Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/99

Rh feet, thus producing slack water to the Dalles. And I must say that every appearance, to my mind, sustains this view.

The Columbia, like most rivers, has a strip of bottom land covered with timber on one side or the other, but at the Cascades this bottom land is very narrow and has a very different appearance from the bottoms at places on the river above and below. The mountain on the south side of the river looks precisely as if a vast landslide had taken place there, and the huge rocks that lift their gray, conical heads above the water at a low stage go to prove that they could not have withstood that terrible current for many centuries. In the winter when the water is at its lowest stage, immense masses of thick ice come down over these Cascades and strike with tremendous force "against the rocks, and the consequent wearing away must have been too great for those rocks to have been in that position many centuries.

But there is another fact that seems to me to be almost conclusive. As we passed upon the river the water was at a very low stage, and yet some twenty miles above we could see stumps of various sizes standing as thick beneath the water as trees in a forest. The water was clear and we had a perfect view of them. They were entirely sound and were rather sharp in form toward the top. It was evident that the trees had not grown in the water, but it had been backed up over their roots and the tops and trunks had died and decayed, while the stumps being under water, had remained substantially sound; and the reason why they were sharp at the top was that the heart of the timber was more durable than the sapwood which had decayed. Another reason for the sharpness of the stumps at the top is the abrasion caused by the floating masses of ice.

It was the opinion of Governor Fremont that these stumps had been placed in this position by a slide which took them from their original site into the river. But I must think that opinion erroneous because the slide could hardly have been so great in length, and the appearance of the adjacent hills does not indicate an event of that magnitude. It is much more rational, I think, to suppose that the slide took place at the Cascades, and that the Indian tradition is true. Another reason is that the river at the points where these stumps are found is quite wide, showing an increase of width by the backing up of the water over the bottoms.

I procured a room for my family at Vancouver until I could build a cabin. General M. M. McCarver and myself had agreed that we would select a town site at the head of ship navigation on the Willamette River. The general, having no family with him. arrived at the fort some time before I did, and selected a spot on the Willamette about five miles above its month at what we then supposed to be the head of ship navigation. Here we laid out a town calling it