LETTERS FROM AN OREGON RANCH
is an old paling fence, at least so tradition tells us, for if it still is there it is lost to sight and serves only as a support for vines and brambles. There the blackberry trails its flowery sprays, and the wild gourd runs like a creature alive, holding up its slender stems of green, tipped with fragrant starry white blossoms, such as we never saw until we came to Oregon. The farmers call it a pest; if so, it is a most bewitching one. Here too are hazel bushes,—not like ours, but small trees; and wild rose and salmon bushes. The latter I am quite sure you have never seen. Their blossoms are beautiful, like pink hollyhocks in miniature. The humming-birds love them; two burnished beauties were hovering above them when I entered the garden,—different from any we have before seen, making the queerest roaring sounds, not unlike a wild animal. You won’t believe this, nor did I until I had traced the incongruous sounds to them. It seemed preposterous to suppose such dainty bits of iridescence should roar like that; but they did, for I caught them in the very act.
Alders and willows grow about my Eden, and wild plum and crab-apple trees are snowy with bloom and faintly sweet; underneath these is a tangle of low bushes, wild-flowers, tall weeds, and vines. Through this wall of green came a pleasant sound of bubbling waters, gushing from the roots of a group of alders just above me, a pure little rill of it sliding down the hillside, under bending briers, tall grasses, and nodding rushes.
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