ful outlying district of the great valley to which it belongs. The original name of this island was Wappatoo, from the abundance of a tuberous root of that name (Sagittaria sagittifolia) which was used by the natives for food. The first settler here was one Sauvé, a French-Canadian, after whom the island was thenceforth called, but with the difference in spelling which makes it Sauvie's Island.
To this lovely insular tract the Columbia maintains a claim, and asserts its right annually during its rise to submerge a goodly portion of it, driving the inhabitants to vacate their houses for a period of two or three weeks. But the farmers are willing to be thus inconvenienced for the sake of the crops obtained from the quick soil after the flood has subsided. On the mainland opposite the island a high range of heavily-wooded hills from the Columbia highlands follows along the Wallamet to and beyond Portland, but receding to a sufficient distance to leave large tracts of rich land, some of which is subject to overflow, but much of which is valuable for farming.
The upper mouth of the Wallamet comes out between the head of the Sauvé Island and a low point opposite a part of the peninsula which is formed by the junction of the two rivers. Lying between the peninsula and the Columbia is a group of small islands, all densely wooded with cotton-wood and willow, extending also along the Oregon shore of the Columbia for several miles, being separated by bayous only less luxuriantly fringed with trees than those of Florida or Louisiana, and without the alligators and moccasin snakes. These places, like those water-ways about Astoria and Scappoose Bay, furnish extensive hunting-grounds in the duck-shooting season.
Just at the junction of the Wallamet and Columbia Rivers I found one of the most charming views to be had in Oregon. From the deck of a steamer passing in between these islands one sees the vast stretch of the great river behind us, and the reach of the one before us, with their verdant and wooded shores, the Cascade Range drawn in blue on the eastern horizon, with the white peaks of St. Helen, Hood, Adams, and Jefferson rising sharply above it, and over the whole the rosy glow of sunset tingeing the mountains, making the blue violet, the white pink, the scene being reflected from the river's surface as from
