BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 199 



most hazardous entrance into the Columbia or Oregon River. 

 Good natural harbours, however, exist at Puget Sound ; but 

 the country there is so wild and rugged that it will require 

 immense labour to open a road thither. 



These are not all the respects in which Oregon is inferior 

 in value for agricultural purposes, to any new territory on 

 the Upper Mississippi waters. Upper Oregon again is by 

 nature severed from the lowlands, by mountains and cata- 

 racts, very difficult to pass ; and for the conveyance of all 

 their bulky, heavy, natural and agricultural productions, to a 

 distant and uncertain market, the future settlers must either 

 trust to the dangerous Columbia River, or the backs of mules 

 and horses. Lower Oregon, with the exception of the, in 

 all respects beautiful and fertile, but narrow Wallamette val- 

 ley (and a few still more limited localities), is, generally 

 speaking, traversed by mountains and high ridges, from about 

 300 to 1000 feet high, bristling with impenetrable pine- 

 forests, which render the many narrow stripes of lowland, 

 boggy and mossy ground very difficult to travel. The latter 

 too, I am told, are subject to inundation almost every spring ; 

 especially along the banks of the Columbia river. The only 

 mode of communication now used by the settlers is by water. 



After weighing the many and heavy disadvantages of access 

 and stating too that the soil in general is far inferior in ferti- 

 lity and capability to that of the Mississippi valley, we may 

 wonder why so many American citizens of the United States 

 leave their desirable residences in the back parts of their own 

 country, and undertake, with their families, and moveable 

 Property, a perilous journey of five months through the 

 wilderness, in order to search for a new home in Oregon ter- 

 ritory ! Not less wonderful is it that the final possession of 

 that territory causes, and has already caused, so many violent 

 demonstrations in the councils of several nations. Certainly 

 Oregon will make a stronghold, for it is already so strong, 



that the entrance to the Columbia river ever can be improved or contracted 

 b y any sort of works nor even attempted, owing to the tremendous force 

 °f the sea at that place. 



