waterfall that goes tumbling down the mountain passes, foaming capriciously on through groves of giant ferns.

There is a fascinating change in the trees as we ascend. The willows can be seen in the valley below, alders, and others. We pass firs and spruce, and on the summit, half a mile possibly above the sea, find a plateau covered with volcanic cannon balls shot out of the great cones, partly overgrown by trees, and for ten miles or more the train runs through what is to me one of the most remarkable volcanic regions in America. The forest becomes deeper and darker, and suddenly we are at Pokegema, the starting point of the most interesting mountain road in Oregon, as it virtually crosses two rangesthe Siskiyou and the Cascades; rises to nearly a mile above the sea, drops into deep cañons swept by dark rivers far below, skirts the face of impossible cliffs, all the time deep in the heart of the splendid fir and pine forests which clothe the ranges of Oregon.

The old-fashioned Concord coach and six horses is waiting for us, and after the freight, from a coffee mill to a bedstead, has been packed, the two passengers are stowed away and the driver, who has driven the stage, we are told, for twenty years, speaks to the horses and we are off over the road made from the bark, seeds, cones, and leaves of the giant trees of centuries,

one.

a noiseless highly-colored road which appeals to Around Pokegema we are in the alleged open. We can see the turquoise blue here and there, like a mosaic above; turquoise and emerald, sky and fir leaves, and there incense to go with it; the very air is impregnated with it, and as the wind comes soughing through the deep glades we catch the tang, the essence of it, clear and sweet, and realize why some men love the forest, live in it, die in it.

When it rains at Pokegema I fancy the natives do not find it out for half an hour; and if it had rained along the line in some dark places I should not have been surprised to hear that it was not discovered until it was all over. Thirty-five miles of forest-sugar pines that grow from one hundred to three hundred feet into the air, pillars supporting the sky, western white pines from one hundred to two hundred feet, Balfour pines nearly one hundred feet in height, black pines, looming one hundred and fifty feet, Douglas fir, three hundred feet, white fir, two hundred feet, Shasta fir, three hundred feet, Pacific red cedar, two hundred and fifty feet. We are in a land of giants; they are the only living things that we are passing here, there, over on yonder range, with scores of others not so large. The driver calls them off as he would old friends who have established claims here, and so they are, and every other day, in summer, he passes

them, thirty-five miles of stupendous forest, so big, so thick that the anglers who have thought well of themselves for years are silenced. There is something in a really big forest that ought to take the conceit out of the average man, and this forest did; its bigness crept into the souls of some, it awed others, and there were some who wished to take off their sombreros to the very big trees, and would, but there were so many, it was a question of holding one's hat in his hand.

The stage road wound through the beautiful great trees in the direction of least resistance. Sometimes a sound would come ringing through the trees, the sound of bells, and a six-, eight-, or ten-horse and mule freight would heave in sight, and every driver knew "Bill," our driver, and had a word to say. Again it would be a load of loggers, huge big-limbed fellows, red, brown, hairy, going out somewhere; or it would be a prairie schooner, women and babies lying on the beds, bear skins on the side, with tired dogs beneath; ranchers going home down the Rogue River from a camping trip up the lake; or an old-fashioned buggy with a solemn man and woman, a country parson going to a funeral, as people do die here. Yet in all this forest there was not a house or cabin that we could see, and it was trees, eternally trees, glorified, for twenty miles up and down over the splendid mountains. There were two