Page:Cathlamet On the Columbia.djvu/52



EW people appreciate how different the forest home of the Indians of the Lower Columbia was from the habitat of other Indian peoples and what effect this had upon them. Cathlamet was situated on the bank of the Columbia River and was in a mere notch cut out of one of the most remarkable forests in the world.

For hundreds of miles to the North, East, South and West, the Douglas fir, now called in the trade by the commonplace name of Oregon pine, covered the earth with a green mantle two to three hundred feet in thickness.

The growth of one of these forests was as good an example of the opulence of nature as 32