ree
footsteps, the thick-growing pines and the immense solitude of the
hills. Our steamer only stayed twenty minutes at that place, but I
counted two hundred and forty finished cans made from the catch of the
previous night ere I left the slippery, blood-stained, scale-spangled,
oily floors and the offal-smeared Chinamen.

We reached Portland, California and I crying for salmon, and a
real-estate man, to whom we had been intrusted by an insurance man, met
us in the street, saying that fifteen miles away, across country, we
should come upon a place called Clackamas, where we might perchance find
what we desired. And California, his coat-tails flying in the wind, ran
to a livery-stable and chartered a wagon and team forthwith. I could
push the wagon about with one hand, so light was its structure. The team
was purely American--that is to say, almost human in its intelligence
and docility. Some one said that the roads were not good on the way to
Clackamas, and warned us against smashing the springs. "Portland," who
had watched the preparations, finally reckoned "He'd come along,
too;" and under heavenly skies we three companions of a day set forth,
California carefully lashing our rods into the carriage, and the
by-standers overwhelming us with directions as to the saw-mills we were
to pass, the ferries we were to cross, and the sign-posts we were to
seek signs from. Half a mile from this city of fifty thousand souls we
struck (and this must be taken literally) a plank road that would have
been a disgrace to an Irish village.

Then six miles of macadamized road showed us that the team could move.
A railway ran between us and the banks of the Willamette, and another
above us through the mountains. All the land was dotted with small
townships, and the roads were full of farmers in their town wagons,
bunches of tow-haired, boggle-eyed urchins sitting in the hay behind.
The men generally looked like loafers, but their women were all well
dressed.

Brown braiding on a tailor-made jacket does not, however, consort with
hay-wagons. Then we struck into the woods along what California called a
camina reale--a good road--and Portland a "fair track." It wound in and
out among fire-blackened stumps under pine-trees, along the corners of
log fences, through hollows, which must be hopeless marsh in the winter,
and up absurd gradients. But nowhere throughout its length did I see any
evidence of road-making. There was a track--you coul