The paper was awaiting the Captain at his table the next morning, with the announcement that the sailing of the ocean steamer was to be delayed for a couple of days on account of an accident to her propeller.
“Then we’ll have time for a spin out to the Ranch of the Whispering Firs, eh, Joe?” he asked, as his brother, accompanied by Wahnetta, who was resplendent in a crimson cashmere robe, over which her black mantilla was carelessly thrown, took his seat at his elbow at breakfast.
“I thought I’d like to take a spin through this embryo city,” was the quiet response.
“But I want you to see the lay of the land. I’m hoping to make you a partner in the ranch and sawmill business. You won’t want to buy a pig in a poke.”
A visit to Joseph’s sons and daughters at school was first in order. Then a carriage was called, and the entire party was conducted around and over stumps, logs, and devious primitive roadways to the heights.
“Why anybody wants to go to the Old World for scenery, when he can enjoy such a prospect as this right at his very door, is one of the mysteries of modern existence,” said Wahnetta. “Away to the north by east of us, in the home of my people, there is a land so different from this that it might be a part of another planet, yet it is passing beautiful. Directly to the north is the traditional Whulge, or Puget Sound, where the enemies of my people live, who, like my own, are dying out. This mighty land is a giant baby; wait half a century, and she will be a full-grown giantess.”
It was three o’clock when they returned to the hotel, but a fresh team from the one livery stable the metropolis of Oregon Territory was able to boast was placed at the disposal of the brothers, who spanned a distance of thirty miles in three hours. A light rain had fallen in the early morning, and the face of Nature was as pure as ether. Resplendent green abounded in the valley, lighted here and there by gleams of the gliding Willamette, on whose silvery current little white steamers were seen at intervals, flitting to and fro like swans. In many spots in the valley, and everywhere on the mountain-sides, stood rows on rows of forest firs, and beyond these, coming frequently into view as the road wound in and out among the trees, arose the snow-crowned monarch of the Cascades, majestic Mount Hood, whose slowly dying glaciers discharged their silt into the milk-white waters of the Sandy.
“What do you think of it all?” asked the elder brother, after a long silence, in which each had been feasting his eyes upon the beauty of the scene and filling his lungs with the exhilarating air.
“I’m thinking of the glories that await the later comers into this beautiful land, after the pioneers have worn their bodies out in their struggles with the native wilderness. I’ve been shutting my eyes and seeing coal mines, iron mines, gold mines, oil mines, silver mines, farms, fisheries, mills, factories, orchards, gardens, everything! I’ve lived in Utah and witnessed the marvels of irrigation there; but God does the irrigating in this country, and He does it well.”
“Did you see the fishes that swarmed in the Sandy, Joe?”