silver-bearing range.' And there is roadside tavern, In case you don't like to camp out, kept by a very hospitable old lady who can not Jo too much to make your stay a pleasant one. She has a son living in Portland, and the last time I was there I heard a man older, and perhaps more learned than he, address him as u Your Honor." My poor pen is weak to describe the beauties of the forests along the East cm slope of the Blue Mountains, with their tall spires of tamarack and taper in? minarets of nine. If vou eo out into the woods of the Cascade range, you find yourself lost lit thicket ere you have gone ten yards. But on the Eastern slope of the Blue Ridge you can walk for miles through these tem ples of Nature and gaze on their mass ive columns in silent awe. You feel the Sacred Presence everywhere about you. It chants its Laudatt in the carols of the lark and robin; it breathes its orison, soft and gentle as a mother's prayer, in the breeze which sways the nodding firs that yield their obeisance to the white cloudy throne above; and wails its Misertrt in the deep diapason of the thunder storm that brings the September rain. It rained one day while I was in the valley of the Grande Komle, the Cha- mount of Oregon. The clouds came first red and then lowering into a pur ple mantle that gradually became a pall of black. Then out blazed the red ar tillery of heaven and down came the blinding rain. Yes, and the beautiful rain as well. Baht suppose you did get wet? This blinding shower that drenches you to the skin and chills the very marrow in your bones; this cold and pitiless rain, had also its silver side. It brought new hope to the parched earth that licked it up with greedy palate, new grass to the fields where the lowing cattle were huddled 'neath the alders and willows. It brought new verdure to the pines, new blood to my heart, new light in my eyes and new courage to my spirit. Why, then, should I chide the beuutiful lain? The bounteous Giver sends His welcome showers that the Earth may be born anew; and His work of regeneration, both of man and world, is the task eternal through which shines out the never-failing goodness, In two years more, the Eastern slope will be no longer a Itrra incognita to the citizens of Oregon's metropolis, lor the railroad will leave the passengers at the scene of the Cayuse massacre in the same time it now takes to go from Port land to The Dalles and then, dear reader, if you love repose in summer you shall journey thither by easier route than I did and shall feel what I have felt. The sulphurous spring shall clasp your enervated limbs in its gjowing cm brace and tend new life into your pares. The chalybeate fountain shall stir up and purify the sluggish life-current with which you left the heated town. The rock-walled lake shall part it blue of a mountain and whm "night draws its sable mountain down, to pin it with a star," the soughing pines shall croon your lullaby to a sleep that the dwellers in cities shall never know. The bleak winter rains shall drip upon the camp that I have lost for a year, and the snow fall in blinded rage upon the banks where I lay down to read after the noon meal of trout and venison. But I shall never know any thing about it, In my memory's treas ure box there is no winter In the year, for the beautiful land where my body was born anew and the blood ot boy hood came back Into my veins recol lection carries mo back to morning with my light canoe on the placid lake; at noon, I climb again the woody hill and see the deer sunning his tawny flanks on the moss-grown cliff; and at night, the pine drops its light needles on my pillow and bids me drop my cares as well. I hear the gurgle of the brook and the deep bay of the hounds in the day, and at night I listen to the clang ing wildfowl, as with mighty but weary pinions, they fan the thin, frosty air. They are seeking a warmer clime and I heed their warning, though their forms I cannot see. " You men of figures inecr, I know Csll me sn title, dreamy fellow ( Hut my chief builneu here below It, Ilk the apple, to grow mellow. " I com the fiih In cove or creek I My light akin nodt on rocking billow Or weary in nine ahsde t seek A mouy hummock for s pillow, "Itut, if uf life I get ties!, The um of wesllh without ill fetter, Am I more idle thsn the real . Or wiaer than the money-getters?" " Mamma, what must I say when I feci like being naughty ?" said a little girl whose conscience had smitten her for some misdemeanor. M Why, my child, you must say, Get thee behind me, Satan,' and you will not be tempt, ed," replied the mother. The little youngster paused a moment, and then said i " I did say that, and do you know, mamma, the old debit said: Mia I ha 1 1 am behind you, and don't you forget it!" A quack Informs the public that ho Is not exclusive. u If a patient want it gentle and mild, I'm a homeopath; and when anybody wants thunder and llpa to bid you, welcome to the waves lightning, I'm art atlfrpath."
