Page:All Over Oregon and Washington.djvu/57

Rh bowlders, growing larger and larger as we near Young's Bay, until just at the extremity of the point they require much exertion to scramble over. But our guide is entertaining, which compensates for great exertion.

In stories of "peril by land and water," of ship-wrecks, and legends of treasure-trove—that should be—he drowns all thoughts of mutiny, and we toil ahead. "To be sure there have been wrecks at the mouth of the Columbia—a century—two centuries ago." Then he takes from his pocket, where he must have placed it for this purpose, and shows to us a thin cake of beeswax, well sanded over, which he avers was portion of the cargo of a Japanese junk, cast ashore near the Columbia in some time out of mind. When we have wondered over this, to us, singular evidence of wrecking, he produces another, in the form of a waxen tube. At this we are more stultified than before, and then are told that this was a large wax candle, such as the Japanese priest, as well as the Roman, uses to burn before altars. The wick is entirely rotted out, leaving the candle a hollow cylinder of wax.

By this self-evident explanation, we are convinced. Certain it is that for years, whenever there has been an unusually violent storm, portions of this waxen cargo are washed ashore, ground full of sand. As bees-wax is a common commodity in Japan, we see no reason to doubt that this, which the sea gives up from time to time, originally came from there. The supposition is the more natural, as the mouth of the Columbia is exactly opposite the northern extremity of that Island Empire; and a junk, once disabled, would naturally drift this way. The thing has been known to occur in later years; and that other wrecks, probably Spanish, have happened on this coast, is evidenced by