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.
