Formerly it was necessary to make a portage of more than a mile around the falls; but the basin, constructed at a great expense by the People's Transportation Company, now enables boats to come down to the warehouse, and the passengers are transferred by simply passing through a long, covered building to the boat lying in the basin at its upper extremity. From the deck of the second steamer a perfect view of the falls is obtained.
Oregon City stands upon a bed of basaltic rock—a ledge of which extends quite across the river, and crops out on the opposite side. This ledge is about twenty feet higher than the surface of the water below the falls, and worn and broken into a jagged crescent, with rather a sharp angle in the centre, where the river deflects toward the western shore. In low or ordinary stage of water the stream divides into several parts, seeking the deepest channels in the rocks, and forming a number of different cataracts; yet the central one, at the angle spoken of, is always the principal one. Above the falls the river parts, flowing around an island of rock, on which once stood a mill belonging to the Methodist Mission, but which was carried away in the great flood of 1862, along with numerous other buildings from the mainland.
The current, always strong just above the falls, is terrific when the heavy rains of winter have swollen all the tributaries of the river, and filled its banks with a rushing torrent fifteen to twenty feet in depth. At such times the rocks are mostly hidden, and the falls extend from shore to shore, or about a quarter of a mile. In the early history of the country, a party of four persons—two gentlemen and two ladies—with their two Indian boatmen, were carried over the falls
