The principal mountains of the range are Mounts Pitt, Scott, and Thielson, Diamond Peak, the Three Sisters, Mounts Jefferson, Hood, St. Helen’s, Adams, Rainier, Aix, and Baker.  Of these the seven first named belong to Oregon, the others to Washington.  They rise singly at irregular distances from one another along the main axis of the range or near it, with an elevation of from about eight thousand to fourteen thousand four hundred feet above the level of the sea.  From few points in the valleys may more than three or four of them be seen, and of the more distant ones of these only the tops appear.  Therefore, speaking generally, each of the lowland landscapes of the State contains only one grand snowy mountain.

The heights back of Portland command one of the best general views of the forests and also of the most famous of the great mountains both of Oregon and Washington.  Mount Hood is in full view, with the summits of Mounts Jefferson, St. Helen’s, Adams, and Rainier in the distance.  The city of Portland is at our feet, covering a large area along both banks of the Willamette, and, with its fine streets, schools, churches, mills, shipping, parks, and gardens, makes a telling picture of busy, aspiring civilization in the midst of the green wilderness in which it is planted.  The river is displayed to fine advantage in the foreground of our main view, sweeping in beautiful curves around rich, leafy islands, its banks fringed with willows.

A few miles beyond the Willamette flows the renowned Columbia, and the confluence of these two great rivers is at a point only about ten miles below the city.  Beyond the Columbia extends the immense breadth of the forest, one dim, black, monotonous field with only the sky, which one is glad to see is not forested, and the tops of the majestic old volcanoes to give diversity to the view.  That sharp, white, broad-based pyramid on the south side of the Columbia, a few degrees to the south of east from where you stand, is the famous Mount Hood.  The distance to it in a straight line is about fifty miles.  Its upper slopes form the only bare ground, bare as to forests, in the landscape in that direction.  It is the pride of Oregonians, and when it is visible is always pointed out to strangers as the glory of the country, the mountain of mountains.  It is one of the grand series of extinct volcanoes extending from Lassen’s Butte[31] to Mount Baker, a distance of about six hundred miles, which once flamed like gigantic watch-fires along the coast.  Some of them have been active in recent times, but no considerable addition to the bulk of Mount Hood has been made for several centuries, as is shown by the amount of glacial denudation it has suffered.  Its summit has been ground to a point, which gives it a rather thin, pinched appearance.  It has a wide-flowing base, however, and is fairly well proportioned.  Though it is eleven thousand feet high, it is too far off to make much show under