Orientals were first upon the river. They came by land, and their journey eastward across the continent from its northwest coast to the banks where, their soothsayers had said, they might rest beside a water that-flows-two-ways, had lasted many generations. There is no knowing who first saw the ocean bound current turn about and run toward the mountains whence it came, but the realization of: a prophecy fulfilled must have come upon him with a stunning impact.

The salty tides of the estuary encounter spring-borne floods that join among the high old rocks to the north, comaier them for measured periods, and then give way, leaving messages for men. Among the slant-eyed, red-brown tribes that gathered by the river were poets whose sensitivity to natural phenomena inspired legends. Dy the fireplaces within their rounded twig-and-clay houses they heard the rush of wind, the roll of thunder, the tattoo of rain, and a goddess who controlled all these and lived in highlands of the sky beyond the river mountains. From her perch above the wide valley she ordered her votaries cursed by lightning or blessed by sun. When the once slim moon hung fat, she lifted it from its hidden hook, cut it into stars, and sowed them like yellow seed into the night’s black furrows. She had plucked and scattered countless full-blown golden blossoms from the sky before European explorers saw from under white sails the river landscape and its habitants, and speculated on its future. Vcrraxano, the Florentine, described his glimpse ol it in 1524 for his patron, “his most serene and Christian Majesty,” Francis I of France:

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