Point, is a deep inlet of the Columbia, and receives the waters of Young's River, Lewis and Clarke's River, and the Skipanon, all which flow from the south; Young's River, however, having two considerable branches coming in from the east. The peninsula formed by Young's Bay and the ocean is a sandy plain, roughened with many hummocks, cut up by tide-sloughs, lakes, and marshy hollows, and timbered near the sea with scrubby pines. It has two rivers rising in the Coast Range,—one, Lewis and Clarke's, emptying into Young' Bay, and one, the Neahcanacum, flowing into the ocean. I stood upon the spot beside the former where the brave explorers Lewis and Clarke wintered in 1805-6, subsisting themselves and their company on elk-meat obtained on this peninsula. There they listened to Indian tales of the Yankee traders who had been in the river in past times, and even learned their names and the names of their vessels, so well had they been remembered by the natives. The Neahcanacum is a beautiful mountain stream, overhung with trees, rapid and cold enough for trout-fishing, and deep enough for boating. Very singularly, it runs parallel to the ocean and very near it, and is one of the most charming features of the summer resort known as Clatsop Beach. There is good hunting in the coast mountains bordering on Clatsop Plains to the south, and this sea-bathing place has for many years been the recreation-ground of Portlanders in the dry months of July, August, and September, a distinction now shared by similar resorts on the beach north of the Columbia. Steamers leave Portland late in the evening, arriving at Astoria in the morning, throughout the week; and on Saturdays leave the city early enough to reach their destination the same evening and give business men a Sunday with their families at the sea-side, to which they are conveyed by boat and train from Astoria.
From Young's Bay there is a view of Saddle Mountain, the highest of its twin peaks, Neah-car-ny, being the subject of a tradition preserved among the Indians of a vessel once cast ashore near the mouth of their river, the crew of which were saved, together with their private property, and a box which they carried ashore and buried on Mount Neah-car-ny, with much care, leaving two swords placed on it in the form of a cross.
