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Show THE WAY TO OREGON. 401 delay till next day, " to get high tide over the bar at the mouth of the Columbia." So my friends made an evening of it to see me off prop-erly, and gave me a world of good advice about sea- sickness. Having properly prepared my nerves, and emptied fourteen bottles of " Bass," they saw me aboard, with the parting words : " Good- bye, Jonah ; and when you begin to heave, think of us! " An " old salt" then gave me his advice: " Take half a dozen limes in your pocket, eat one when-ever you begin to feel giddy, wrap up well and walk about, st'xjk to the deck with me, and I'll insure you." This I did, and found it the best plan. At daylight, the bang of a six- pounder on the bow aroused me from dreams of shipwreck, and pretty soon the " hoh- he- hoh " of the sea-men's chorus, and the rattle of lines and jingle of bells announced that we were off. The easy motion of the vessel lulled me to another nap of an hour, from which I awoke to find that we were dead still neither tied nor anchored, but swinging with the current, and buried in a fog, so dense that I had to feel my way along the berths to the cabin door. We were near the mouth of the Willamette, and were to stay there any time from one to twenty- four hours. Hour by hour the fog slowly lifted, drizzle and mist taking its place, and chilling one to the very bones. The cabin passengers crowded around the stoves, while the Chinese and other steerage passengers walked the deck, or . stood around the smoke- stacks for warmth ; the melancholy " Johns," with glazed caps and black pig- tails, looking like a lot of half- drowned crows. About 2 P. M., blue spots began to appear, bright rays broke through the gloom, a light wind was felt from the north- west, and soon the fog was sailing away in fleecy clouds toward the Cascade Range. We were soon out in the Columbia, and at once surrounded by large flocks of ducks and wild geese, with an occasional gull or Walloon. At dark we reached the principal salmon fisheries, stopped for the night, and took on a hundred tons of canned salmon " No put up at all," the clerk said. The amphibious race who follow the calling of fishermen on the lower Columbia, know all about salmon and next to nothing of any thing else. Three hours persistent questioning among them developed these facts. The salmon vary in weight from five to thirty pounds, twelve being a fair average. When they enter the Columbia from the ocean, their meat is of a bright red color; every mile they go up stream they get poorer, and their meat whiter. In the Willamette it is a pale vermillion, further up almost white ; but no Oregonian will eat of salmon taken above the mouth of the Willa- 2G |