stes on which even the lizards appear starving, while the other
looks forward to their being covered with countless flocks and herds at
no very distant period of time. Both Cook and Vancouver, having
previously made up their minds against the existence of a river near
parallel 46 degrees, passed the Columbia without perceiving it, and the
former even declared most decidedly that the strait seen by Juan de Fuca
had its origin only in the fertility of the pilot's brain. As they were
discovered to be in error, so it is not impossible that others not less
positive in their assertions may be convicted of the same carelessness
of examination as those navigators, so remarkable in all other respects
for their accuracy, and so indefatigable and minute in their researches,
that little has been left to their successors but to check their work.

"With respect, however, to the attributed barrenness of great part of
the territory, so peremptorily insisted on by many, there is some excuse
for the earlier travellers from whom that opinion is derived. Ignorant
of the best routes, and frequently famishing in the immediate
neighbourhood of plenty, they most justly reflect back to others the
impressions they received; but in so doing, though they speak truth,
they give very erroneous ideas of the country they think themselves to
be describing most accurately, and of this very pregnant examples are
found in the travels of Lewis and Clarke, and the party who came
overland to Astoria: both struck the head waters of the Saptin, both
continued its course to its junction with the main stream, both
suffered--the latter party intensely; but had they, by the fertile
bottoms of Bear and Rosseaux Rivers, found access to the valley between
the Cascade and Blue Mountains--or, keeping still further west, crossed
the former range into that of the Wallamette, they would have found
game, been banished from their pages, and the Oregon would have appeared
in her holiday attire--

"A nymph of healthiest hue--"

and the depth of ravines and the elevation of rocks and precipices would
have been changed into the unerring evidences of fertility and
luxuriance of vegetation afforded by the dense forests and gigantic
pine-trees of the coast district. We can scarce estimate the transition
of feeling and change which would have been produced in their estimate
of the country, if they could have been suddenly transported from their
meagre horse-steak--cut from an