Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/256

246 in weight. In the still parts of the water, immense quantities are caught in these nets, to which are attached spindles formed of the wood of Thuja plicata, which is very buoyant and which serve as corks, while small oblong stones answer the purpose of lead. The rope of the net is made from a species of Salix, or from the Thuja, and the cord of Apocynum piscatonum (A. hypericifolium?), a gigantic species peculiar to this country, whose fibre affords a great quantity of flax.

The country continues mountainous as far as the lower branch of the Multnomak River, the Belle Vue Point of Vancover, about seventy miles from the ocean, where the banks again become low, and the background rises gradually. On the south, towards the head water of the Multnomak, we saw a ridge of snowy mountains, and one which was very conspicuous and of a conical form in the distance, far exceeding the others in height. This, I have no doubt, is Mount Jefferson, of Lewis and Clark. Another was equally striking due east, and one due north; the former, Mount Hood, and the latter Mount Saint Helens, of Vancouver; their height must be very great, at least 10,000 or 12,000 feet, and I am informed that two-thirds are continually wrapped in snow, of which there is hardly any sensible diminution even in summer, immense barriers of ice rendering every attempt to reach the summits quite impracticable. From the Grand Rapid to the Great Falls, seventy miles, the banks are steep, rocky, and in many places rugged; and the hills gradually diminish in elevation, and are thinly covered with stunted timber and shrubs but a few feet high. Here we were no longer fanned by the huge Pine, the Thuja and Acer, nor gratified by observing the perpetual quiver of the beautiful Populus tremuloides. Far as the eye can reach there is but a dreary waste of barren soil, thinly covered with scanty herbage. Here, however, I found the beautiful Clarckia pulchella (Bot. Mag. t 2918), Calochortus macrocarpus (Bot. Reg. t. 1152), Lupinus aridus (Bot. Reg. t. 1242), and leucophyllus (Bot. Reg. t. 1124), Brodiaea grandiflora (Bot. Mag. t. 2877. Bot. Reg. t. 1183), etc. The present bed of