[Illustration:  pointing finger] Title perfect—­a Warrantee
Deed from the hub of the earth to the top of the skies, and
Uncle Sam’s Patent to back us!

A further-reaching title one could scarcely require.

I don’t know where I got the belief that the Columbia was a second-rate river.  There must have been some blunder in the geographies out of which I got my lessons and my notions of the North-west coast at school.  Possibly, too, the knowledge that navigation is interrupted by rapids at the Cascades and Dalles contributed to form an impression conspicuously wrong.  In fact, the Columbia is one of the great rivers of the world.  It seems to me larger, as it is infinitely grander, than the Mississippi.

Between Astoria and the junction of the Willamette its breadth, its depth, its rapid current, and the vast body of water it carries to sea reminded me of descriptions I had read of the Amazon; and I suspect the Columbia would rank with that stream were it not for the unlucky obstructions at the Cascades and Dalles, which divide the stream into two unequal parts.

[Illustration:  SALEM, CAPITAL OF OREGON.]

For ten miles above Astoria the river is so wide that it forms really a vast bay.  Then it narrows somewhat, and the channel approaches now one and then the other of its bold, picturesque shores, which often for miles resemble the Palisades of the Hudson in steepness, and exceed them in height.  But even after it becomes narrower the river frequently widens into broad, open, lake-like expanses, which are studded with lovely islands, and wherever the shore lowers you see, beyond, grand mountain ranges snow-clad and amazingly fine.

The banks are precipitous nearly all the way to the junction of the Willamette, and there is singularly little farming country on the immediate river.  Below Kalama there are few spots where there is even room for a small farmstead.  But along this part of the river are the “salmon factories,” whence come the Oregon salmon, which, put up in tin cans, are now to be bought not only in our Eastern States, but all over the world.  The fish are caught in weirs, in gill nets, as shad are caught on the Hudson, and this is the only part of the labor performed by white men.  The fishermen carry the salmon in boats to the factory—­usually a large frame building erected on piles over the water—­and here they fall into the hands of Chinese, who get for their labor a dollar a day and their food.

The salmon are flung up on a stage, where they lie in heaps of a thousand at a time, a surprising sight to an Eastern person, for in such a pile you may see many fish weighing from thirty to sixty pounds.  The work of preparing them for the cans is conducted with exact method and great cleanliness, water being abundant.  One Chinaman seizes a fish and cuts off his head; the next slashes off the fins and disembowels the fish; it then falls into a large vat, where the