e carried into their places by
immense landslides.

Much of interest in the connection must necessarily be omitted for want
of space. About forty miles below the Cascades the river receives the
Willamette, the last of its great tributaries. It is navigable for ocean
vessels as far as Portland, ten miles above its mouth, and for river
steamers a hundred miles farther. The Falls of the Willamette are
fifteen miles above Portland, where the river, coming out of dense
woods, breaks its way across a bar of black basalt and falls forty
feet in a passion of snowy foam, showing to fine advantage against its
background of evergreens.

Of the fertility and beauty of the Willamette all the world has heard.
It lies between the Cascade and Coast Ranges, and is bounded on the
south by the Calapooya Mountains, a cross-spur that separates it from
the valley of the Umpqua.

It was here the first settlements for agriculture were made and a
provisional government organized, while the settlers, isolated in the
far wilderness, numbered only a few thousand and were laboring under the
opposition of the British Government and the Hudson's Bay Company. Eager
desire in the acquisition of territory on the part of these pioneer
state-builders was more truly boundless than the wilderness they were
in, and their unconscionable patriotism was equaled only by their
belligerence. For here, while negotiations were pending for the location
of the northern boundary, originated the celebrated "Fifty-four forty or
fight," about as reasonable a war-cry as the "North Pole or fight."
Yet sad was the day that brought the news of the signing of the treaty
fixing their boundary along the forty-ninth parallel, thus leaving the
little land-hungry settlement only a mere quarter-million of miles!

As the Willamette is one of the most foodful of valleys, so is the
Columbia one of the most foodful of rivers. During the fisher's harvest
time salmon from the sea come in countless millions, urging their way
against falls, rapids, and shallows, up into the very heart of the Rocky
Mountains, supplying everybody by the way with most bountiful masses of
delicious food, weighing from twenty to eighty pounds each, plump
and smooth like loaves of bread ready for the oven. The supply seems
inexhaustible, as well it might. Large quantities were used by the
Indians as fuel, and by the Hudson's Bay people as manure for their
gardens at the forts. Used, wasted, canned and sent in