It would result from these facts, that the soil on the banks of the river, as far as tide water, or for a distance of fifty or sixty miles, is very little adapted for agriculture; at all events, vegetation is very slow.  It may be that the soil is not everywhere so cold as the spot we selected for our garden, and some other positions might have given a better reward for our labor:  this supposition is rendered more than probable when we take into consideration the great difference in the indigenous vegetables of the country in different localities.

The forest trees most common at the mouth of the river and near our establishment, were cedar, hemlock, white and red spruce, and alder.  There were a few dwarf white and gray ashes; and here and there a soft maple.  The alder grows also to a very large size; I measured some of twelve to fifteen inches diameter; the wood was used by us in preference, to make charcoal for the blacksmith’s forge.  But the largest of all the trees that I saw in the country, was a white spruce:  this tree, which had lost its top branches, and bore evident marks of having been struck by lightning, was a mere, straight trunk of about eighty to one hundred feet in height; its bark whitened by age, made it very conspicuous among the other trees with their brown bark and dark foliage, like a huge column of white marble.  It stood on the slope of a hill immediately in the rear of our palisades.  Seven of us placed ourselves round its trunk, and we could not embrace it by extending our arms and touching merely the tips of our fingers; we measured it afterward in a more regular manner, and found it forty-two feet in circumference.  It kept the same size, or nearly the same, to the very top.

We had it in contemplation at one time to construct a circular staircase to its summit, and erect a platform thereon for an observatory, but more necessary and pressing demands on our time made us abandon the project.

A short distance above Astoria, the oak and ash are plentiful, but neither of these is of much value or beauty.

From the middle of June to the middle of October, we had abundance of wild fruit; first, strawberries, almost white, small but very sweet; then raspberries, both red and orange color.  These grow on a bush sometimes twelve feet in height:  they are not sweet, but of a large size.

The months of July and August furnish a small berry of an agreeable, slightly acid flavor; this berry grows on a slender bush of some eight to nine feet high, with small round leaves; they are in size like a wild cherry:  some are blue, while others are of a cherry red:  the last being smaller; they have no pits, or stones in them, but seeds, such as are to be seen in currants.