latter, we could not reach it that night, for the wind freshened again every instant, and the waves grew angry and fearful, and dashed into the boat at every sweep of the paddles.
We were beginning to calculate our prospects of another hour's breathing when the shadowy outline of the ship was brought between us and the open horizon of the mouth of the river, a half mile below us. The oars struck fast and powerfully now, and the frail boat shot over the whitened waves for a few minutes, and lay dancing and surging under the lee of the noble "Vancouver." A rope was hastily thrown us, and we stood upon her beautiful deck, manifestly barely saved from a watery grave. For now the sounding waves broke awfully all around us. Captain Duncan received us very kindly, and introduced us immediately to the cordial hospitalities of his cabin. The next morning we dropped down to Astoria, and anchored one hundred {272} yards from the shore. The captain and passengers landed about ten o'clock; and as I felt peculiar interest in the spot, immortalized no less by the genius of Irving than the enterprize of John Jacob Astor, I spent my time very industriously in exploring it.
The site of this place is three quarters of a mile above the point of land between the Columbia and Clatsop Bay. It is a hillside, formerly covered with a very heavy forest. The space which has been cleared may amount to four acres. It is rendered too wet for cultivation by numberless springs bursting from the surface. The back ground is still a forest rising over lofty hills; in the foreground is the Columbia, and the broken pine hills of the opposite shore. The Pacific opens in the west.
Astoria has passed away; nothing is left of its buildings but an old batten cedar door; nothing remaining of its bastions and pickets, but half a dozen of the latter,
