But we moor on the lower point of Wappatoo Island, to regale ourselves with food and fire. This is the highest point of it, and is said to be never overflown. A bold rocky shore, and the water is deep enough to float the largest vessels, indicate it to be a site for the commercial mart of the island. But the southern shore of the river, half a mile below, is past a doubt the most important point for a town site on the Columbia.[83] It lies at the lower mouth of the Willamette, the natural outlet of the best agricultural district of {269} Oregon. It is a hillside of gentle acclivity, covered with pine forests. There is a gorge in the mountains through which a road from it to the prairies on the south can easily be constructed. At this place the Hudson’s Bay Company have erected a house, and occupy it with one of their servants. Having eaten our cold lunch, we left Wappatoo Island to the dominion of its wild hogs, and took again to our boat. It was a drizzly, cheerless day. The clouds ran fast from the south-west, and obscured the sun. The wind fell in irregular gusts upon the water, and made it difficult to keep our boat afloat. But we had a sturdy old Sandwich Islander at one oar, and some four or five able-bodied Indians at others, and despite winds and waves, slept that night a dozen miles below the Cowelitz. Thus far below Vancouver, the Columbia was generally more than one thousand yards wide, girded on either side by mountains rising very generally, from the water side, two or three thousand feet in height, and covered with dense forests of pine and fir. These mountains are used by the Chinooks as burial-places. During the epidemic fever of 1832, which almost swept this {270} portion of the Columbia valley of its inhabitants, vast numbers of the dead were placed among them. They were usually wrapped in skins, placed in the canoes, and hung from the boughs of trees six or eight feet from the ground. Thousands of these were seen.[84] They hung in groups near the water side. One of them had a canoe inverted over the one containing the dead, and lashed tightly to it. We were often driven close to the shore by the heavy wind, and always noticed that these sepulchral canoes were perforated at the bottom. I was informed that this is always done for the twofold purpose of letting out the water which the rains may deposit in them, and of preventing their ever being used again by the living.