There is no doubt that both Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens have still internal fires, though both their craters are now filled up with ashes.  There is reason to believe that at its last period of activity Mount Hood emitted only ashes; for there are still found traces of volcanic ashes, attributable, I am told, to this mountain, as far as one hundred miles from its summit.  Of Mount St. Helens it is probable that its slumbering fires are not very deeply buried.  A few years ago two adventurous citizens of Washington Territory were obliged, by a sudden fog and cold storm, to spend a night near its summit, and seeking for some cave among the lava where to shelter themselves from the storm, found a fissure from which came so glowing and immoderate a heat that they could not bear its vicinity, and, as they related, were alternately frozen and scorched all night—­now roasting at the volcanic fire, and again rushing out to cool themselves in the sleet and snow.

[Illustration:  THE DUKE OF YORK.  QUEEN VICTORIA.  Puget Sound Chiefs.]

The rocks are volcanic from near the mouth of the Willamette to and above the Dalles, and geologists suppose that there have been great convulsions of nature hereabouts in recent geological times.  The Indians have a tradition, indeed, that the river was originally navigable and unobstructed where now are the Cascades, and that formerly there was a long, natural tunnel, through which the Columbia passed under a mountain.  They assert that a great earthquake broke down this tunnel, the site of which they still point out, and that the debris formed the present obstructions at the Cascades.

Oregon, if one may judge by the fossil remains in Mr. Condon’s collection, seems once to have been inhabited by a great number and variety of pre-adamite beasts; but the most singular object he has to show is a very striking ape’s head, carved with great spirit and vigor out of hard lava.  This object was found upon the shore of the Columbia by Indians, after a flood which had washed away a piece of old alluvial bank.  The rock of which it is composed is quite hard; the carving is, as I said, done with remarkable vigor; and the top of the head is hollowed out, precisely as the Indians still make shallow depressions in figures and heads which they carve out of slate, in which to burn what answers in their religious ceremonies for incense.

But supposing this relic to belong to Oregon—­and there is, I was told, no reason to believe otherwise—­where did the Indian who carved it get his idea of an ape?  The Indians of this region, poor creatures that they are, have still the habit of carving rude figures out of slate and other soft rocks.  They have also the habit of cutting out shallow, dish-like depressions in the heads of such figures, wherein to burn incense.  But they could not give Mr. Condon any account of the ape’s head they brought him, nor did they recognize its features as resembling any object or creature familiar to them even by tradition.