CHAPTER IV.
ASTORIA AND ITS SURROUNDINGS.
The situation of Astoria, in point of beauty, is certainly a very fine one. The neck of land occupied by the town, is made a peninsula by Young's Bay on one side and the Columbia River on the other, and points to the north-west. A small cove makes in at the east side of the neck, just back of which the ground rises much more gently and smoothly than it does a little farther toward the sea. The whole point was originally covered with heavy timber, which came quite down to high-water mark; and whatever there is unlovely in the present aspect of Astoria, arises from the roughness always attendant upon the clearing up of timbered lands.
Standing, facing the sea or the river, with your back to half-cleared lots, made unsightly by the blackened stumps of trees, the view is one of unsurpassed beauty. Toward the sea, the low, green point on which Fort Stevens stands—the Capo Frondosa (leafy cape) of the Spanish navigators—and the high one of Cape Hancock, topped by the light-house tower, mark the entrance to the river. Above them is a blue sky; between them, a blue river, celebrating eternally its union with the sea by the roar of its breakers, whose white crests are often distinctly visible. There is a sail or two in the offing, and a pilot-boat going out to bring them over the bar.
