Page:The Overland Monthly, Jan-June 1894.djvu/212

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coast mountains for miles, and which for weeks darkened the sky with smoke and embers. The country is covered with a second growth of shrubby timber, that in contrast with the original forest, gives it an appearance of baldness.

The general direction of the bay is east and west, Newport being on the north shore. There is a hotel also on the south shore, and visitors are divided between North Beach and South Beach. The jetty which the government has constructed at Yaquina is on the south side, and on it lies the wreck of the steamer Yaquina, carried there by the force of the wind in the winter of 1889. There is a good deal of picturesque coast scenery in the neighborhood of Newport. At Brasfield's, ten miles below, we see seal rocks, natural bridges, and towering cliffs. There is a lighthouse at the entrance to Yaquina Bay, and another with a first-class light on Cape Foul weather which is visible from here. Fishing is good at this point, and the central valley towns arc supplied from Yaquina. But the beach is not interesting, the "sea agate "alone is an object of search on the sands. This rare "agate" is a small clam petrified into a pellucid stone that holds a little water in its center, visible to the eye and audible to the ear. As curios they are much sought after, and command a good price. The rock oyster, a soft-shelled variety of the genus Ostrea, is found in the rocks of this part of the coast, and always exercises the intellect of visitors with presenting the problem of how it got there. Let the naturalist come forward and explain that "hard sum,"—also how it enlarges its stony cell as it grows.

North of Yaquina is the Siletz. Indian Reservation, extending about thirty miles along the coast, and eastward to the summit of the Coast Range, with a small reserve known as the Grand Rond, just over the mountains. These reservations hold the remaining representatives of these warlike tribes, whose hostility to white men made Southern Oregon a battlefield from 1851 to 1856. Their characteristics may be studied in a modified form by summer visitors at Yaquina, who desire a lesson in evolution and heredity.

Camping parties find the coast of Nestucca more attractive than at Ya- quina. The bay at this place is only a small inlet at the mouth of the Nestucca and Nestachee rivers; but there is a grand forest here and many fine coast views. The most prominent local object is an immense rock standing in the