Note 42 — Chapter V

Mr. Blackwell, then 80 years old, used to rise early in the morning and take a trolley ride of thirty or forty miles in various directions to enjoy the beauties of nature. "Feeling unwilling to return east without bathing in the Pacific," he said in one of his letters, "and wishing to visit Astoria, the ancient American fur-post so charmingly immortalized by Washington Irving, I left Portland after the convention closed and had a beautiful voyage of nine hours down the river to where it meets the ocean.... After an early morning plunge into the big waves we chartered an auto and sped over the hard sands to the fir-crowned cliffs."