Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/169



Great improvements were made in the little town, at the Falls of the Willammette, during our stay in the Country. There was [sic] at the Falls, when we left, a Saw and Grist Mill on one of the Rock Islands, belonging to an American Company, styled the Oregon Milling Company, and on the main shore, two Saw Mills and a large merchant Flouring Mill, belonging to Dr. Mclaughlin, four Dry Goods Stores, a School House, two Churches, a Public Library, a flourishing Literary Society, Law offices, Physicians, Shops,and Mechanics, of almost every description, and a population of about three hundred persons.

At the Falls, the Willammette precipitates down a perpendicular basaltic rock, thirty-three feet, and spreads out as it approaches the precipice, into a broad sheet, at the verge of which it is nearly a half a mile wide. It is divided by two large Islands of rock into three different shoots. The whole descent of the water from the level surface above, to that below, is about forty-five feet. The River for some distance above and below the Falls, runs through a channel cut in the solid rock. On the East