Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts 2.djvu/86

 &quot;A backwoodsman, with his axe alone, can in a few days make out of one of these cedars (Oregon cedar,—Thuia gigantea) a comfortable cabin, splitting it into timbers and boards with the greatest ease. This the Indians did, long before an iron axe was known among them, using stone hatchets and wedges of the crab-apple (Pyrus malaris). They also make from its trunk those celebrated canoes, which have an elegance and lightness superior to any other, except the fragile shells of birch-bark, used farther north.&quot;

&quot;The Oregon crab-apple (Pyrus rivularis) grows sometimes twenty feet in height and one in diameter; but usually forms low, tangled thickets, equal to the tropical mangrove in impenetrability; its fruit, though small, is abundant and well-flavored."

Dr. Cooper says that the salmon far up the Columbia River &quot;have every appearance of having travelled all the way from the ocean. Their fins and tails were so worn down as to be almost useless; their color had changed to a dappled mixture of red