614 OREGON. 
the coast line. This island has the Straits of De Fuca on the south, 
and an extensive sound and a complexity of channels on the east. 
These channels run into the land often some scores of miles, and form 
in many parts an irregular network of canals, as is well seen about 
Nisqually ; and they have great depth of water, even allowing large 
vessels to rub their sides against the rocky shore, before the keel 
touches bottom. They are in great numbers along the whole coast, 
up to the Russian settlements in latitude sixty degrees. As a part of 
the same system, this coast has its thousand islands of all shapes and 
sizes. Even the islands have deep bays cutting in far towards their 
centre; thus on the sea-shore side of Vancouver, the bays are singu- 
larly intricate, and twenty miles deep. Some remarks on the origin 
of these features will be given in the sequel. 
B. The Mountains—The grand features of the country on the 
Pacific side of the Rocky Mountain chain, arise to a considerable 
extent from a general parallelism in the ranges of heights intersecting 
the country, a fact apparent in the courses of the rivers were the 
elevations unmarked on a map. 
There are three of these north-and-south ranges, the Coast Range, 
the Cascade Range, and the Blue Mountains. The first hes near the 
coast, the second, one hundred and thirty miles inland, and the third, 
three hundred and fifty miles from the sea. 
The Cascade Range is much the most extensive of the three, and 
even rivals the Rocky Mountains in the height of some of its peaks. 
It may be traced far into California, and north beyond Puget’s Sound, 
retaining throughout a direction nearly parallel with the coast. It 
constitutes a strong line of territorial demarcation in Western America, 
separating a coast section from the interior, and forming a barrier to 
commercial intercourse, excepting along the single great highway, the 
Columbia. The two sections, moreover, are widely different in cha- 
racter. 
This range, though in general over a hundred miles from the sea, 
approaches the coast at the south near the Gulf of California, and 
north at Puget’s Sound, and obviously because the waters of the ocean 
in both cases make deep inroads into the land, rather than from a 
change in the direction of the range. In the course of the six hun- 
dred miles from Puget’s Sound to the Sacramento, latitudes 50° to 
40°, the range contains seven or eight snowy peaks varying from ten 
to fifteen thousand feet in height,—three north of the Columbia, and 
the others south. Commencing at the north, they are, Baker, Rainier, 
