The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Guardians of the Columbia, by John H. (John Harvey) Williams

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Title: The Guardians of the Columbia

Mount Hood, Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens

Author: John H. (John Harvey) Williams

Release Date: June 8, 2013 [eBook #42893]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GUARDIANS OF THE COLUMBIA***

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COPYRIGHT DR. U. M. LAUMAN

Dawn on Spirit Lake, north side of Mt. St. Helens.

"Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops." Shakespeare.

THE GUARDIANS
OF THE COLUMBIA

COPYRIGHT, G. M. WEISTER

Climbing the last steep slope on Mount Hood, from Cooper's Spur, with ropes anchored on summit.

Willamette River at Portland, with ships loading wheat and lumber for foreign ports.

FOREWORD

In offering this second volume of a proposed series on Western mountain scenery, I am fortunate in having a subject as unhackneyed as was that of "The Mountain that Was 'God.'" The Columbia River has been described in many publications about the Northwest, but the three fine snow-peaks guarding its great canyon have received scant attention, and that mainly from periodicals of local circulation.

These peaks are vitally a part of the vast Cascade-Columbia scene to which they give a climax. Hence the story here told by text and picture has necessarily included the stage upon which they were built up. And since the great forests of this mountain and river district are a factor of its beauty as well as its wealth, I am glad to be able to present a brief chapter about them from the competent hand of Mr. H. D. Langille, formerly of the United States forest service. A short bibliography, with notes on transportation routes, hotels, guides and other matters of interest to travelers and students, will be found at the end.

Accuracy has been my first aim. I have tried to avoid the exaggeration employed in much current writing for the supposed edification of tourists. It has seemed to me that simply and briefly to tell the truth about the fascinating Columbia country would be the best service I could render to those who love its splendid mountains and its noble river. A mass of books, government documents and scientific essays has been examined. This literature is more or less contradictory, and as I cannot hope to have avoided all errors, I shall be grateful for any correction of my text.

In choosing the illustrations, I have sought to show the individuality of each peak. Mountains, like men, wear their history on their faces,—none more so than Hood's sharp and finely scarred pyramid; or Adams, with its wide, truncated dome and deeply carved slopes; or St. Helens, newest of all our extinct volcanoes—if, indeed, it be extinct,—and least marred by the ice, its cone as perfect as Fujiyama's. Each has its own wonderful story to tell of ancient and often recent vulcanism. Let me again suggest that readers who would get the full value of the more comprehensive illustrations will find a reading glass very useful.

Thanks are due to many helpers. More than fifty photographers, professional and amateur, are named in the table of illustrations. Without their co-operation the book would have been impossible. I am also indebted for valued information and assistance to the librarians at the Portland and Tacoma public libraries, the officers and members of the several mountaineering clubs in Portland, and the passenger departments of the railways reaching that city; to Prof. Harry Fielding Reid, the eminent geologist of Johns Hopkins University; Fred G. Plummer, geographer of the United States forest service; Dr. George Otis Smith, director of the United States geological survey; Judge Harrington Putnam, of New York, president of the American Alpine Club; Messrs. Rodney L. Glisan, William M. Ladd, H. O. Stabler, T. H. Sherrard, Judge W. B. Gilbert, H. L. Pittock, George H. Himes, John Gill, C. E. Rusk, and others in Portland and elsewhere.

The West has much besides magnificent scenery to give those who visit it. Here have been played, upon a grander stage, the closing acts in the great drama of state-building which opened three hundred years ago on the Atlantic Coast. The setting has powerfully moulded the history, and we must know one if we would understand the other. Europe, of course, offers to the American student of culture and the arts something which travel here at home cannot supply. But every influence that brings the different sections of the United States into closer touch and fuller