four thousand feet above sea-level, scatteringly covered with lofty pines, underneath which grows the short, thick grass known as "pine-grass," giving, with the groups of cattle here and there, a park-like aspect to the woodland. Beyond this twenty miles, and five hundred feet lower, is the valley resembling Grand Bond, and known as Camas Prairie, with the town of Mt. Idaho in the southeast corner.
Here let us stop, for we are off our prescribed territory; but this pan-handle of Idaho naturally belongs to the State of Washington, and has been repeatedly claimed by it. It contains, besides a good deal of superior farming land, the Coeur d'Alene mines, all of which territory is at present tributary to Washington, and must in a great measure ever remain so, being shut off by natural barriers from Southern Idaho. On the other hand, the southern counties of this new State could ill spare the best of its farming territory, and, being now a State, will not.
CHAPTER XII.
A CHAT ABOUT OREGON MOUNTAINS.
If there is anything of which an Oregonian is more proud than another, it is of his mountains, for every one exhibits that personal interest in them which amounts to a sense of proprietorship. Portland shop-windows are full of bad pictures of Mount Hood, which, notwithstanding their deficiencies from an artistic point of view, are yet pleasingly suggestive. That they sell is certain, for the production never ceases.
I may as well confess right here that I am myself responsible for starting this particular fad. Years ago, on my first visit to Oregon, I was delighted with the charming cloud-effects so noticeably lacking in the drier climate of California, as well as with the woods and the snow-peaks. My enthusiasm in my correspondence with the well-known California artist, F. A. Butman, "slopped over" to such an extent that he came up here and made a good many sketches. On returning he painted a "Mount Hood" on a large canvas, with a beautiful foreground,
