All Over Oregon and Washington/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
ABOUT THE MOUTH OF THE COLUMBIA.
Where the Columbia meets the sea, in an almost continuous line of surf, is some distance outside the capes; but from the one to the other of these—that is, from Cape Hancock to Point Adams—is seven miles. Should the sea be calm on making the entrance, nothing more than a long, white line will indicate the bar. If the wind be fresh, the surf will dash up handsomely; and if it be stormy, great walls of foam will rear themselves threateningly on either side, and your breath will be abated while the quivering ship, with a most "uneasy motion," plunges into the thick of it, dashes through the white-crested tumult, and emerges triumphantly upon the smooth bosom of the river.
Of the two channels, the south is most used. Should you happen to go in by the north one, you will find yourself pretty close under a handsome promontory, with a white tower, in which a first-class Fresnel-light is burning from sunset to sunrise, all the year round. This promontory is the Cape Hancock of Captain Gray and the United States Government, and the Cape Disappointment of the English navigators and of common usage, since the long residence in the country of the Hudson's Bay Company.
The steamers of the North Pacific Transportation Company will not land you before reaching Astoria, a dozen miles inside the bar. But, for this once, we will "subsidize" our captain with many fair words, and persuade him to send us ashore in a ship's boat, that we may miss nothing in our voyage up this river we have come a long way to see.
As we round the base of the cape, we find ourselves in a pretty little harbor called Baker's Bay, with an island or two in it, and surrounded by heights of sloping ground covered with a dense growth of spruce, fir, and hemlock, with many varieties of lesser trees and shrubs. Along the strip of low land, crescent-shaped and edged with a sandy beach, are the officers' quarters and soldiers' barracks; for the cape has been fortified, and has three powerful batteries on the channel side. Nearest of all is the residence of the light-house keeper—a modest mansion under the shelter of the cape.
At this place wo will call and get our bearings. We wish to pay our respects to the post-commander, and have the quarters pointed out to us. That formality—a very pleasant one—disposed of, we gladly accept a proffered escort to the fortifications. If the day be warm, we take the path through the thick woods, winding around and about up to the top of the promontory. What fine trees! What a dense and luxuriant undergrowth!
Sauntering, pulling ferns and wild vines, exclaiming at the shadows, the coolness, the magnificence of the forests, we come at last to the summit, and emerge into open ground. Here all is military precision and neatness: graveled walks, grassy slopes and terraces, whitened walls. As for the guns and earth-works, they are of the first order. When we have done with these, we turn eagerly to gaze at the sea; to watch the restless surf dashing itself against the bar; to catch that wonderful monotone—"ever, forever."
The fascination of looking and listening would keep us long spell-bound; but our escort, who understands the symptoms, politely compels us "to move on," and directly—very opportunely—we are confronted with the light-house keeper, who offers to show us his tower and light. Clambering up and up, at last we stand within the great lantern, with its intense reflections; and hear all about the life of its keeper—how he scours and polishes by day, and tends the burning oil by night. When we ask him if the storm-winds do not threaten his tower, he shakes his head and smiles, and says, it is an "eerie" place up there when the sou'westers are blowing. But, somehow, he likes it; he would not like to leave his place for another.
Then we climb a little higher, going out upon the iron balcony, where the keeper stands to do his outside polishing of the glass. The view is grand; but what charms us most, is a miniature landscape reflected in one of the facets of the lantern. It is a complete copy of the north-western shore of the cape, a hundred times more perfect and beautiful than a painter could make it, with the features of a score of rods concentrated into a picture of a dozen inches in diameter, with the real life, and motion, and atmosphere of Nature in it. While you gaze enchanted, the surf creeps up the sandy beach, the sea-birds circle about the rocks, the giant firs move gently in the breeze, shadows flit over the sea, a cloud moves in the sky; in short, it is the loveliest picture your eyes ever rested on.
The friendly keeper explains to you, as you turn to look up the coast, that the beach north of the cape extends, in one unbroken level, about twenty miles; and that it is a long, narrow neck, divided from the main-land by an arm of Shoalwater Bay, extending almost down to the light-house. A splendid drive down from the bay! It is in the sandy marshes up along this arm of Shoalwater Bay, too, that we may go to find cranberries.
When we ask, "What does he do when the thick fogs hang over the coast?" he shows us a great bell, which, when the machinery is wound up, tolls, tolls, tolls, solemnly in the darkness, to warn vessels off the coast. "But," he says, "it is not large enough, and can not be heard any great distance. Vessels usually keep out to sea in a fog, and ring their own bells to keep off other vessels."
Then he shows us, at our request, Peacock Spit, where the United States vessel of that name was wrecked, in 1841; and the South Spit, nearly two miles outside the cape, where the Shark, another United States vessel, was lost in 1846. The bones of many a gallant sailor, and many a noble ship, are laid on the sands, not half a dozen miles from the spot where we now stand and look at a tranquil ocean. Nor was it in storms that these shipping disasters happened. It was the treacherous calm that met them on the bar, when the current or the tide carried them upon the sands, where they lay helpless until the flood-tide met the current, and the. ship was broken up in the breakers. Pilotage and steam have done away with shipwrecks on the bar.
We are glad to think that it is so. Having exhausted local topics for conversation, we descend the winding stairs, which remind us of those in the "Spider and the Fly"—so hard are they to "come down again." How still and warm it is down under the shelter of the earth-works! Descending by the military road, which is shorter than the one we came by, we come out near the life-boat house, and, being invited, go in to look at it. It seems well furnished and commodious, and wo are told it is safe, but, happily, has seldom been needed. Lastly, we take a look at the fishing-tackle, with which the light-house keeper goes out to troll for salmon. Glorious sport! The great, delicious fellows, to be caught by a fly! But we, humans, need not sermonize about being taken by small bait!
Baker's Bay is not without its little history; albeit, it is nothing romantic. In 1850, a company conceived the plan of building up a city, under shelter of the cape, and expended a hundred thousand dollars, more or less, before they became aware of the fruitlessness of their undertaking. By mistake, portions of their improvements were placed on the Government Reserve, to which, of course, they could have no title. Yet, this error, although a hinderance, was not the real cause of the company's failure, which was founded in the ineligibility of the situation for a town of importance. Nothing remains of the buildings there erected, their sites being already grown over with a young forest of alders, spruce, and hemlock.
There being nothing more of interest to be seen at the cape, we take the little steamer U. S. Grant, which has run over from Astoria with the mail for the garrison, for Point Adams on the opposite side of the river. The wind has freshened, and the steamer rolls a good deal, the river here feeling the ocean-breezes very sensibly. Such is its expanse, that, although our course brings us off Chinook Point, we have but an indistinct view of it. Not as it was seventy years ago—a populous Indian village; the dwellings of white settlers are now overshadowing the ancient wigwams. Even its burial-ground—its memelose illihee, or "land of spirits"—is profaned. Alas! nothing of one race is sacred to another; least of all, are the poor Indians' bones sacred to white men.
Several localities are pointed out to us, while we cross the river; but, at this distance, we can not see much more than that to the north of us is a range of high, wooded bluffs, with a narrow strip of level ground along the river, more or less inhabited. That which does attract our attention is Sand Island, close to which we pass. It is scarcely above the level of the water, at mean tide, and presents a waste of sand, in which a few dead trees are embedded. It is fringed with a colony of eagles, who sit motionless, but keen-eyed, watching for their prey—their pre-emptive title being disputed only by a shoal of seals, whose antics furnish a pleasing contrast to the gravity of their feathered rivals. In little more than half an hour, we are landed at Fort Stevens, on Point Adams.
There is nothing handsome in the situation of Fort Stevens. It occupies a low, sandy plain, and is just a little inside of the actual point of this cape; but the fort itself is one of the strongest and best-armed on the Pacific Coast. Its shape is a nonagon, surrounded by a ditch, thirty feet wide. This ditch is again surrounded by earth-works, intended to protect the wall of the fort, from which rise the earth-works supporting the ordnance. Viewed from the outside, nothing is seen but the gently inclined banks of earth, smoothly sodded. The officers' quarters, outside the fort, are very pleasant; and, although there is nothing attractive in the appearance of the fort, or its surroundings, it is a pleasant enough place to those who have the good fortune to have the entree of its society.
The view from the embankment is extensive, commanding the entrance to the river, the opposite fortifications, and the handsome highlands of the north side, as well as a portion of Young's Bay. A system of signals is established between the two forts, and signal-practice is made a portion of the daily duty of the officers. Standing on this eminence, our curiosity is excited, to know why a certain small sailing-craft keeps anchored out near the bar, and are told that it belongs to the United States Surveying Service, and that its business is to observe the tides and currents on this station.
Point Adams is the northern projection of a sandy peninsula, formed by the Pacific Ocean and Young's Bay. It is a narrow neck of sand-ridges, or irregular sand-hills, interspersed with ponds and swamps, and thickly overgrown with spruce, hemlock, and other trees of similar species. Where the trees have been cleared away, thickets of wild roses, willows, and spiræa have sprung up, covering the ground.
Below this swampy point, the sand-ridges continue for sixteen miles to Tillamook Head, a promontory four or five hundred feet in height. A species of wild clover grows in the sand, flourishing until midsummer, when it is succeeded by a good crop of grass. The wild strawberry grows finely here; and, wherever cultivated, vegetables do well. This narrow sand-belt is known by the name of Clatsop Plains, and is nowhere more than a mile in width. Back of it, toward Young's Bay and Skippanon Creek, the land is heavily timbered, the timber extending back to the Coast Mountains.
Clatsop Plains, and all the level country between them and the Coast Range, together form the county of that name. It is famous for its dairies, its strawberries, its vegetables, but, most of all, for its sea-bathing. No one is presumed to be in the fashion, who has not been to Clatsop Beach: therefore, to Clatsop we are going—have gone. We like the place, though it is as little like Newport or Long Branch as possible, having for an hotel a one-storied wooden building, brilliant externally with whitewash, internally not brilliant at all, nor elegantly furnished, being the residence of a family of French half-breeds. The cuisine is all that a Frenchman could desire; but the house and grounds are decidedly of a by-gone order of architecture and arrangement. When the house is overrun with visitors, the later comers are domiciled in tents. Perhaps it is this very lack of conventional luxury which makes the place popular; for it never is deserted during the warm season, but every year increases the number of its visitors. Sea-air, bathing, riding, hunting, good living, and the absence of those usual conventionalities which make life refined and monotonous, continue to "draw" more and more largely, so that shortly some sharp-sighted party will be found erecting the hotels and cottages of a crowded watering-place.
There are certainly here many attractions lacking in most sea-bathing resorts: a trout-stream, a forest for hunting in, where any thing may be found, from a deer to an elk, or a bear. Geese, ducks, plover, and snipe frequent the mouth of the creek, while sea-gulls, cranes, and eagles give picturesqueness to the beach-views. Three or four miles to the east, the peaks of the Coast Range fret the blue of the summer sky, a spur from which range comes down quite to the sea, in a bold promontory called Tillamook Head, closing in the southern view.
Having taken in all these features of the place, and pronounced it good, let us take the light wagon, and, driving across the plain and through the woods nearly sixteen miles, find the Grant—ubiquitous little steamer—waiting for us in Young's Bay. As we steam toward Astoria, the accomplished Captain of the Grant—the first white male child born west of the Rocky Mountains—becomes our guide, and points out the mouth of Lewis and Clarke's River, on the south side of the bay, where those hardy explorers spent the winter of 1805–6 in a log-hut, to which the severe rains confined them nearly all those dreary months, in imminent danger of starving. Not only have sixty years effaced all traces of their encampment, but a house, which stood on the same site in 1853, has quite disappeared, the site being overgrown with trees now twenty feet in height. Of a saw-mill that furnished lumber to San Francisco, in the same year, nothing now remains except immense beds of half-rotted sawdust, embedding one or two charred foundation timbers. A dense growth of vegetation covers the whole ground.
At the eastern extremity of the bay is the mouth of Young's River, a handsome stream, with densely wooded shores, and a fall, at one place, of fifty feet perpendicular, furnishing one of the attractions to boating parties of summer visitors at Astoria.
From the deck of the steamer we have a fine view of the Coast Range, and of one double peak higher than the range, which goes by the ugly misnomer of Saddle Mountain. Not snow-capped in summer, it is still very lofty and very picturesque, reminding us of "castled crags of Drachenfels." We, for our private satisfaction, name it Castle Mountain, and try to forget that it has another name.
As we round the high, wooded point which hides Astoria from sight, as it must, also, shelter it from south-west storms, we observe that the banks are covered with a most luxuriant growth of shrubs of many varieties, and promise ourselves a ramble along a just visible "trail" at an early day, in order to ascertain whether or not they are as beautiful close at hand, as they are in the distance.
Our eyes are engaged, in another moment, with some glimpses of our destined port. Very shortly, the Grant comes alongside a great wharf, and seeking her own slip, makes fast; and, the tide being out, we clamber up cautiously a steep incline, to the level of the Astorians.