The road now led us straight eastward to the mountains, whose fir-crowned summits frowned on us from every side. Here and there a little valley nestling among the hills had been reclaimed to the use of man; and many a neat little farm and well-grown orchard, with fenced grain-fields and hay-fields, witnessing to the successful labor of the owner, smiled on us as we passed. On nearly all appeared the magic words: "Hay and oats sold here. Good accommodation for campers"; betokening that we were on the main road of travel, and that the farmers found a ready market for their produce at their very door. At one farm stood a set of Fairbanks's scales, for weighing and apportioning the wagon-loads before undertaking the passage of the mountains. The ascent was soon commenced; indeed, we had mounted several hundred feet before we were well aware of it, so good was the engineering of the road. [Sidenote: _LOWER SODA SPRINGS._] The timber grew larger on either side and ahead; no burned timber here, but massive, heavy growths, extending mile after mile, of spruce, hemlock, and pine, interspersed with many a cedar, tall, straight, and strong. Very little undergrowth of brush; a good deal of brake-fern and of grass; and by the sides and along the edges of the little gullies and cañons that we crossed, the large maidenhair-fern grew in beautiful profusion. We were never far from the Santiam, and now and again the roar and rush of water told us of little falls and rapids in the stream. Always ascending, here with a long, straight stretch of grading cut into the hill-side, there with a winding course to cheat the hill that rose to bar our road; down a short distance, then along the little valley with its farm, then up again, till we gained the brow overlooking the settlement at the Lower Soda Springs. The little wooden houses, with galleries overhanging the rocky stream; the heavy fir-woods clothing the hill-sides; the abundant ferns and creeping plants growing down to the water's edge; the abrupt outlines of the rocks in places too steep for vegetation--all reminded us of Norway, and of happy tours in bygone years. And the welcome we received from the hospitable innkeepers served to strengthen the remembrance.