COAST OF OREGON AND CALIFORNIA. 



335 



and thence up to Sand Island, through the Clatsop Channel. In my 

 opinion, there are no means by which the entrance into the river can 

 be made feasible in the hours of darkness. 



The Columbia River is navigable for vessels drawing 12 feet water, 

 to within 1 mile of the Cascade Range of mountains. To this point 

 it was surveyed by the Exploring Expedition, a distance of 120 

 miles from its mouth. At the low stage of the water, owing to the 

 numerous sandbanks and bars, its navigation is intricate, and for 

 vessels of large size, extremely tedious. 



The channel leading to Astoria is on the south side of the river : 

 it is narrow and very close to the shore. That on the north shore is 

 much broader as far as Point Ellice, above which it is encroached 

 upon by the Lower Flats, and contracted to very narrow limits off the 

 western point of Gray's Bay, yet there is room and depth of water for 

 ships to pass up through Kutzule Bay into the Pillar Rock Channel. 

 The Columbia is 31 miles wide between Astoria and Point Ellice, 

 which lie nearly opposite to each other. The middle of the river 

 is almost entirely occupied by sandbanks, which in some places are 

 dry at low water ; in others, there are bights with deep water. 

 These sandbanks I have distinguished on the first sheet of the chart 

 of the river, as Upper, Middle, and Lower Sandbanks ; on the second 

 sheet, as Upper and Lower Flats. Between the Upper and Middle 

 Sandbanks is the passage leading up and across from Baker's Bay, 

 before described ; and abreast of Tongue Point there is another, lead- 

 ing across the river from the south to the north shore, called Tongue 

 Point Channel, in which there is a very narrow and intricate pas- 

 sage, from which circumstance it was called the Pishak Pass. 

 Tongue Point Channel lies on a line between Tongue Point and the 

 Yellow Bluff, on the east side of Kutzule Bay. That part of the 

 channel called Pishak Pass, is not over 300 feet in width, and one-third 

 of a mile in length ; it lies opposite to Kutzule Bay. 



Tongue Point is a high bluff, projecting into the river from the 

 south shore a mile ; it divides Swan Bay from the lower river : 

 the extreme point is 3 miles above Astoria. The channel up to it is 

 close to the shore, and half a mile wide. Until the survey by the 

 Exploring Expedition, it was the belief that there was no other 

 channel above, than by the Tongue Point Channel across the 

 river. I was satisfied that, from the great flow of water towards 

 the south shore, a channel must exist ; and the examination resulted 



