as if such words and thoughts were very dear to
them. The parents had with them, all their little children; but we saw
no old people; that charm was wanting which exists in such scenes in
older settlements, of seeing the silver bent in reverence beside the
flaxen head.

At Oregon, the beauty of the scene was of even a more sumptuous
character than at our former "stopping-place." Here swelled the river
in its boldest course, interspersed by halcyon isles on which Nature
had lavished all her prodigality in tree, vine, and flower, banked
by noble bluffs, three Hundred feet high, their sharp ridges as
exquisitely definite as the edge of a shell; their summits adorned
with those same beautiful trees, and with buttresses of rich rock,
crested with old hemlocks, which wore a touching and antique grace
amid, the softer and more luxuriant vegetation. Lofty natural mounds
rose amidst the rest, with the same lovely and sweeping outline,
showing everywhere the plastic power of water,--water, mother of
beauty,--which, by its sweet and eager flow, had left such lineaments
as human genius never dreamt of.

Not far from the river was a high crag, called the Pine Rock, which
looks out, as our guide observed, like a helmet above the brow of the
country. It seems as if the water left here and there a vestige of
forms and materials that preceded its course, just to set off its new
and richer designs.

The aspect of this country was to me enchanting, beyond any I have
ever seen, from its fulness of expression, its bold and impassioned
sweetness. Here the flood of emotion has passed over and marked
everywhere its course by a smile. The fragments of rock touch it with
a wildness and liberality which give just the needed relief. I should
never be tired here, though I have elsewhere seen country of more
secret and alluring charms, better calculated to stimulate and
suggest. Here the eye and heart are filled.

How happy the Indians must have been here! It is not long since they
were driven away, and the ground, above and below, is full of their
traces.

"The earth is full of men."

You have only to turn up the sod to find arrowheads and Indian
pottery. On an island, belonging to our host, and nearly opposite his
house, they loved to stay, and, no doubt, enjoyed its lavish beauty
as much as the myriad wild pigeons that now haunt its flower-filled
shades. Here are still the marks of their tomahawks, the troughs in
which they prepared t