At Oregon, the beauty of the scene was of even a more sumptuous character than at our former “stopping-place.”  Here swelled the river in its boldest course, interspersed by halcyon isles on which Nature had lavished all her prodigality in tree, vine, and flower, banked by noble bluffs, three Hundred feet high, their sharp ridges as exquisitely definite as the edge of a shell; their summits adorned with those same beautiful trees, and with buttresses of rich rock, crested with old hemlocks, which wore a touching and antique grace amid, the softer and more luxuriant vegetation.  Lofty natural mounds rose amidst the rest, with the same lovely and sweeping outline, showing everywhere the plastic power of water,—­water, mother of beauty,—­which, by its sweet and eager flow, had left such lineaments as human genius never dreamt of.

Not far from the river was a high crag, called the Pine Rock, which looks out, as our guide observed, like a helmet above the brow of the country.  It seems as if the water left here and there a vestige of forms and materials that preceded its course, just to set off its new and richer designs.

The aspect of this country was to me enchanting, beyond any I have ever seen, from its fulness of expression, its bold and impassioned sweetness.  Here the flood of emotion has passed over and marked everywhere its course by a smile.  The fragments of rock touch it with a wildness and liberality which give just the needed relief.  I should never be tired here, though I have elsewhere seen country of more secret and alluring charms, better calculated to stimulate and suggest.  Here the eye and heart are filled.

How happy the Indians must have been here!  It is not long since they were driven away, and the ground, above and below, is full of their traces.

  “The earth is full of men.”

You have only to turn up the sod to find arrowheads and Indian pottery.  On an island, belonging to our host, and nearly opposite his house, they loved to stay, and, no doubt, enjoyed its lavish beauty as much as the myriad wild pigeons that now haunt its flower-filled shades.  Here are still the marks of their tomahawks, the troughs in which they prepared their corn, their caches.

A little way down the river is the site of an ancient Indian village, with its regularly arranged mounds.  As usual, they had chosen with the finest taste.  When we went there, it was one of those soft, shadowy afternoons when Nature seems ready to weep, not from grief, but from an overfull heart.  Two prattling, lovely little girls, and an African boy, with glittering eye and ready grin, made our party gay; but all were still as we entered the little inlet and trod those flowery paths.  They may blacken Indian life as they will, talk of its dirt, its brutality, I will ever believe that the men who chose that dwelling-place were able to feel emotions of noble happiness as they returned to it, and so were the women that received