Page:The Overland Monthly, Jan-June 1894.djvu/204

140 The stone is somewhat crumbled and moss-grown, but the inscription is still legible, and reads:

From this hill you obtain a very satisfactory view of that part of the Coast Range which lies to the south and east of Astoria, and which throws up a group of peaks that, seen from the Columbia, seem to constitute a single massive mountain, and is known to most persons as Saddle Mountain. Its true name is Necahnie; and it forms one of the most picturesque elevations in the mountainous regions of the Northwest, its blended outlines making a sharp peak at one extremity, a domed peak at the other, with a lower but greater bulk connecting them. In the foreground are the foothills covered with timber, descending gradually to the level of the sandy plains that abut upon the sea.

Astoria has no beach or speed tracks, no means, in fact, of touring for pleasure, except such as depend upon boating of some sort. Besides, except the passenger steamers which run on the river above this point, and during the summer "season" venture below as far as Fort Stevens on the Oregon side, or Fort Canby on the Washington side, there are only the sort of steamers called tugs available for passenger service. These inelegant but more seaworthy craft are made necessary by the heavy waves encountered about the mouth of the Columbia when the wind is fresh and the tide coming in against the current.

If we wish to get to the seaside from Astoria we embark in one of these tugs, either for Tansy Point where there is a railroad wharf, and where we take passage for different points on Clatsop Plains and Clatsop Beach; or we steam over to Baker's Bay on the north side of the river, and take a train there for points along Ilwaco Beach.

The Seaside, on Clatsop Beach, is the oldest fashionable summer resort on the Oregon coast. To the visitor who is curious about the history of a country, the Clatsop Plains are full of interest. Neither will the student who is not indifferent to how the world was made, is unmade, and made over again continually, fail to find this corner of Oregon interesting. The plains have been formed by the action of the sea and river, being a deposit of sand divided by lagoons and small lakes, a portion of the peninsula being still tide land. They extend from the Point Adams Lighthouse south about fifteen miles, and have a breadth of from one to seven miles. To the south the land rises gradually towards the Coast Mountains which are covered with timber, and which send down numerous streams into Young's Bay and the Pacific Ocean. One of these small rivers has a historic interest, as being the stream on which the United States explorers Lewis and Clarke wintered in 1805–06. To stand upon this spot inspires one to re-read the story of that winter, and strengthens the imagination to behold the discomforts of the party, detained not only by the weather in so cheerless a spot, but in spite of the weather having to hunt and dry the provisions which were to supply them on their homeward journey, to wade the lagoons, and carry home the carcasses of elk, deer, and bear, on their backs, or to make salt from sea-water to preserve the meat. What time they were not doing this, they were endeavoring to acquire enough of the Chinook language to enable them to obtain some information about the country from the squalid Clatsops that crowded their very limited quarters. It is a fact which surprises