almost equal straits. One of its last and best uses was as a ball-room, where, on the Fourth of July, 1849, the gold-seekers on their way to California, and a company of United States artillery-men, celebrated the day with patriotic enthusiasm.
Even as late as that year, the canoes of eight hundred native warriors of the Chinooks covered the water in Astor Bay, curious, as savages always are, to watch the acts, and note the customs, of civilized men. Not a canoe is now in sight. The white race are to the red as sun to snow: as silently and surely the red men disappear, dissipated by the beams of civilization. Among those who came to gaze at the overpowering white race on that occasion, was an old Chinook chief, the number of whose years was one hundred. His picture, which some one gave to us, shows a shrewd character. So, no doubt, looked Com-com-ly, the chief whom Washington Irving describes in his "Astoria," and whose contemporary this venerable savage must have been. His sightless eyes, in his early manhood, beheld the entrance into the river of that vessel whose name it bears. Between that time and the day of his death, he saw the Columbia Biver tribes, which once numbered thirty thousand, decimated again and again, until they scarcely counted up one-tenth of that number.
If you ask an Astorian, what constitutes the wealth and commercial importance of his town, present and future, he will tell you, that it has a commodious harbor, with depth of water enough to accommodate vessels of the deepest draft, with good anchorage, and shelter from south-west (winter) storms. He will point to the forts at the mouth of the river, and say that they make business; to the custom-house, and
