461 
TRAVELS IN OREGON, NO. 2 . 
depend upon this for supplies of provisions. It is said 
to be 2200 feet above the level of the sea, a rise which 
takes place within the space of five hundred miles, and is 
unequalled in any other river of so great a size. 
Sir Alexander McKensie has left us in his journal, the 
most accurate description of Northern Oregon. Although 
there are, no doubt, some parts of the regions north of the 
inlet where he fell in with the sea, worth cultivating, and 
though many tracts are covered with wood, even north 
of Cook’s Inlet, yet, except for fishing and for w r ild ani¬ 
mals, there appears to be little other value in the region 
possessed by Russia, or that part of Oregon west of the 
Rocky Mountains north of the parallel of 49° north la¬ 
titude. The glowing descriptions of Vancouver, and all 
the accounts of land fit for cultivation and settlement by 
Captain Wilkes, apply to lands south of that parallel. 
All north of this is described by Vancouver as dreary, 
rugged, and unfit for settlements. Of the parts of Ore¬ 
gon west of and within Admiralty Inlet, and south of 
Vancouver’s Islands, he says, to describe the beauties of 
this region will, on some future occasion, be a very grate¬ 
ful task to some skilful panegyrist. The serenity of the 
climate, the innumerable pleasing landscapes, and the 
abundant fertility that unassisted nature puts forth, re¬ 
quire only to be enriched by the industry of man with 
villages, mansions, cottages, and other buildings to render 
it the most lovely country that can be imagined ; whilst 
the labor of the inhabitants would be amply rewarded 
in the beauties which nature seems ready to bestow 
on cultivation. Of the western shores north of 48° 29', 
he gives the most cheerless and sterile character. It 
presented, he says, a very different aspect from that we 
had been accustomed to behold from the south. The 
shores now before us were composed of steep rugged 
rocks, whose surface varied exceedingly in respect to 
height, and exhibited little more than the barren rock, 
71 
