hour it lulled a little, and Captain Wyeth ordered the boats to be again launched, in the hope of being able to weather a point about five miles below before the gale again commenced, where we could lie by until it should be safe to proceed. The calm proved, as some of us had suspected, a treacherous one: in a very few minutes after we got under way, we were contending with the same difficulties as before, and again our cowardly helmsman laid by his paddle and began mumbling his prayer. It was too irritating to be borne. Our canoe had swung round broadside to the surge, and was shipping gallons of water at every dash.

At this time it was absolutely necessary that every man on board should exert himself to the utmost to head up the canoe and make the shore as soon as possible. Our Indian, however, still sat with his eyes covered, the most abject and contemptible looking thing I ever saw. We took him by the shoulders and threatened to throw him overboard if he did not immediately lend his assistance: we might as well have spoken to a stone. He was finally aroused, however, by our presenting a loaded gun at his breast. He dashed the muzzle away, seized his paddle again, and worked with a kind of desperate and wild energy until he sank back in the canoe completely exhausted. In the meantime the boat had become half-full of water, shipping a part of every surf that struck her; and as we gained the shallows, every man sprang overboard, breast deep, and began hauling the canoe to shore. This was even a more difficult task than that of propelling her with the oars; the water still broke over her, and the bottom was a deep kind of quicksand, in which we sank almost to the knees at every step, the surf at the same time dashing against us with such violence as to throw us repeatedly upon our faces. We at length reached the shore, and hauled the canoe up out of reach of the breakers. She was then unloaded as soon as possible, and turned bottom upwards. The goods had suffered considerably by the wetting; they were all unbaled, and dried by a large fire which we built on the shore."

For two or three days they were tossed about on the river, now attempting to make way, now forced to land again, and always drenched to the skin. The missionaries and their party, too, who had set out in the barge from Walla Walla, were in no better plight. On the 14th the three canoes were again loaded, and again made the attempt to proceed; but in a short while one of them was stove, and another greatly damaged, so that they had to be unloaded and drawn out of the water. An effort was now made to procure one or two canoes with a pilot from an Indian village five miles below. This proved a hazardous and fatiguing journey; but was rewarded by getting one canoe and several Indians to assist in the navigation. With this reinforcement, and with the boats mended, the party again attempted the descent of the river. The voyage this time was more fortunate,

and next day they all arrived at the fort, which was the end of their journey across the wilderness. The time occupied in this dangerous expedition had been six months and three days. Unharmed by fatigue or accident, with a constitution strengthened by healthful exercise, and a mind buoyant with the novelty of the scenes they had passed through, the travellers felt sincerely thankful to that kind and overruling Providence which had watched over and protected them.

At Fort Vancouver, Mr Townsend left the trading part of the expedition, and procured a passage on board an American vessel, which carried him to the Sandwich Islands, and there he passed the winter months. He afterwards returned to the Columbia and its environs among the Rocky Mountains, to pursue his scientific researches; and his purpose being at length fulfilled, he returned by sea, touching at Valparaiso on the South American coast, and reached home after an absence of three years.

It is gratifying to learn, that the researches of the two naturalists were eminently successful. Besides procuring specimens of many rare animals, Mr Townsend discovered in the course of his expedition about fifty-four new species, sixteen of which were quadrupeds, and twenty-eight birds. Mr Nuttall also made many important additions to botanical science.

THE OREGON TERRITORY.

The large district of country on the Pacific, receiving the name of Oregon, which can only be reached from the eastern settlements, as we have seen, by an incalculable degree of labour, is of uncertain dimensions, but is generally considered to extend from the 42d to the 54th degree of north latitude, and from the Rocky Mountains westward to the Pacific. From the mountains, the country presents a comparatively abrupt slope, consisting of immense belts or terraces, disposed one below the other to the sea, but here and there interrupted by hilly ridges. The higher regions are rocky, wild, and covered with forests of huge pines and other trees; in the lower grounds, the land is open and fertile, furnishing grasses and edible roots in great profusion.

Towards the south, where the country borders on Mexico, the climate is mild, but afflicted with a rainy season, which, commencing in October, does not end till April. The tempests of wind and rain which occasionally occur are terrible. Near the northern limit, the extremes of heat and cold are greater, the winters being intensely severe. The principal animals found in the territory are bears, wild horses, small deer, wolves, and foxes; otters and beavers are plentiful on the banks of the rivers, whose waters abound with the finest salmon and seals. The Indian races are thinly scattered over this extensive region, and are not supposed to number more than 170,000 individuals. Little, however, is distinctly known of the Oregon. Few have

explored it except hunters. The attention of travellers has been chiefly confined to the river Columbia or Oregon, the latter name having been communicated to the country. This river, politically and commercially, is the great point of attraction; for from it is expected a means of descending to the Pacific from the interior. The upper part of the river is formed by two main branches, winding their way amidst the valleys of the Rocky Mountains; and the more southerly of these tributaries is said to reach to within 200 miles of the head waters of the Missouri. Formed by these and many smaller streams, the Oregon flows in a westerly direction to the Pacific, pretty nearly dividing the country into two equal parts. In a direct line, the space over which it runs is 650 miles in breadth; but as it winds considerably, the entire length of the river is probably as much as 1000 miles.

According to the accounts of Townsend, Lewis and Clark, Washington Irving in his "Astoria," and others, the Oregon, though a large river, is exceedingly difficult of navigation, being very various in breadth and force of current, impeded by rocks, islands, cascades, and rapids, and exposed to furious gusts of wind, against which no skill can afford protection. In some places the banks are flat and marshy, covered with trees and bushes which flourish only in swamps, and in others they are high and precipitous, hemming in the waters which dash to and fro at their base. The bar or estuary is infested with breakers, which render the ingress and egress always hazardous; the tide rises about eight and a half feet at the mouth, and ascends the stream about 160 miles. Vessels of 300 tons may reach the Multnomah branch, about sixty miles below the great falls, and sloops of small burden go up nearly to the rapids. Beyond this point all is difficulty and danger, and the smallest craft have to be taken from the stream, and carried over the numerous rocky impediments.

The greatest of the falls is at about 180 miles above the mouth of the river. The first is a perpendicular cascade of twenty feet, after which there is a swift descent for a mile, between islands of hard black rock, to another pitch of eight feet divided by two rocks. About two and a half miles below this the river expands into a wide basin, seemingly dammed up by a perpendicular edge of black rock. A current, however, sets diagonally to the left of this rocky barrier, where there is a chasm forty-five yards in width. Through this the whole body of the waters roars along, swelling, and whirling, and boiling for some distance in the wildest confusion. Through this tre*mendous channel the first explorers of the river, Lewis and Clark, passed adventurously in their boats; the danger not being from the rocks but from the great surges and whirlpools. At the distance of a mile and a half from the foot of this narrow channel is a rapid formed by two rocky islands; and two miles beyond is a second great fall over a ledge of rocks twenty feet

high, extending nearly from shore to shore. The river is again compressed into a channel from fifty to a hundred feet wide, worn through a rough bed of hard black rock, along which it boils and roars with great fury for the distance of three miles. This is called the Long Narrows. Such are a few of the features of the Columbia or Oregon, as mentioned by Irving and other American writers; the impression left on our minds, from all we have read on the subject, being that it is a river in its present condition of little commercial value; and how many millions of pounds sterling would be required to provide its navigation with artificial side-locks and channels, it would be presumptuous for us to say.

The only establishments of the whites are the Hudson Bay Company's posts and settlements, and the missionary stations of the American Board of Foreign Missions, the country generally being still in possession of the native tribes. Fort Vancouver, the company's principal depôt, stands on the north side of the river, 100 miles from its mouth, in the midst of fertile and beautiful prairies. The fort is merely a stockade, inclosing the company's buildings, surrounded by about fifty huts, occupied by the mechanics and labourers, with their Indian wives and slaves, who number in all about 800 persons. The stations of the American mission board are Astoria and Clatsop, both situated near the mouth of the river-the former on the north and the latter on the southern shore. Besides these there are various posts scattered over the interior; latterly the territory has received a number of Anglo-American settlers from the states; and from the enterprising character of that people, it seems not unlikely that in a few years, in spite of every obstacle, it will be extensively settled upon by them.

As is generally known, the United States prefer a claim to the greater part, if not the whole of the Oregon territory, while Great Britain disputes this title, and asserts a claim to at least joint occupancy, a right of navigating the Columbia, and of forming settlements and trading posts in the country. To the British, with their feeble and cumbrous colonial policy, this far distant territory can never be anything but an engine of trouble and expense; or at best, the mere resort of hunters and fur-traders, from whose feats the nation at large can derive little economical advantage. Even did it present an average field for emigration -which is rendered more than dubious by the character both of the soil and climate-still, considering that it is between two and three thousand miles distant from the farthest verge of Western Canada, and of very tedious and dangerous access by sea, it can' by no means form an acquisition of peculiar value to a country whose accessible possessions are already so extensive. Viewed in whatever light, it is exceedingly desirable that the conflicting claims of the British and United States governments respecting the Oregon were amicably and speedily adjusted.

Na beautiful morning in summer, Mrs Mason, a lady who had led an active and useful life, but now was desirous of retiring for the sake of her health to a pleasant part of the country, arrived at the village of Glenburnie. Situated near the head of a glen, or romantic valley, the village was small and picturesque, but, like too many villages and hamlets in Scotland, it showed that nothing was done to make it neat, cleanly, or attractive. It consisted of about twenty or thirty thatched cottages, which, but for their chimneys, and the smoke that issued from them, might have passed for so many stables or hogsties, so little had they to distinguish them as the dwellings of man. That one horse, at least, was the inhabitant of every dwelling, there was no room to doubt, as every door could not only boast its dunghill, but had a small cart stuck up on end directly before it; which cart, though often broken, and always dirty, seemed ostentatiously displayed as a proof of wealth.

In the middle of the village stood the kirk, a humble edifice, which meekly raised its head but a few degrees above the neighbouring houses, ornamented, however, by two old ash-trees, which grew at its east end, and spread their protecting arms over its lowly roof. As the houses of the village stood separate from each other, at the distance of many yards, our traveller had time to contemplate the scene, and was particularly struck with the number of children who, as the car advanced, poured forth to look at Mrs Mason and her friends, Mr and Miss Mary Stewart,