CHAPTER IV.
A TALK ABOUT ASTORIA AND VICINITY.
The situation of Astoria, in point of beauty, is certainly a very fine one. The neck of land occupied by the town is made a peninsula by Young's Bay on one side and the Columbia River on the other, and points to the northwest. A small cove makes in at the east side of the neck, just back of which the ground rises much more gently and smoothly than it does a little farther towards the sea. The whole point was originally covered with heavy timber, which came quite down to high-water mark; and whatever there is unlovely in the present aspect of Astoria arises from the roughness always attendant upon the clearing up of timbered lands.
Standing facing the sea or the river, the view is one of unsurpassed beauty. Towards the sea, the low, green point on which Fort Stevens stands—the Cape Frondosa (leafy cape) of the Spanish navigators—and the high one of Cape Hancock, topped by the light-house tower, mark the entrance to the river. Above them is a blue sky; between them a blue river celebrating eternally its union with the sea by the roar of its breakers, whose white crests are often distinctly visible. There is a sail or two in the offing, and a pilot-boat going out to bring them over the bar; perhaps the vessel is from "far Cathay," with the silks and spices of the Ind. While we gaze, there is seen against the horizon the black smoke of a steamer. On she comes over the bar, breathing asthmatically and beating the waters with her great wheels in a steady rhythm, until at last the boom of her gun gives notice to the custom-house officials of her arrival, and all the town hastens to the wharf to learn of her cargo and her passengers, and to question what sort of a voyage she has had.
Towards night, when the sun is setting behind the light-house cape, and gilding sky and sea beyond the bar, there suddenly appear upon the river hundreds of fishing-boats, whose white
