For some weeks in the late summer heavy smoke-clouds from the many forest and clearing fires obscure all distant view. This last summer fires burned for at least fifty miles in length at close intervals of distance, and the dark gray pall overlay the mountains throughout. Behind the house, and in easy view from the windows on either side, are the Coast Mountains, or rather hills.
Mary's Peak rises over four thousand feet, and is snow-crowned for nine months in the year. The outlines of this range are far more gently rounded than the Cascades, and timber-covered to the top. Save for the solid line of the heavy timber, the outlines of the Coast Range constantly remind us of our own Dartmoor; and the illusion is strengthened by the dark-red soil where the plow has invaded the hills, yearly stealing nearer to their crowns. Mary's Peak itself is bare at the top for about a thousand acres, but the firs clothe its sides, and the air is so clear that, in spite of the seventeen miles' distance, their serrated shapes are plainly and individually visible as the sun sinks to rest behind the mountain.
Such sunsets as we have! Last night I was a mile or two on the other side of the river as night fell. Mount Hood was the first to blush, and then Mount Jefferson and the Three Sisters in turn grew rosy red. From the valley I could not see the lower Cascades, but these snowy pyramids towered high into the sky. One little fleecy cloud here and there overhead caught the tinge, but the whole air on the eastern side was luminously pink. Turning westward, the pale-blue sky faded through the rainbow-green into the rich orange surrounding the departing sun; and the westward mountains stood solidly and clearly blue in massive lines.
One great peculiarity of the Oregon landscape, as distinguished from an English rather than a New England scene, is in the number of white farmhouses that catch the eye. We see many from our windows. I suppose it is that the roads are so bad in winter that the farmers must live on the farms, instead of in the English-village fashion. So it is that you may travel by railroad up and down this valley for two hundred miles between farmhouses every quarter or half mile all the way. Nearly every farmhouse has its orchard close by; but one big barn is all the out-buildings they boast, and farm-yard, in the English sense, one never sees.