LETTERS FROM AN OREGON RANCH
there, with Fingal’s black bounding ships with their white sails; warlike hosts with shining shields and spears, their “red eyes rolling on the foe.” There too were the ghosts of Arden, “with stars dim twinkling through their forms.” Mountains too were there, and rocks, caves, woods, pines, bearded oaks, and foaming torrents. Only the most unimaginative could live in Oregon and not hark back to Ossian. Hear how well he describes our own mountain eyrie: “The rain beats hard; the strength of the mountain streams comes roaring down the hills.” “The blue stream roars in the vale; the thistle shakes there its lonely head; the moss whistles in the wind.” “Autumn is dark on the mountains; gray mists rest in the hills.” “A green field in the bosom of hills.” “Rain gathers round the head of Cromla; the stars of the north shake heads of fire through the flying mists of heaven.” Now, if you want to know just what Oregon is like, read Ossian. We are a little short, it is true, of kings, warriors, bards, harps, and ghosts; but all the rest is here.
But I am straying from my subject. Breakfast over, the Plymouth Rock fowl safely landed in the oven, the plum-pudding steaming, vegetables prepared for cooking, feeling then that what Mrs. Carlyle calls “The Cares of Bread” were off my mind for a time, I said, “Tom, let’s go now and open our Christmas packages.” We had no gifts for each other, owing to
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