Sinopsis

I. THE RIVER The Columbia, viewed as one from the sea to the mountains, is like a rugged, broad-topped picturesque old oak, about six hundred miles long, and nearly a thousand miles wide, measured across the spread of its upper branches, the main limbs gnarled and swollen with lakes and lake-like expansions, while innumerable smaller lakes shine like fruit among the smaller branches.—John Muir. ON a frosty morning of last July, before sunrise, I stood upon the belvedere of the delightful Cloud Cap Inn, which a public-spirited man of Portland has provided for visitors to the north side of Mount Hood; and from that superb