THE OREGON 
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mK 
NATURALIST. 
WILLAMETTE SOUND. 
Some years ago my brother and I were spend- 
ing the Christmas holidays at the country home 
ofa friend. The farm is one of the finest that 
nestle among the foot-hills which close up the 
Willamette Valley just south of Eugene, After 
several days s;ent in hunting and tramping we 
felt almost recovered from the hard knocks, 
mentally speakiug, that we had received from 
our professors during the preceding term; 
enough so, indeed, to admit of the contempla- 
tion of the ascent of Mt, Pisgah, not the one of 
Biblical fame, but along sugar-loaf mountain, 
stretched across the head of the Willamette 
Valley, with the seeming intent of barring all 
further progress of the 
Calapooias, 
into the heart 
The appointed morning, New Year’s day, 
dawned raw and chilly, nature being blanketed 
or rather shrouded, in the white mist of a fog 
of such density as almost to warrant the sailor- 
saying, ‘‘you can cut it with a knife.” How- 
ever we had lived in Oregon long enough to 
predict that, before many hours, the clouds 
would be rolled away in splendor from the 
beauty of the hills. So forth we started. After 
several hours haid climbing we reached the 
summit. But the fog was just as dense as ever. 
Luckily we found a pitch tree, to which we 
applied the match, and thus kept our tempers 
cool and ourselves warm until tne clouds should 
clear away. 
PorTLAND, OREGON, 
AUGUST, No. 8. 
1895. 
About one o’clock the rays of the sun began 
to have an appreciable effect. Soon great bill- 
ows of mist began to roll and surge around, 
Then the whole mass settled to a dead _ level, 
a perfect calm, There lay before us a scene of 
indescribable beauty, 
The very much like that of 
Commencement Bay, as seen from the heights 
of Tacoma, Far away to the right the waters, 
—and so it seemed,— lapped the foot-hills of 
the Cascades, and to the left the bases of the 
Coast were laved by the sunlit 
waves; while here and there in the foreground 
rose wooded islands, the forest-clad buttes of 
the Willamette Valley, 
Irresista ly the thought came to our minds, 
Can it not be that this is buta phantom of a 
pre-historic picture; that these were once true 
islands; that yonder was a navigable strait; 
that in the dim ages of the past some denizen 
of the forest or noble Red man, from this 
identical spot, looked down upon a similar 
scene, when these mountains were ashore-line, 
bathed in the rlppiing waters of Willamette 
Sound? It remains to be seen. 
All along the Oregon and Washington coast 
are seen indisputable evidences of a previous 
depression of the land below its present level. 
Fussil clam beds are found from fifty to one 
hundred and fifty feet above high water mark, 
In Prof, Condon’s cabinet is the fossilized head 
of a fur seal which was cut out of the solid rock 
many feet above the waters of the Pacific, The 
question to be decided then is whether or 
not this depression was enough to cause the 
view was 
Mountains 
