Beyond the West: containing an account of two years' travel in the other half of our great continent far beyond the old West, on the plains, in the Rocky mountains, and picturesque parks of Colorado. Also, characteristic features of New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho ... Oregon, Utah, Nevada, and ... California, the end of the West ... the great continental railroad, together with the ... most wonderful natural scenery in the world .../ by George W. Pine.

BEYOND THE WEST.
becoming the terminus of a branch Pacific Railway.
The country about Dalles has a remarkabt)le wvildness
and singularity. You have ail about evidences of
that period when the country was one great field of
molten rock and liquid fire; rocks burnt and worn
by the elements into horizontal terraces or massive
perpendicular columns and sharp-pointed peaks
hewn and seamed in every direction. This is
an interesting region; the worn basaltic rock
makes impressions on the mind and memory of the
beholder not soon forgotten.
The word Dales signifies thought, and was applied
to this place by the early French voyagers to describe the narrow channel through which the river
is forced at this place. From Dalles Bierstadt
painted his " Mount Hood."
"Upon Mount Hood I stood,
And with rapt gaze explore
The valley, and that patriot band
Upon Columbia's shore."
The grand old mountain can be seen for a hundred
miles along the river, rising from the backbone of
the Cascade Range. This, like Vesuvius and Etna,
has formed for itself a cone-shaped mountain on the
top of the range, and has thrown up from its crater
a wonderful pile of scoria, ashes and other debris piled mountain upon mountain. The northern side, tha.t of the river, has large quantities of
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