ight 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