Part 14
The same writer tells of a Chinaman who stole the picture of a pretty girl from an album and concealed it in his room. And an Oregon lady related to me an incident which gives further proof that John has a sense of beauty. She has two daughters, one a very pretty brunette of eleven, the other a blonde with irregular features and freckles. Lee had one day promised a handkerchief to the blonde, but on looking at the two he decided to give it to the other one. He often spoke of her beautiful black eyes, “just like a China girl’s,” and said he would take her along to China. “How much will you give me for her?” asked the mother. “Hundred dollars,” was the answer. “And how much for the other one?” “Two bits” (twenty-five cents). Lee used to tease these children by running away towards his cabin with their favorite cat, pretending that he was going to cook her for dinner. One day he was left alone in the house, and when the family returned late in the evening, they found he had attended to everything, even to winding up the clock. But at one o’clock they were awakened by a most infernal noise; Lee, with the thoroughness of his race, had wound up everything he could find—alarm clock and all!
Lee always gave the children Christmas presents of preserved ginger, candy, or silk handkerchiefs, and occasionally ten cents “to go to the theatre”; but after a time he became lazy and unmanageable, and was finally chased away because he impudently gave notice that he would not work the next day: “To-mollow I’ll be sick.”
One of the greatest advantages of Portland as a place of residence is that one can stay here all the year round, as there are very few days in summer when the thermometer rises high enough to make one uncomfortable; while the winter climate is similar to that of Virginia. When a few successive warm days do come, however, the Portlanders have an unusual variety of excursions to choose from. Picnic boats go up the Columbia River every day, to visit the Cascades or the Multuomah or Latourelle Falls. Others go down the river to Astoria and the sea. Mt. Hood can be reached in a few hours, and a hotel has been built near the great glacier, where fans are never in demand. Portland is a hundred miles from the sea, yet it has three seaside resorts, accessible by rail or boat, which are much frequented in July and August, less because the city is considered uncomfortable, than because all residents on the Pacific Coast seem to have a passion for camping out a few weeks each year.
In selecting a seaside resort on the North Pacific Coast, the most important consideration, next to a good beach, is protection from the cold winds which often make even the summer months chilly. In this respect the most southerly of Portland’s summer resorts, at Yaquina Bay, is well favored. It is situated about a hundred miles south of the Columbia River bar; and expects to be some day an important commercial place, owing to the facilities for transportation of wheat and fruit to San Francisco, the distance being two hundred miles less than from Portland. At present a steamer leaves every two weeks for the Golden Gate. Newport, on this bay, is a place of about five hundred inhabitants, who claim that their town will never need a fire company because the salt spray from the ocean renders the houses fire-proof—an assertion which they probably expect to be taken _cum grano salis_. Yaquina Bay formed part of a large Indian reservation until 1865, and up to that time the San Franciscans who found it profitable to fish for oysters in their bay had to pay the Indians a shilling a bushel for this privilege.
The other two seaside resorts of Portlanders are due west,—Clatsop being a few miles south of the Columbia River bar, and Ilwaco, or Long Beach, a few miles north of it. Of these two, by far the most frequented to-day is Long Beach, because it is accessible by boat and rail, while Clatsop has hitherto involved a dusty stage ride of eighteen miles from Tansy Point. Ilwaco is opposite Astoria, on the Washington side of the Columbia estuary, and lies at the southern extremity of the long, sandy peninsula which separates Shoalwater Bay from the Pacific. A few years ago a primitive sort of railway was built on this peninsula for the accommodation of visitors to the seaside, and now hotels and camps are scattered along its whole length. There are two hotels, but they are expensive and not very good, and most of the Portlanders prefer to bring their tents along and rough it. A site for the tent may be purchased for two dollars and a half a season, and hay for the beds is supplied by the neighboring farmers to those who are too fastidious to use the fragrant fern which is an omnipresent and irrepressible weed in Washington and Oregon. Fern has its advantages, not only because it costs nothing, but because it offers no temptation to the cows which have the freedom of the camp in the early morning hours. It is hardly conducive to comfortable rest to know that at any moment after daylight a cow may poke her head under your tent and chew up the substratum of your bedding. The owners of these cows provide for a plentiful supply of milk and vegetables, while meat is daily brought from Portland or Astoria, and is offered for sale, together with canned goods, at booths which are more numerous than they need to be. One can hardly blame these vendors for asking somewhat high prices for their supplies, but the person to guard against is the thrifty farmer’s wife who buys “store” butter and eggs at Ilwaco and then peddles them around as “fresh farm products” at double prices.
Shoalwater Bay is a famous oyster-ground, and the bivalves, together with mud-clams and razor-clams, are daily brought over to the camp. These oysters are small and inferior in flavor to Eastern oysters. Crabs and fish in great variety are also to be had for a trifle, but the popular way at Long Beach is to catch them yourself. When the tide recedes, some crabs (occasionally weighing four or five pounds) are always left in the hollows on the beach, where they can be easily caught. But once every month there are several mornings when the tide recedes about half a mile, and then the sport becomes lively. Everybody is out with poles and large sacks, in which the crabs are packed and afterwards gathered in by wagons. Another kind of sport peculiar to this region is gathering in the large hake (two to five pounders), which in their eager pursuit of sardines are occasionally caught by the breakers and cast ashore, where they can be gathered in by the hundred. Larger fish, too, are often cast ashore, among them ten-foot sturgeon, and large salmon with a big hole in the side. The seals which abound in this region have a destructive and abominable habit of taking some favorite tidbit out of the salmon and then leaving them to die. These dead fish on the beach have to be carefully covered with sand, or else they become a malodorous nuisance.
In the evening the scene along the beach is rendered brilliant by numerous bonfires, fed with the logs that are scattered along the beach in countless numbers. These logs are brought down the Columbia during the high-water season, and deposited along the beach for miles each way. Some of them, in fact, have been carried to distant islands in the Pacific. They supply the campers with plentiful fuel, and no one objects to the wasteful bonfires, because the stock is replenished every year. During storms this driftwood adds a unique element of grandeur to the scene, the huge logs being tossed about like straws by the angry waves, now lifted up straight as trees, and again dashed against each other with a thud which is heard above the roar of the breakers.
Long Beach is a place where even a victim of insomnia will sleep ten hours every night, and still yawn all day. But as a bathing-place it has its disadvantages. Bathing on the North Pacific is a different thing from bathing on the New Jersey coast. The waves are so rough—positively rude, one might say—and the undertow so strong, that there is only one hour each day when bathing becomes safe and enjoyable. This hour varies of course daily with the tide, and a bell is rung to announce it. Immediately hundreds of campers, who have put on their bathing-suits in their tents, rush into the waves; but few of them stay in more than twenty minutes, as the water, even on summer afternoons, is rarely warm enough to invite a longer stay. That it is perilous to go into the water at any other than the official hour announced by the bell is proved by the sad case of a young lady, a well-known heiress, who lost her life here a few years ago. She was engaged to a young man, whom she asked one day to accompany her into the water when the tide was going out. Of course he flatly refused, whereupon she was piqued and invited another young man, who foolishly complied with her request. They entered the breakers, when suddenly the young lady disappeared under the waves and was never seen again. Although a large sum was offered for the recovery of her body, it was never found, and it is possible that it was devoured by sharks; for these fish are occasionally seen here, though there is no danger near shore, and the noise made by the bathers is said to frighten them away.
The greatest objection to Long Beach is the cold winds which almost constantly sweep along the coast, very often accompanied by dense fogs. During three weeks in July and August, 1889, that I spent there, the sun shone only on five days. On account of these disadvantages it is probable that before long Clatsop Beach will become the favorite summer resort of Portlanders, because it is protected against wind and fogs by Tillamook Head on one side, and forests on another. A railroad has just been built to Clatsop, and it is probable that this summer the Portlanders will desert their favorite Long Beach and establish their summer quarters at Clatsop, which has the additional merit, from their own patriotic point of view, of being in Oregon, while Long Beach is in Washington.
From Clatsop a very interesting excursion can be made on foot to Tillamook Head, where a much-needed lighthouse was built ten years ago in a most exposed and romantic situation. It stands on an isolated rock, about a mile from the shore, and twenty miles south of the Columbia River bar. The foreman of the party that built the lighthouse was swept away by the waves and drowned, when he first put foot on the rock, and the workmen were repeatedly in great danger while building the lighthouse, being once cut off from all supplies for over two weeks by a storm. The almost incredible fury of the “Pacific” Ocean when it gets roused may be inferred from the fact that during a recent winter storm the wild waves broke over this tower, the summit of which is one hundred and thirty-six feet above sea-level, leaving fish and rocks scattered on the roof. One of these rocks weighed sixty-two pounds, and is now on exhibition in Portland.
Sea-lions are abundant in this neighborhood, and it is interesting to watch them fishing for salmon, or quietly basking in the sunshine on the rugged rocks, regardless of the cacophonous roaring of the monstrous sentinels. The Indians have a tradition that pearl-oysters used to be obtained a few miles off shore; but at present the less ornamental but more useful rock-oyster only is to be found, together with mussels and razor-clams, which have their habitat on the sandy shore, and on being disturbed dig their way down so rapidly, that it requires some skill to catch them with a little spade. In some places along the beach the curious phenomenon of “singing sands” is encountered, the sand on being trod on giving out a peculiar sound.
The Elk Creek region, through which this part of the coast is approached, is a veritable hunter’s and botanist’s paradise. Here bears and deer abound, and more dangerous game, like timber wolves and cougars, may be encountered, as well as otter and beaver. In the south fork of Elk Creek there is good trout-fishing. But it requires a decided talent for “roughing it” to enjoy all these things; for here we are in a forest truly primeval, where paths are few and far between, and where the sunlight rarely penetrates through the dense groups of firs and spruce to impede the growth of the moisture-loving ferns and mosses which carpet the ground everywhere. Trees of over two hundred feet in height and straight as masts abound, some of them up to ten feet in diameter, and therefore too large to tempt the lumbermen to destroy them.
As for these Oregon mosses and ferns, one would have to seek in moist tropical regions for anything to match them in variety, beauty, and verdant luxuriance. Not only is the ground covered so deeply that one could walk noiselessly, were it not for the dead twigs, but every tree, standing or prostrate, has its green mossy cover. Rotten logs are adorned with ferns waving gracefully over the lovely mosses amidst which they have gained foothold; and even the rocks, which are so bare and bleak in California, are here covered with a mosaic of mosses and lichens—green, gray, red, and yellow. Of the ferns the loveliest is, of course, the black-stemmed maiden-hair, which attains a height of several feet along the banks of shaded brooks, and looks so graceful as it waves about in the gentle breezes that it seems fully to deserve its poetic name. Less graceful and poetic is the common Oregon fern, which sometimes grows as high as California wild mustard, so that hunters may lose their way in it, and which is, from an æsthetic point of view, one of the most charming features of Oregon, since it covers up the unattractive gray of the soil everywhere with a delicate pale green garb which contrasts delightfully with the darker green of the fir-trees. But the farmers look on this species of fern as a dreadful nuisance, because it is the most irrepressible of all weeds, whose roots have more lives than cats. Oregon, it must be admitted, is almost as weed-ridden as California. Besides the fern, the most troublesome weeds are sorrel, dog-fennel, wild carrots, and oats, thistles, and the beautiful corn-flowers in every imaginable color. The most curious thing about these Oregon weeds is the tendency they have to supplant each other every three years, as if there were fashions among weeds. But whereas thistles and wild carrots and corn-flowers may come and go, the fern always remains, unless it is ploughed down persistently, and a _harrowing_ war is waged against the last inch of root remaining in the soil.
It goes without saying that a soil which is so favorable to the growth of weeds also extends a generous welcome to flowers. This is most strikingly shown on deserted farms where _annual_ garden flowers continue to seed themselves year after year, without any care. I have seen half-a-dozen garden species of flowers growing wild in a place where they had received no attention for twenty years. Wild flowers do not grow here in such profusion or variety as in California, but there are few flowers in California that equal in beauty the pendent red clusters of the wild Oregon currant, or the trifolium, whose petals are at first snow-white, and subsequently change to purple. Lilies of the valley, tiger-lilies, bleeding hearts, lady’s-slippers, iris, columbines, larkspur, and many other flowers that are carefully reared in Eastern gardens, grow wild here in great profusion.
In the matter of berries, Oregon is greatly ahead of California. The delicious wild strawberries on long stems are so abundant in May and June that they perfume the air along country roads like clover-fields. Blackberries are even more numerous, and a single county of Oregon would supply enough for all our Eastern cities. Wild currants and gooseberries are also abundant, as well as black and red raspberries and huckleberries. Then there are berries peculiar to Oregon and Washington, including the yellow salmon-berries, the scarlet thimble-berries, and the odd salal, a bush which grows everywhere and is quite ornamental with its glossy leaves and bell-shaped white flowers which turn into bluish black berries of a rather agreeable flavor. Usually these berries are small and dry, but in the swampy regions along the sea-coast they grow as large as gooseberries, and are very sweet, although care has to be used in eating them, as they are apt to be inhabited. Bears are very fond of these salal-berries. But perhaps the most curious berry in the State is the so-called Oregon “grape,” a small blue berry which makes good wine, but requires plenty of sugar, as it is perhaps the sourest thing that grows, unless it be the Oregon crab-apple, a small berry-like fruit growing in clusters, and of which a jam is made that would give European or Eastern epicures a new sensation of delight. Speaking of epicures, I claim to be an amateur in that line myself, and I must acknowledge that I have never tasted any French château wine with a more agreeable bouquet than that of Oregon cider made exclusively of the finest apple that grows—white winter pearmain—and kept in bottles, unfermented.
The wild oranges which grow in Mexico indicate that oranges, lemons, and limes must be among the most profitable crops grown there; and in the same way the wild crab-apples, cherries, various sorts of berries, and wild oats prophetically indicated that the wealth of Oregon lay in the systematic cultivation of fruit, berries, and grain.
I have apparently wandered away from my topic, which, I believe, was Portland and its summer resorts; but these things may as well be referred to here as elsewhere, since all of rural Oregon is practically a summer resort. I can only briefly refer to other attractions, such as the numerous wild canaries and other song-birds which fill the Oregon air with glad music; or the game-birds which may still be hunted but a few miles from Portland,—the stoical, hooting grouse on the tree-tops, undaunted by the repeated shots of the amateur rifleman; the partridges, which do not allow a passing train to disturb them at their breakfast in a wheatfield; or the wild pigeons, which save you the trouble of hunting them by giving you a few shots at them every morning on your cherry-trees; or the deer, which still abound in the mountains; etc. But in conclusion I must once more refer to what after all constitutes the greatest charm and attraction of Oregon, next to the snow-peaks; namely, the omnipresent fir-trees, tall, stately, dark green, and shady. Artists and others who have grown up in firless countries can have no idea of the true grandeur and beauty of a real forest, of the cathedral-like gloom and silence in its midst, of the exquisite serrated lines formed by the branching tree-tops standing against a deep blue sky, and of the infinite variety of tints and shadows produced by the play of clouds and of sunlight at different hours of the day. More beautiful still, if less imposing, than the full-grown trees, are the young fir-trees of ten to thirty feet in height which are rapidly filling up the regions destroyed by forest fires. They look like so many square miles of Christmas-trees, but no Christmas-trees adorned by Santa Claus with colored wax candles ever present so brilliant an appearance as those young fir groves when the morning or evening sun shines horizontally on them. Such lights and shades are to be seen nowhere else in the world, and the tints seem so warm and glowing that on a cold morning one involuntarily edges up to them to get warm.
XII.
UP AND DOWN THE COLUMBIA RIVER.
AN UNGRATEFUL REPUBLIC—THE COLUMBIA COMPARED WITH OTHER RIVERS—SNOW-PEAKS—SALMON-CANNERIES—ASTORIA AND THE MOUTH OF THE RIVER—CAPE HORN AND ROOSTER ROCK—WATER-FALLS—THE CASCADES—SALMON-WHEELS—IN THE HIGHLANDS—THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS—LOW AND HIGH WATER—THE SCENERY AND THE RAILROAD—THE “PLACE OF THE WINDS”—“SWIFT WATER”—A RIVER TURNED ON EDGE.
The proverbial ingratitude of republics has never been better illustrated than by the fact that not one of our forty-two States is named after the discoverer of America. True, there are more than fifty Columbia counties, townships, cities, and villages in the United States, and thirty more have adopted the name Columbus, while the capital of the country lies in the District of Columbia; but this district comprises an area of only sixty-four square miles, and in a country where so much is thought of big things, Columbus surely ought to have been sponsor of one of our largest States. An excellent opportunity was missed, on the occasion of the recent admission of Washington Territory to statehood, of changing its name to Columbia. This would not only have prevented much confusion in the mails, but would have been singularly appropriate, for the reason that Washington is bounded on the south by the Columbia River, and on the north by British Columbia.[1]
[1] When Washington Territory was separated from Oregon, an effort was made to have it named Columbia, but it was defeated in Congress.
However, even if it failed to use its opportunity for adopting the name of Columbia for one of its States, the Northwest has done more to honor the name of Columbus than any other part of the country; for here is British Columbia with its magnificent mountain scenery, more than eight times as large as the State of New York; and, better still, the Columbia River, three thousand miles in length, with the grandest river scenery in the world. I have repeatedly seen the Hudson, the St. Lawrence, Mississippi, Missouri, Sacramento, the Rhine, Elbe, and Danube, and none of these rivers impressed me as deeply as the Columbia, which, with the exception of the castles on the Rhine, combines the best features of all of them, and adds to them what they all lack—a background of lofty mountains covered with eternal snow. Grandeur is the watchword of the Columbia, which, with this mountainous background and the stupendous sculpture of its banks, towers above other famous rivers as the high Alps of Switzerland do above our Adirondacks and Catskills.
In entitling this chapter “Up and down the Columbia” I do not wish to frighten the reader into the belief that I intend to take him over the same ground—or water—twice, but merely to indicate that Portland is to be our starting-place. From that city steamers leave daily to make the trip of one hundred miles down to Astoria and the ocean, while others go up the river about one hundred and ten miles, to the Falls. The former trip should be taken first, to avoid an anticlimax.
Portland, Oregon,—which, although founded two centuries later than its namesake in almost the same latitude in Maine, has already almost double the population of the latter (sixty thousand),—is, as I remarked in the last chapter, doubtless the most picturesquely situated city in the United States. From the densely wooded green hills which enclose it on the west, the city is seen spreading itself comfortably and without unsanitary crowding along both sides of the Willamette River, which is about a mile wide at this place. East Portland and Albina are on the east side of the river, and beyond them, at a distance of about fifty miles, this picture is framed in by the Cascade Range and half-a-dozen giant snow-peaks. Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens, both covered with eternal snow, are so vast that on clear days they seem to rise just beyond the outskirts of the city, and delightful glimpses of them are caught in the streets. Less conspicuous, because farther away, but still adding to the charm of the scene, are Mt. Tacoma and Mt. Adams on the left, while on the right, the snowy tops of Mt. Jefferson and the three sisters are visible. To the left of Mt. Hood the Columbia River can be seen in the distance, like a silver cord showing the way to the deep cañon which it has worn through the Cascade Mountains.