Crossing the Cascade Range, we pass from a green to a gray country, from a wilderness of trees to a wilderness of open plains, level or rolling or rising here and there into hills and short mountain spurs.  Though well supplied with rivers in most of its main sections, it is generally dry.  The annual rainfall is only from about five to fifteen inches, and the thin winter garment of snow seldom lasts more than a month or two, though the temperature in many places falls from five to twenty-five degrees below zero for a short time.  That the snow is light over eastern Oregon, and the average temperature not intolerably severe, is shown by the fact that large droves of sheep, cattle, and horses live there through the winter without other food or shelter than they find for themselves on the open plains or down in the sunken valleys and gorges along the streams.

When we read of the mountain ranges of Oregon and Washington with detailed descriptions of their old volcanoes towering snow-laden and glacier-laden above the clouds, one may be led to imagine that the country is far icier and whiter and more mountainous than it is.  Only in winter are the Coast and Cascade Mountains covered with snow.  Then as seen from the main interior valleys they appear as comparatively low, bossy walls stretching along the horizon and making a magnificent display of their white wealth.  The Coast Range in Oregon does not perhaps average more than three thousand feet in height.  Its snow does not last long, most of its soil is fertile all the way to the summits, and the greater part of the range may at some time be brought under cultivation.  The immense deposits on the great central uplift of the Cascade Range are mostly melted off before the middle of summer by the comparatively warm winds and rains from the coast, leaving only a few white spots on the highest ridges, where the depth from drifting has been greatest, or where the rate of waste has been diminished by specially favorable conditions as to exposure.  Only the great volcanic cones are truly snow-clad all the year, and these are not numerous and make but a small portion of the general landscape.

As we approach Oregon from the coast in summer, no hint of snowy mountains can be seen, and it is only after we have sailed into the country by the Columbia, or climbed some one of the commanding summits, that the great white peaks send us greeting and make telling advertisements of themselves and of the country over which they rule.  So, also, in coming to Oregon from the east the country by no means impresses one as being surpassingly mountainous, the abode of peaks and glaciers.  Descending the spurs of the Rocky Mountains into the basin of the Columbia, we see hot, hundred-mile plains, roughened here the there by hills and ridges that look hazy and blue in the distance, until we have pushed well to the westward.  Then one white point after another comes into sight to refresh the eye and the imagination; but they are yet a long way off, and have much to say only to those who know them or others of their kind.  How grand they are, though insignificant-looking on the edge of the vast landscape!  What noble woods they nourish, and emerald meadows and gardens!  What springs and streams and waterfalls sing about them and to what a multitude of happy creatures they give homes and food!