THE COAST COUNTRY.
229
To be convinced of the prodigal wealth of the soil and mildness of the climate, we have only to visit any of the small valleys about the mouth of the Columbia River, and find ourselves lost as in a forest, in thickets of ferns and wild berries; while the trees that tower above us two hundred feet have trunks eight feet in thickness. Of the scenery of a country which combines sea, mountains, forests, valleys, and rapid rivers, we need not speak. The imagination has ample scope here; but its variety could never surpass the infinite variety of the scenes furnished by Nature's never-ending new combinations.
