<P> Alexander Ross, an early Scottish Canadian fur trader, describes the lower Columbia River area of the Oregon Country (known to him as the Columbia District): </P> <P> The banks of the river throughout are low and skirted in the distance by a chain of moderately high lands on each side, interspersed here and there with clumps of wide spreading oaks, groves of pine, and a variety of other kinds of woods . Between these high lands lie what is called the valley of the Wallamitte (sic), the frequented haunts of innumerable herds of elk and deer...In ascending the river the surrounding country is most delightful, and the first barrier to be meet with is about forty miles up from its mouth . Here the navigation is interrupted by a ledge of rocks, running across the river from side to side in the form of an irregular horseshoe, over which the whole body of water falls at one leap down a precipice of about forty feet, called the Falls . </P> <P> After living in Oregon from 1843 to 1848, Peter H. Burnett wrote: </P> <P> (Oregonians) were all honest, because there was nothing to steal; they were all sober, because there was no liquor to drink; there were no misers, because there was no money to hoard; and they were all industrious, because it was work or starve . </P>

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