394 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. viii. 



200 feet above the road, which is here about 650 feet above the 

 sea. The valley is wide and flat-bottomed, gradually sloping 

 downward to the north, and quite different from any met with 

 on the line of route since leaving the plain of central California. 

 The soil is usually pale-coloured and often clayey, and north of 

 Eugine, is seen in several places in cuttings to be underlain by 

 beds with large and small rounded stones. Beyond Albany, the 

 country is for some distauce more undulating, and in many places 

 more or less perfectly bedded deposits of gravel and sand, with 

 occasional small boulders, occur. These much resemble some 

 varieties of modified drift, and are probably due neither to local 

 glaciers nor to the present or former streams, but to the transport 

 of material by ice during a general submergence. It is here that 

 we first meet with distinct traces of that invasion of the land 

 by the sea during a period of cold, which has been universal fur- 

 ther to the north. 



The Willamette and Columbia Rivers, immediately below 

 Portland, flow through a flat country, its general aspect, with 

 that of the rivers themselves and the vegetation of their banks, 

 being much like that of the Fraser below New Westminster. The 

 tide affects the Willamette up to Portland. Seven miles below 

 this place, on the left bank, very distinct terraces occur, with 

 elevations estimated by the eye as 100, 180, and 300 feet above 

 the river, the highest being about the general level of the surface 

 of the country here. In several other places more or less perfect 

 terraces appear, at various elevations, less than about 300 feet. 



Leaving the banks of the Columbia at Kalama, our route con- 

 tinues northward between the two ranges before referred to. 

 The only portion of the Northern Pacific Railway yet built on 

 the West Coast, connects this place with Tacoma, 105 miles 

 distant, and near the extremity of Puget Sound, which with a 

 ramifying form occupies the northern part of the same great 

 valley. The valley of the Cowlitz river is at first followed up 

 for some distance, several small streams which afterwards unite 

 and flow west through the Coast Range are then crossed, and in 

 a short distance water flowing northward to Puget Sound is 

 reached ; no strongly-marked watershed being observed. At 

 Olequa Station, twenty-eight miles from the Columbia, is a well 

 marked terrace or beach with an elevation of about 100 feet,* 



•The elevation of places on this part of the route, though taken 

 by barometer, were cheeked at the sea level at both ends, and are 

 correct within a very few feet. 



