Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/52



One July day, a dozen or more years ago, sitting upon the Oregon side of the Columbia, with Mount St. Helens in front of me on the Washington side, a wall of pentagonal columns of basalt garlanded with the vines and flowering shrubs with which Nature in this region adorns even the rocks, at my back, and at my feet the grandest of rivers "making haste slowly" to the sea, I listened to some significant tales of ocean life told by that pioneer of pioneers, Captain Francis A. Lemont.

There are pioneers and pioneers, but when you come to a man who was on this coast in 1829, you listen for something different from the now familiar story of crossing the plains with an ox team. Not but that was a narrative full of interest, but we know it too well to have much curiosity about it, the overlanders having made their history for all time. The tales related by the retired sea captain just named furnish some very interesting links in Oregon history, and have more than an ordinary value. The history of the man himself incident to his connection with that of Oregon has in it a great deal of romance, as will be seen from the brief and simple rendering here given. It goes without saying that a mere land lubber of a scribbler could never put into a narrative of sea life the proper nautical