Page:All Over Oregon and Washington.djvu/72

66 rapid stream, and cold from the snows of St. Helen. Its waters in summer, when the snows are melting rapidly, are white, from being mixed with volcanic ashes, or some disintegrated infusorial marl or chalk. A favorite voyage for travelers coming down from Puget Sound, is twenty miles of canoe travel from Pumphrey's Landing to Monticello. An Indian canoe, with Indians to steer, carries one rapidly and pleasantly down stream—while the excitement of passing the rapids, and the splendid scenery of the wild, little river, furnish entertainment.

So disguised in a luxuriance of trees and shrubbery is the mouth of the Cowlitz, that, when we are in the open Columbia, we can scarcely detect the place of our exit from it. Crossing over to the Oregon side we find ourselves at Rainier, where lumber is manufactured, chiefly for export. The location of Rainier is, in many respects, fine; but, at present, there seems to be little besides the lumber trade to give it business, though there are a few excellent farms in the vicinity. Any day in summer one may see at this place a picturesque group of natives hanging about the wharves, or paddling their canoes near the steamboat-landing. Should they have berries to sell, they will offer them to you in neatly woven baskets of cedar-bark, which you are welcome to keep if you purchase their contents.

Without tarrying long, we steam on up, passing Coffin Rock—another memelose illihee—a promontory of basalt sparsely covered with trees, which have found soil enough in the crevices to support a stunted growth. Along here, on the Oregon side, is a tract of level land, extending back from the Columbia for some distance. It answers to the depression of the Cowlitz Valley; and it is remarkable, that, wherever a stream comes into the