Rev. H. K. Hines

ASCENT OF MOUNT HOOD.

The following is the closing of an account of the "Ascent of Mount Hood," made in July, 1866, by Rev. H. K. Hines, D. D., author of Hines's History of Oregon. The paper was prepared for the Royal Geographical Society of London, by request of Sir Robert Brown, of Edinburg, Scotland, and was read before that society which passed unanimously a resolution of thanks to Dr. Hines, which was conveyed to him by letter with the personal compliments of Sir Roderick Marchison, who was then its president. It is given as a specimen of Dr. Hines's descriptive writing:

Standing upon the summit of the mountains when the ethereal brightness of the early northern summer was spread over the landscape near and far, it was given me to behold scenes that were their own and only parallel. I am in despair, go where I may on earth, of finding others like them. It was not the sublimity of the great mountains alone, nor yet the altitude which lifted me so high above the rolling, billowy breast of the great ranges sleeping their rocky slumbers so far beneath my feet, eastward, westward, southward and northward away to the far and blue horizon. It was not the reaching in and out of the great glittering riverflow which cleft mountain from mountain like a silver sea, and seemed ever listening to the whispering forth and back of tempest and lightning from pinnacle to pinnacle far above its sleeping sweetness. It was all these, and much more, aggregating and blending their sublimities in a creation of indescribable grandeur before and below me. then, above, the sky seemed so near! almost within touch of my fingers. Where I had so often seen the clouds wander on their airy journeys so far above was now as far below. They were silver-flecked robes wrapping the icy foot of the mountain, and I stood far on their sun

And

ward side and gazed down on their shining broidery of infinite brightness. And yonder, near a hundred miles northward, the storm-king broke his clouds and dashed his thunderbolts in harmless violence against the rocky sides and icy glaciers of Mount Adams, whose peaks glowed in unclouded light above the swift beat of the storm. The hour was auspicious, as if chosen of God, in which to greet the footsteps of mortal where few but the Immortal had ever trod before. It was a glorious welcome to this colossal masterpiece of His creation.

Yonder, two hundred miles to the north, the huge, rugged, inverted icicles of Mount Baker pierce the snowy drifts fallen around their base, while in the intervals between are deep ravines, vast gorges, and rude, craggy peaks, as if the earthquakes had taken this whole western world in their frenzied arms and tossed its mightiest rocks in wild disorder across the plains. South, another hundred miles, over the deep chasms of rivers, and the dread blackness of vast lava-piles frozen into rocks by the winter of ages, Diamond Peak seems almost a rival to the mountain on which I stand. Eastward, in the foreground, sweep far away the golden plains of the Des Chutes, John Day and Umatilla Rivers, enframed within the piney crests of the great Blue Mountain Range, a hundred and fifty miles distant. On the west the evergreen summits of the Coast Range cut clear against the blue sky, with the Willamette Valley, unsurpassed in beauty on the earth, a hundred miles in length, sleeping in quiet loveliness at their feet. The broad, silver belt of the Columbia, without a peer in grandeur and purity on the continent, winds down through its bordering of sunlit vales and shaded hills toward the ocean, which I see blending with the blue of the horizon through the broad vista between the lofty capes that sentinel its entrance to the sea, an hundred and fifty miles away. Within these almost measureless limits, which I had but to turn upon my heel to sweep with my vision, was every variety of vale and mountain, lake and prairie, bold, beetling precipices and gracefully rounded summits, blending and melting into each other, and forming a whole of unutterable magnificence.

Now, as often as thought recurs to the moment when I stood upon that awful height, the same awe of the Inǹnite God "who setteth fast the mountains, being girded with power, comes over my soul. I praise Him that He gave me strength to stand where His power speaks with words few mortals ever heard, and the reverent worshippings of mountains and soltudes seem ever flowing up to His Throne.

Mrs. Harriet K. M'Arthur

SENATOR NESMITH AND HIS TUTOR.

Senator Nesmith always was passionately fond of books, and, notwithstanding misfortune and hardship, at that time exhibited much of the same high spirit and love of fun and humor that he always retained. The tutor he remembered most vividly was one Gregor MacGregor, to whom he went to school one hundred and twenty days and received one hundred thrashings. He admitted it was the only school where he ever learned anything, and, notwithstanding a genuine feeling of regard for his old tutor, had vowed he would thrash him if he was ever large enough. The time came, but he did not execute his threat. In the year 1860, when Mr. Nesmith went to the United States Senate, he journeyed into New England to revisit the scenes of his early days. He went to see his old tutor, and said, "Mr. MacGregor, I have always intended thrashing you in return for your early cruelty to me, and now I think I can do it." "Weel, Weel, Jeems, ," said the auld Scot, "if I had given you a few more licks you would have been in the Senate long before

Valentine Brown

Valentine Brown, of Portland, Oregon, has recently written and published two volumes, Poems" and "Armageddon," of which the latter is probably the stronger book. The almost monosyllabic style of his beautiful strain is illustrated in the following verses:

HELEN.

From a wide, wide sea, came a joy to me,
Came a tiniest, daintiest star,

And my quiet rooms its light illumes
With the fairest tints which are.

It is not a gleam from the land of dream,
Nor a star from the azure sky,

But a life and light, which day and night
Must either smile or cry.

'Tis a babe as sweet as one would meet
Where the babes of heaven be,

And this I know, but a month ago
From heaven she came to me.

Her joyous coo is a song anew,

And her wee cry moves my heart,
And the angels where all things are fair,
Must have sighed from her to part.

But she surely brought to my mortal lot
Heaven's own sweet delight,

For I bend and kiss my little miss,
And she smiles with all her might.

UNIV. OF