a mirror, snow-peaks, islands, and all! One might travel far to see anything finer.
The Wallamet, unlike the more majestic Columbia, divides nearly in half a level valley, but the prairies do not come to the river-banks for a considerable distance. This valley is enclosed on the east side by the Cascade Range, on the west side by the Coast Range, and on the south by a cross-range of spurs from either side, being left open only on the north, where it is cut off by the Columbia River, but from which it is hidden by a forest extending for nearly twenty miles from the river southward. This forest covers not only the highlands as far as the Falls of the Wallamet, but also the low sandy plains which form the lower section of the valley. From this description of the north end of the Wallamet Valley, coupled with the account already given of the Columbia, it is easy to appreciate the correctness of the poet's—
"Continuous woods,
Where rolls the Oregon,"
as well as some of the difficulties which beset the Oregon pioneers; and to understand why the early settlers travelled in canoes from the mouth of the Columbia, or from The Dalles, to the heart of the valley before even betaking themselves to a horse,—a wagon being unthought of for travel.
When we have passed the head of Sauve Island we find these river-banks more populous than those of the Columbia. On the right hand, going up, is the town of Linnton, located forty-seven years ago by Hon. Peter H. Burnett, author of "Recollections of a Pioneer," and first governor of California, a pleasant writer and an irreproachable man. Nearly opposite Linnton, which, by the by, was named in honor of that Missouri senator who fought so long and persistently for the Oregon donation law, is the town of St. John, occupying probably about the site selected for a city by that eccentric, if not demented, Hall J. Kelley, who organized in New England an immigration society to bring settlers to Oregon in 1832. Think of that, you whose knowledge of this region leads you to fancy it a terra incognita! Poor Kelley had a lugubrious experience, being taken for a horse-thief by the Hudson's Bay Company and harshly treated. Yet he was very near the truth in his views and prognostica-
