from others, "the Cascade Mountains," and so named them for all time.
But Oregon has several other though not as high ranges,—namely, the Blue Mountains, so called from their color seen across the tawny waste of the plains, which have a northeast and southwest course through East Oregon; the Coast Bange, which follows the trend of the west shore of the continent, near the sea; and three or four cross-ranges from the Cascades to the Coast Mountains in the southern part of the State. All these ranges have their peaks, but only the great Andean chain of the Cascades lifts up into the region of cold air its crumbling volcanic cones covered with snow, which even the fiercest heat of summer only diminishes, but never dissipates except on the sharpest ridges.
The most southern of these, and next above California's pride,—Mount Shasta,—is Mount Pitt, nine thousand two hundred and fifty feet high, named after the British statesman by British subjects in Oregon before the boundary question was settled. Frequent attempts have been made to change its name to Mount McLoughlin, in honor of Dr. John McLoughlin, the benevolent governor of the Hudson's Bay Company in Oregon, who rescued from starvation the immigrants of 1843, at a time when the London board would far rather they had been left to perish than have been rescued, to the injury of the fur-trade and the weakening of England's claim on the territory. So difficult is it, however, to make these changes understood, that the Oregonians have compromised by naming a lesser peak in Klamath County Mount McLoughlin.
Next north of Pitt is Union Peak, feeding the north fork of Rogue River. Thirty-five or forty miles farther north is Mount Scott,—whether a namesake of the general or of an Oregon pioneer I do not know,—eight thousand five hundred feet in height. About the same distance above Scott, and of the same altitude as Mount Pitt, is Mount Thielsen, so called in compliment to General Thielsen, of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Railroad. This peak feeds the south fork of the Umpqua River. Again in thirty or forty miles rises Diamond Peak, five thousand five hundred and ninety-five feet in height, which is the source of the middle fork of the Wallamet on the west and of the
