I found the Willamette deep enough for ordinary steamboats, for the distance of twenty miles from its western mouth. One mile below the falls are rapids on which the water was too shallow to float our canoe. The tide rises at this place about fourteen inches. The western shore of the river, from the point where its mouths diverge to this place, consists of lofty mountains rising immediately from the water-side, and covered with pines. On the eastern side, beautiful swells and plains extend from the {202} Columbia to within five or six miles of the rapids. They are generally covered with pine, white-oak, black-ash, and other kinds of timber. From the point last named to the rapids, wooded mountains crowd down to the verge of the stream. Just below the rapids a very considerable stream comes in from the east. It is said to rise in a champaign country, which commences two or three miles from the Willamette, and extends eastward twenty or thirty miles to the lower hills of the President’s range. This stream breaks through the mountain tumultuously, and enters the Willamette with so strong a current, as to endanger boats attempting to pass it.[3] Here were a number of Indian huts, the inmates of which were busied in taking and curing salmon. Between the rapids and the falls, the country adjacent to the river is similar to that just described; mountains clothed with impenetrable forests. The river, thus far, appeared to have an average width of four hundred yards, water limpid. As we approached the falls, the eastern shore presented a solid wall of basalt, thirty feet in perpendicular height. On the top of this wall was nearly an acre of level area, on which the Hudson Bay Company {203} have built a log-house.[4] This plain is three or four feet below the level of the water above the falls, and protected from the floods by the intervention of a deep chasm, which separates it from the rocks over which the water pours. This is the best site in the country for extensive flour and lumber-mills. The valley of the Willamette is the only portion of Oregon from which grain can ever, to any extent, become an article of export; and this splendid waterfall can be approached at all seasons, from above and below, by sloops, schooners, &c. The Hudson Bay Company, aware of its importance, have commenced a race-way, and drawn timber on the ground, with the apparent intention of erecting such works. On the opposite side is an acre or two of broken ground, which might be similarly occupied.