There was a good deal of feminine curiosity displayed on either side, by the natives and the new-comers. When we went to church the first Sunday after our arrival, there were a good many curious worshipers, more intent on the hats and bonnets of the strangers than on the service in which we united. We heard afterward how disappointed they were that the stranger ladies were so quietly and cheaply dressed. We could not say the same when callers came, which they speedily did after we were settled in our new home--such tight kid gloves, and bright bonnets, and silk mantles! It was a constant wonder to our women-folk how their friends managed to show as such gay butterflies, two thousand miles on the western side of everywhere. [Sidenote: _RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS._] We found here, in a little town of eleven hundred inhabitants, all kinds of religious denominations represented--Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Methodists North, and Methodists South, Evangelicals, and Baptists--but very little rivalry and no rancor. I shall have something more to say about the religious life later on, but I think I will reserve the description of our home, and of those of some of our neighbors, for a fresh chapter. CHAPTER II. Where we live--Snow-peaks and distant prospects--Forest-fires--The Coast Mountains and Mary's Peak--Sunset in Oregon--Farmhouses: the log-cabin, the box-house, the frame-house--Dinner at the farm--Slay and eat--A rash chicken--Bread-making by amateurs--Thrift and unthrift--Butter and cheese--Products of the "range," farm, and garden--Wheat-growing. You might look the world over for a prettier spot than that on which this house stands. Just a mile from Corvallis, on a gently rounded knoll, we look eastward across the town, and the river, and the broad valley beyond, to the Cascade Mountains. Their lowest range is about thirty miles off, and the rich flat valley between is hidden by the thick line of timber, generally fir, that fringes the farther side of the Willamette. Against the dark line of timber the spires of the churches and the cupola of the court-house stand out clear, and the gray and red shingled roofs of the houses in the town catch early rays of the rising sun. The first to be lighted up are the great snow-peaks, ninety, seventy, and fifty miles off--a ghostly, pearly gray in the dim morning, while the lower ranges lie in shadow; but, as the sun rises in the heavens, these same lower ranges grow distinct in their broken outlines. The air is so clear that you see plainly the colors of the bare red rocks, and the heavy dark, fir-timber clothing their rugged sides. Ere the sun mounts high the valley often lies covered with a low-lying thin white mist, beyond and over which the mountains stand out clear.