Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 29).djvu/20

 the water rises and falls with the river. Nearly the whole surface is overflown by the June freshets. It is covered with a heavy growth of cotton-wood, elm, white-oak, black-ash, alder, and a large species of laurel, and other shrubs. The Hudson Bay Company, some years ago, placed a few hogs upon it, which have subsisted entirely upon roots, acorns, &c. and increased to many hundreds.

I found the Willamette deep enough for ordinary steamboats, for the distance of twenty miles from its western mouth. One mile below the falls are rapids on which the water was too shallow to float our canoe. The tide rises at this place about fourteen inches. The western shore of the river, from the point where its mouths diverge to this place, consists of lofty mountains rising immediately from the water-side, and covered with pines. On the eastern side, beautiful swells and plains extend from the {202} Columbia to within five or six miles of the rapids. They are generally covered with pine, white-oak, black-ash, and other kinds of timber. From the point last named to the rapids, wooded mountains crowd down to the verge of the stream. Just below the rapids a very considerable stream comes in from the east. It is said to rise in a champaign country, which commences two or three miles from the Willamette, and extends eastward twenty or thirty miles to the lower hills of the President's range. This stream breaks through the mountain tumultuously, and enters the Willamette with so strong a current, as to endanger boats attempting to pass it. Here were a number of Indian huts, the inmates of which were busied in taking and curing salmon. Between the rapids and the falls, the country adjacent to the river is similar to that just described; mountains clothed with impenetrable forests.