According to an Indian tradition, the river of the Cascades once flowed through the basalt beneath a natural bridge that was broken down during a mountain war, when the old volcanoes, Hood and St. Helen’s, on opposite sides of the river, hurled rocks at each other, thus forming a dam.  That the river has been dammed here to some extent, and within a comparatively short period, seems probable, to say the least, since great numbers of submerged trees standing erect may be found along both shores, while, as we have seen, the whole river for thirty miles above the Cascades looks like a lake or mill-pond.  On the other hand, it is held by some that the submerged groves were 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