The change is to be regarded as fortunate, for, had the country north of the great river been called by the same name, the individuality of the latter would have been destroyed, and this mighty highway have seemed to constitute a part of a single State, whereas it belongs, first and last, to several.
But to go back to the beginning of a journey from Portland to and through West Washington. The Northern Pacific (Branch) road skirts the Wallamet highlands and river for fifteen or twenty miles, the traveller getting glimpses of each, and of Sauvé Island, as he rushes past old homesteads whose sacredness the "steam eagles" of civilization have invaded, the iron track often cutting in twain blooming orchards, now laden with the promise of a rich harvest. There certainly never were such cherry-trees as grow in the Northwest; enormous in height and spread of limb, and phenomenal in wealth of snowy blossoms, quite concealing leaves and stems. And the wonder culminates when we find the fruit has ripened after the same fashion, quite concealing the branch on which it grows. Pears are blooming with the same freedom, as are also plums, although receiving no care. All the pretty things of May-time are smiling at us from the wayside, and the dandelion, which is an immigrant to this country, has "taken" it, immigrant fashion, and the owners of the soil have much difficulty to teach it its proper place in agricultural politics. But it looks pretty and smiling and golden against the green sod, and I find it hard to have it compared to a dago.
No breadth of cultivable land is seen along this road for some distance, which finally emerges into a good farming country about the head of Scappoose Bay, an inlet from the Columbia at the mouth of the Lower Wallamet. Suddenly the character of the surface changes, and for a couple of miles, back of St. Helen, a sheet of basalt, some time poured out of Mount St. Helen, covers the underlying sand rock, and supports a thin soil on top, sufficient to sustain scattering groups of trees, which have a pleasing effect in contrast with the denser woods of the hillsides.
The crossing of the Columbia about twelve miles below St. Helen is made by a ferry-boat large enough to convey the train to the opposite side of the river, where we are landed on terra
