e of the master peak, and nothing to mar the symmetry of the
cool green woodlands. For Shasta stands alone, and from its isolation is
doubly impressive. One sees it all at once, as the train clambers up the
grades towards Oregon, not a mere peak among many of a range, but an
individual cone, neighborless and inspiring. Shasta has a volcanic
history, and but a few hundred years ago bestirred itself titanically,
casting forth balls of molten lava which to-day are encountered for
scores of miles roundabout, weird testimonials to the latent strength
now seemingly so reposeful beneath the calm crust of the earth.

Up and still up, into the timbered mountains, you are borne, until the
very heart of the tousled Siskiyous is about you. Then all at once the
divide lies behind and with one locomotive instead of several the train
swings downward and northward into Oregon, winding interminably, and
twisting and looping along hillsides and about the heads of little
streams, which grow into goodly rivers as you follow them. Slowly the
serried mountains iron out into gentler slopes dimpled with meadows, and
here and there are homes and cultivated fields, and steepish roads of
many ruts. Then the rushing Rogue River is companion for a space, and
orchards and towns dot the wayside. More rough country follows, the
Rogue and the Umpqua are left behind in turn, and the rails bear you to
the regions of the Willamette.

A broad valley, rich, prosperous, and beautiful to look upon, is the
Willamette, and a valley of many moods. Neither in scenic charms nor
agricultural resourcefulness is its heritage restricted to a single
field. There are timberland and trout stream, hill and dale, valley and
mountain; rural beauty of calm Suffolk is neighbor to the ragged
picturesqueness of Scotland; there are skylines comparable with
Norway's, and lowlands peaceful as Sweden's pastoral vistas; the giant
timber, or their relic stumps, at some pasture edge, spell wilderness,
while a happy, alder-lined brook flowing through a bowlder-dotted field
is reminiscent of the uplands of Connecticut. Altogether, it is a rarely
variegated viewland, is this vale of the Willamette.

[Illustration: Along the Willamette]

[Illustration: Mount Shasta

From a photograph by Weister Co., Portland, Ore.]

You have seen valleys which were vast wheat fields, or where orchards
were everywhere; in California and abroad you have viewed valleys
dedicated to vineyards, and from