Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 24.djvu/289

 John Work's Journey to Umpqua River, 1834 267 [Willamette] when we continued down the river to Mr. McKay's place which we reached in 6 hours. The road lay sometimes along the plain & sometimes along to the height of the water. We had to pass through the woods where the road was very bad & difficult to pass owing to the thickets & fallen timber. We had also to unload & carry the baggage across a creek deep with steep clayey banks. The horses could not cross loaded. There are immense meadows all the way down along the river, & if the grass were not injured would yield an immense quan- tity of pasturage & hay. Where the water has recently dried off there is a thick crop of grass so tall that it reaches to the horses' [220] shoulders. Mr McKay's place is in a beautiful situation. There is a plain of considerable extent surrounded by woods clothed with fine pasturage in which there is a consider- able quantity of clover. The soil however is gravelly & appears of an inferior quality to the Faladin country. There is a considerable quantity of ground enclosed & under crop. One field of potatoes, 5 acres, has a fine ap- pearance, but the wheat, barley, pease & Indian corn dont promise so abundant a crop. The house is built on the bank of a lake which communicates by channels with the small channel of the Willamet. The cattle & horses are in fine order. What a pity the low ground is subject to be inundated, for otherwise it would yield most abund- ant crops of every kind of grain. July 9. Fine. Obtained a canoe from La Bonte and a boy as a guide & embarked at [221] 10 oclock & after winding through a number of small channels reached the Comments July 9. Louis La Bonte provided the canoe for the journey to Fort Vancouver. Camp was six miles west of and below Fort Vancouver, on the Washington side, op- posite the mouth of Willamette River. The "lake" was probably Sturgeon Lake in Sauvie Island, that being the