In California one hears constant allusion to climate. Now, while climate is valuable, and worth all that is paid for it, in comfort and pleasure, and while Oregon has as good a climate as need be desired, taking it "by and large," I think the "card" on which West Oregon should draw tourists would be scenery. Like the climate of California, it is everywhere. If you enter the State by the Southern Pacific you have one whole day, at least, of mountain views greatly excelling in variety and interest the crossing of the Sierra Nevadas, and a lovely ride through the Wallamet Valley after it. If you come by the Union Pacific, you have the Columbia River views, whose grandeur I have but faintly indicated. By the Northern Pacific you are brought in view of an extraordinary and wonderfully extended panorama, including lakes, plains, the crossing of the Cascade Range, Puget Sound, and West Washington. Or, if the approach is made via the Canadian Pacific, you enjoy other similar scenes of sublimity impossible to forget.
But here, right about Portland, are views not to be surpassed in the United States, and the Cornell Road and Portland Boulevard furnish them to you, one winding among the heights north from the city, and the other taking a southerly direction. From the ridge west of Portland you may see five snow-peaks, two great rivers, the triune cities of West Portland, East Portland, and Albina, the town of Vancouver in Washington, and half a dozen other outlying towns within a radius of twenty-five miles. You may drive for eighteen miles in one direction, looking over two counties as you go, and for twelve miles in another, of scarcely less wonderful picturesqueness, but of softer features. Neither the camera nor the pen is equal to the task of delineating scenes on a scale of such magnificence as are grouped about Portland-on-Wallamet.
