Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/257

 shot, canister, stand of grape, two midshipmen and a master’s mate, wad and ram home the charge."



Early in the morning of the 28th we heard the cheerful cry of "Land-ho!" It proved to be Cape Disappointment, Columbia River, our own native land. At about nine o’clock we entered a strong tide-rip and  soon after came within sight of the Columbia River. It was blowing pretty fresh, with a considerable sea on, and  heavy breakers extended from Cape Disappointment to  Point Adams, in one unbroken line. Nothing could exceed the grandeur of this scene when viewed from  aloft. The Columbia is a thousand miles long, and has its source eight hundred feet above the level of the sea.

To view its powerful floods of light, milky water rushing down and contending with the tides of the blue  water of old ocean and see the marked line of separation  between the sea and the river water, and a line of breakers nearly seven miles long dashing its silvery spray high  in the air, is a wild sight. All who have seen it have