“Yes; and I’ve seen salmon and sturgeon struggling up the Columbia, so thick in the current that they looked like Illinois saw-logs. I think I know how Moses felt when he had
“‘Climbed to Pisgah’s top,
And viewed the landscape o’er.’”
“Wait till we reach the Ranch of the Whispering Firs. Then you will see something worthy of all your rhapsodies. There!” cried the Captain, as they sighted the broad and slightly sloping plateau on which his new log house was built.
In front of it stood a towering fir-tree, like an ever-vigilant sentinel; and behind it rose gigantic colonnades of evergreen forests. Foaming waters surged and leaped through a ragged gulch; and tangled thickets of hazel, alder, dogwood, and elder crowded the luxurious growth of ferns that struggled for the mastery. “There!” he repeated, “what do you think now?”
“That I’d like to transport the entire family of Rangers, root and branch, to the Ranch of the Whispering Firs. Suppose we take your old sawmill off Lije’s hands and remove the whole thing to Oregon, John? It would be a good way to relieve him of his elephant.”
“The machinery is old and old-fashioned, Joe. We’d better buy everything new, and the best of its kind.”
“I was merely thinking of relieving Lije; that’s all.”
As they made the last turn leading to the house, they were accosted impatiently by the Captain’s junior partner.
“At this rate, you won’t git started to the States afore Christmas, Cap’n.”