e happiness so nearly
theirs, was distanced in her race for the sunny goal by Death. To-day
the shack stands vacant.

[Illustration: A valley of Washington. "The big Westland smiles and
receives them all"

From a photograph by Frank Palmer, Spokane, Wash.]

A friend, who knew the girl and the story, and loves the land she hoped
to see, wrote this to hearten her when the doctors realized that the
home upon whose threshold she wavered was far, far distant from the one
her lover fashioned "over the eastern mountains":

Over the eastern mountains
Into a valley I know,
Into the air of uplands,
Into the sun, you go.

Warm is a day in the upland;
Warm is the valley, and bright;
Glittering stars are shining
Over the valley at night.

Here in the western lowland
Patiently I remain,
Under the clouds, in darkness,
Under the dismal rain.

Patient I wait, well knowing
The joy that is to be:
Into the east you're going
To build a home for me.

Rather would I go with you,
But, staying, I smile and sing,
For winter is almost over,
And soon will come the spring.

Then to the home you have made me,
Singing, still singing, I'll go
Over the eastern mountains
Into a valley I know.

CHAPTER VII

On Oregon Trails

At Shaniko I denied being a land seeker. Yet such I actually was,
although seeking

Oregon, a land of plenty
Where one dollar grows to twenty

not because of the financial fruitfulness the verse implies, but rather
because it was a land where outdoor pleasures are readily accessible.
The logical outcome of land seeking is home making, and so in due course
we became Oregonians; and now from our Oregon home we pilgrimage along
the varied trails of the Pacific Playland, whose beginnings are but
across our doormat, when fancy leads and the exchequer permits.

All of us read with envy of the "big trips," the splendid outings to the
ends of the earth, made by scientists and sportsmen, and those who are
neither but possess the instincts, income, and the inclination. Simply
because we cannot follow such examples is no reason to suppose they
appeal to us less than to the fortunate adventurer _de luxe_ for whom
African expeditioning, Labrador or Alaskan game trails, mountain scaling
in Peru, or hunting along the Amazon are matters of every-year routine.
Some day, we, too, hope for such mighty vacationing--when our ship comes
in, or the baby gets big eno