CHAPTER VI.
TRIBUTARIES OF THE LOWER COLUMBIA.
Just above the Narrows, and opposite to the Oak Point of Captain Winship, is the modern Oak Point, which seems to have borrowed the name, and shifted it to the Washington side. The name is pretty and distinctive, and ought never to be changed, as it marks the western boundary of the oak-tree in Oregon and Washington. Between this and the sea not an oak-tree grows. The only business at or about Oak Point is that of the fisheries already mentioned, and the lumbering establishment of Mr. Abernethy, which was erected in 1848–9. It is run by water-power, and capable of manufacturing 4,000,000 feet annually.
About ten miles above Oak Point we come to the mouth of the Cowlitz River. Just below it is a high, conical hill, known as Mount Coffin. This eminence, together with Coffin Rock, seven miles above, on the Oregon side, formed the burial-places of the Indians of this vicinity, before the settlement of the country by whites. Here the dead were deposited in canoes, well wrapped up in mats or blankets, with their most valuable property beside them, and their domestic utensils hung upon the posts which supported their unique coffins. Wilkes relates in his journal, how his men accidentally set fire to the underbrush on Mount Coffin, causing a number of the canoes to be consumed, to the grief and horror of the Indians, who would
