attributable, I am told, to this mountain, as far as one hundred miles
from its summit. Of Mount St. Helens it is probable that its slumbering
fires are not very deeply buried. A few years ago two adventurous citizens
of Washington Territory were obliged, by a sudden fog and cold storm, to
spend a night near its summit, and seeking for some cave among the lava
where to shelter themselves from the storm, found a fissure from which
came so glowing and immoderate a heat that they could not bear its
vicinity, and, as they related, were alternately frozen and scorched all
night--now roasting at the volcanic fire, and again rushing out to cool
themselves in the sleet and snow.

[Illustration: THE DUKE OF YORK. QUEEN VICTORIA. Puget Sound Chiefs.]

The rocks are volcanic from near the mouth of the Willamette to and above
the Dalles, and geologists suppose that there have been great convulsions
of nature hereabouts in recent geological times. The Indians have
a tradition, indeed, that the river was originally navigable and
unobstructed where now are the Cascades, and that formerly there was a
long, natural tunnel, through which the Columbia passed under a mountain.
They assert that a great earthquake broke down this tunnel, the site
of which they still point out, and that the debris formed the present
obstructions at the Cascades.

Oregon, if one may judge by the fossil remains in Mr. Condon's collection,
seems once to have been inhabited by a great number and variety of
pre-adamite beasts; but the most singular object he has to show is a very
striking ape's head, carved with great spirit and vigor out of hard lava.
This object was found upon the shore of the Columbia by Indians, after
a flood which had washed away a piece of old alluvial bank. The rock of
which it is composed is quite hard; the carving is, as I said, done with