Page:From the West to the West.djvu/273

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discharged their silt into the milk-white waters of the Sandy.

"What do you think of it all?" asked the elder brother, after a long silence, in which each had been feasting his eyes upon the beauty of the scene and filling his lungs with the exhilarating air.

"I 'm thinking of the glories that await the later comers into this beautiful land, after the pioneers have worn their bodies out in their struggles with the native wilderness. I Ve been shutting my eyes and seeing coal mines, iron mines, gold mines, oil mines, silver mines, farms, fisheries, mills, factories, orchards, gardens, everything! I Ve lived in Utah and witnessed the marvels of irrigation there; but God does the irrigating in this country, and He does it well/ "Did you see the fishes that swarmed in the Sandy, Joe?" "Yes; and I Ve seen salmon and sturgeon struggling up the Columbia, so thick in the current that they looked like Illinois saw-logs. I think I know how Moses felt when he had

"' Climbed to Pisgah's top,

And viewed the landscape o'er.' "

"Wait till we reach the Ranch of the Whispering Firs. Then you will see something worthy of all your rhapsodies. There!" cried the Captain, as they sighted the broad and slightly sloping plateau on which his new log house was built.

In front of it stood a towering fir-tree, like an evervigilant sentinel; and behind it rose gigantic colonnades of evergreen forests. Foaming waters surged and leaped through a ragged gulch; and tangled thickets of hazel, alder, dogwood, and elder crowded the luxurious growth of ferns that struggled for the mastery. "There!" he repeated, "what do you think now?"

"That I'd like to transport the entire family of Rang