Page:The New Penelope.djvu/138



HE annual rain-fall on the lower Columbia River is upward of eighty inches—often almost ninety; and the greater amount of this fall is during the winter months, from November to March, generally the least intermittent in December. I mention this climatic fact, the better to be understood in attempting to describe a certain December afternoon in the year 186-.

It lacked but two days of Christmas, and the sun had not shone out brightly for a single hour in three weeks. On this afternoon the steady pour from the clouds was a strong reminder of the ancient deluge. Between the rain itself and the mist which always accompanies the rain-fall in Oregon, the world seemed nearly blotted out. Standing on the wharf at Astoria, the noble river looked like a great gray caldron of steaming water, evaporating freely at 42°. The lofty highlands on the opposite shore had lost all shape, or certain altitude. The stately forest of firs along their summits were shrouded in ever-changing masses of whitish-gray fog. Nothing could be seen of the light-house on the headland at the mouth of the river; nothing of Tongue Point, two miles above Astoria; and only a dim presentment of the town itself, and the hills at the back of it. Even the old Astorians, used to this sort of weather and not disliking it, having little to do in the winter time, and being always braced up by sea-airs that even this fresh-water flood could not divest of their tonic flavor—these old sea-dogs, pilots, fishermen, and other amphibia, were constrained at last to give utterance to mild growls at the persistent character of the storm.

A crowd of these India-rubber clad, red-cheeked, and,