rollers seeming to attack the beach with a purpose to demolish it, receding and renewing the onslaught perpetually. The scene is rendered more wild by the dense growth of dwarf timber covering the low land stretching back to an arm of Shoalwater Bay lying to the east. Many fresh-water lakes or lagoons dot this long peninsula, which, with its black, rich soil, would make profitable cranberry fields.
At Ocean Park there is a grove of gnarled spruce-trees through which streets have been cleared from the railroad to the beach, making beautiful vistas through which one may catch glimpses of the sparkling sea. The trees which brave the heavy northwest wind of summer, and the terrible strength of the winter's southwest storms, lean inland, and have a stunted appearance very different from the straight, tall timber of the river bottoms and mountains.
Sea-Land is situated in a spruce forest, on the inner shore of the peninsula, fronting Shoalwater Bay, the clearing being of very recent date. It has a wharf and warehouse extending half a mile into the bay. Several small steamers ply on these waters, carrying passengers to and from towns on the mainland side, whence railroads in the near future will convey them to Gray's Harbor, or into the interior of Washington.
To a sportsman with sufficient hardihood to invade the rugged and heavily-timbered mountains on the east side of Shoalwater Bay, bear, elk, and deer offer temptations. Bear are numerous, and keep fat on the wild fruit of this region,—whortleberries, sallal, and salmonberries. They also invade the apple-orchards of the settlers, and have to be trapped for their presumption.
Returning as we came, we take the "General Canby" at Ilwaco to cross the Columbia. Such is its expanse that, although its course brings us off Chinook Point, we have but an indistinct view of it. Not as it was eighty years ago, as Franchere and Irving and Cox wrote about it,—a populous Indian village,—the dwellings of the white invader overshadow the ancient wigwams. Even its burial-ground, memelose illihee, which freely translated means "spirit country," is profaned. Alas! nothing of one race is sacred to another; least of all is there anything in common between the white and the red man.
