State of Oregon, the Valley of the Willamette,
October 3, 1903. }

From Portland to San Francisco. Written while moving thirty miles an hour on the Southern Pacific Railway.

Here we are flying due south from Portland, crossing the entire State of Oregon. We have left Portland on the 8:30 morning train—“The Southern Limited”—and shall be in “Frisco” at eight o’clock to-morrow night. We are now ascending the beautiful valley of the Willamette, “Will-am-ett;” with a fierce accent on the am. Flat and level as a table—ten to twenty miles wide and two hundred miles long, lying between the Coast Range on the west and the higher Cascade Mountains on the east. A land of perfect fertility, so gracious a country as I have never yet beheld. In winter, rarely any snow, plenty of rain and very much moist Scotch air. In summer, a sunshine that ripens fields of wheat, a moisture that grows the biggest apples and prunes and small fruits. Everywhere neat, tidy farmhouses, big barns. Great stacks of wheat straw and as big ones of hay, and these generally tented in with brown canvas. We are passing, too, extensive fields of hop vines, an especially lucrative crop at present prices—twenty-five cents a pound, while seven cents is reckoned as the cost. Everywhere we see flocks of chickens, turkeys and some geese plucking the stubble fields, for the crops are all cut and harvested. And every now and then we espy a superb Mongolian pheasant in gorgeous plumage, for they have become acclimated and multiply in this salubrious climate. Herds of fine cattle and sheep are grazing in the meadows, and the horses are large and look well cared for. A rich, fat land, filled with a well-to-do population. I have just fallen into talk with a young lawyer who lives at the port of Toledo, where Uncle Sam is dredging the bar at the mouth of the Yaquina River, and to which city new railroads are coming from the interior, and where they expect a second Portland to grow up. He tells me that east of the Cascade Mountains lie other fertile valleys west of the Rockies, and where also is the great cattle and stock raising region of the State, and where moisture is precipitated sufficient to save the need of irrigation.

Now we are just coming to the Umpqua River and the town of Roseburg—a garden full of superb roses blooming by the station—where stages may be taken to the coast at Coos Bay, another growing seaport section, where extensive coal mining and timbering prevail. And as the dusk grows we are passing over the divide to Rogue River and its verdant valley, which we shall traverse in the night. Oregon is green and the verdure much like that of England—the same moist skies, with a hotter summer sun urging all nature to do its best.

In the night we shall climb over the Siskiyou Mountains, and by dawn will be in sight of Mount Shasta. At Portland we were amidst mists and fogs and drizzling rain, so we caught no glimpses of Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helena and Mt. Jefferson, all of whose towering snow-clad cones may be seen on a clear day. We hope that to-morrow Mt. Shasta will be less bashful and not hide her white head.

Sunday A. M., October 4th.

In California! We were called at six o’clock that we might see Mt. Shasta, and also have a drink from the famous waters of Shasta Spring. Mt. Shasta we did not see, so great were the fog masses and mists enshrouding her, but we have had a drink from the elixir fountain. A water much like the springs at Addison, in Webster County, W. Va., but icy cold.

Now we are coming down the lovely valley of the Sacramento. A downgrade all the way to “Frisco.” The verdure is growing more tropical. The undergrowth of the forests is more and more luxuriant. I see big, red lilies by the swift water-side. The air is milder. We have descended already 1,600 feet since passing Shasta Spring. We have five hundred feet more to drop to Oakland. We are now in a ruggedly volcanic mining country, many iron, lead and copper mines and once placer diggings for gold, these latter now pretty much worked out, only a few Chinese laboriously washing here and there.

Now we are at Keswick and see our first groves of figs and almonds and some wide-reaching palms and the spreading umbrella-trees, and many prune orchards. The valley is widening, the air is warmer than we have known it for many days. We are surely in California.

I have just been talking with the brakeman. He has been in Dawson and on the Klondike. “Mushed” through the White Pass, but, after reaching Dawson, he lost heart and came back again without a stake. The man who failed! Another, a big man, with a strong jaw and keen eye, has just climbed on the rear platform. He, too, has been in Dawson, stayed one day, bought a claim in the morning for $1,000, and sold it in the evening for $15,000, and then came right back to his almond groves to invest his make and thereafter rest content with California. The man who won.

Near us sits a black-eyed Russian woman, young and comely, whose husband was one of the discoverers of gold in Nome, and with her the loveliest blue-eyed Norwegian maiden just arrived from Hammerfest. “My husband’s sister who is come to America to stay,” the Russian says in perfect English. She is learning to talk American, and wonders at the huge cars, the multitude of people, the distances—“only a few hours from Trondhjem to Kristiania, but over four days and nights from New York to Seattle!” she exclaims. And her blue eyes grow big with wonder at the half-tropical panorama now unrolling before us.

I am writing this letter by bits as we travel. We are now on a straight track, as from my improved handwriting you may detect. A stretch of thirty-seven miles straight as the crow flies. We are past the smaller fruit farms of the upper Sacramento Valley; we are out on the interior plain that from here extends all down through California, a thousand miles almost to Mexico. We are in the wonderful garden land of the State. On either side of us stretches away, as far as the eye can see, a flat, level plain. It is one monstrous wheat field, and fences only at rare intervals mark it into separate holdings. On the east, far on the sky line, extend the snow-tipped summits of the Sierra Nevada Mountains; on the west, the Coast Range. We have passed out of the region of mists and clouds, and are now in a clear, warm sunshine, the heavens an arching vault of cloudless blue. As clear as on the Yukon almost, but with many times the warmth. This is the region of the Mammoth Bonanza wheat farms you have so often read about. And one feels that man hereabouts does things in a big way.

In Oregon, they tell me, the climate is so equable that a single blanket keeps you warm of night the year round. You need it in summer; you do not need more in winter. Here, I fancy, you scarcely need any at all, so much further south have we already come.

Even yet we are passing through the wide stretches of wheat lands, wheat now milled in California and sent in many big ships to the Orient. The Chinaman is just learning the joy of an American flap-jack or a loaf of wheat bread—and he can’t get enough.

Dusk has come down upon us before we have reached Carquinez Strait, over which our train—a long train—is carried by a monstrous ferry boat, and then, skirting San Francisco Bay, we are soon among the suburban illuminations of Oakland. Across the five miles of water lies San Francisco, its million glittering electric lights stretching several miles and covering the hills on which the city is built, while far out on the right flashes the intermittent gleam of the light-houses marking the entrance of the Golden Gate. The ferry-boat taking us across is said to be the largest in the world, and the Norwegian lass’s big blue eyes grow all the bigger as she looks about her on the multitude of fellow-passengers. And then we are ashore and are whirling through broad, well-lighted streets to our hotel, “The Palace,” where now we are.