Campfire of Yakima Indians gathered at the Astoria Centennial, 1911, to take part in "The Bridge of the Gods," a dramatization of Balch's famous story. The celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the Astor trading post at the mouth of the Columbia was made noteworthy by a revival of Indian folk lore, in which the myth of the great tamahnawas bridge held first place.] Thirty miles northeast, a ribbon of gold flashed the story of a mighty stream at The Dalles. Far beyond, even to the uplands of the Umatilla and the Snake, to the Blue Mountains of eastern Washington and Oregon, stretched the wheat fields and stock ranges of that vast "Inland Empire" which the great river watered; while westward, cut deep through a dozen folds of the Cascades, the chasm it had torn on its way to the sea was traced in the faint blue that distance paints upon evergreen hills. Out on our left, beyond the mountains, the Willamette slipped down its famous valley to join the larger river; and still farther, a hundred and fifty miles away, our glasses caught the vague gray line of the Pacific. Within these limits of vision lay a noble and historic country, the lower watershed of the Columbia. Earth has not anything to show more fair. [Illustration: Sunset at the mouth of the Columbia. Cape Hancock on right, Point Adams on left. View from river off Astoria.] [Illustration: Northern part of Portland, showing the Willamette River flowing through it, and indicating relative position of the three snow-peaks. Mount Hood (right) and Mount St. Helens (left) are each about fifty miles away, while Mount Adams, seen between, is twenty miles farther.] [Illustration: "The Coming of the White Man" and "Sacajawea," statues in Portland City Park which commemorate the aboriginal Americans.] Wide as was the prospect, however, it called the imagination to a still broader view; to look back, indeed,--how many millions of years?--to an earlier dawn, bounded by the horizons of geological time. Let us try to realize the panorama thus unfolded. As we look down from some aerial viewpoint, behold! there is no Mount Hood and no Cascade Range. The volcanic snow-peaks of Oregon and Washington are still embryo in the womb of earth. We stand face to face with the beginnings of the Northwest.