The heaviest swell encountered is going over the Columbia River Bar. The ocean is uniformly placid during the summer months. The trip, with its freedom from the dust, rush, and roar of a train, and the inexorable restraint one always feels on the cars, is a delightful one, and with larger comforts and more luxurious surroundings, one enjoys the added pleasure of courteous and thoughtful service from the various officers of the ship.
Taking the "Columbia" as a sample of the class of steamships in the Union Pacific fleet, we notice that she is 334 feet long, 2,200 horse-power, nearly 3,000 tonnage, has 65 state-rooms, and can accommodate 200 saloon and 200 steerage passengers. Steam heat and electric light are used. In 1880 the first plant from Edison's factory was put on board the "Columbia," at that time a great curiosity, she being the first ship to use the incandescent light.
CRATER LAKE.
Crater Lake is situate in the northwestern portion of Klamath county, Oregon, and is best reached by leaving the Southern Pacific Railroad at Medford, which is 328 miles south of Portland, and about ninety miles from the lake, which can be reached by a very good wagon road. The lake is about six miles wide by seven miles long, but it is not its size which is its beauty or its attraction. The surface of the water in the lake is 6,251 feet above the level of the sea, and is surrounded by cliffs or walls from 1,000 to over 2,000 feet in height, and which are scantily covered with timber, and which offer at but one point a way of reaching the water. The depth of the water is very great, and it is very transparent, and of a deep blue color. Toward the southwestern portion of the lake is Wizard Island, 845 feet high, circular in shape, and slightly covered with timber. In the top of this island is a depression, or crater—the Witches' Caldron—100 feet deep, and 475 feet in diameter, which was evidently the last smoking chimney of a once mighty volcano, and which is now covered within, as without, with volcanic rocks. North of this island, and on the west side of the lake, is Llao Rock, reaching to a height of 2,000 feet above the water, and so perpendicular that a stone may be dropped from its summit to the waters at its base, nearly one-half mile below.
So far below the surrounding mountains is the surface of the waters in this lake, that the mountain breezes but rarely ripple them; and looking from the surrounding wall, the sky and cliffs are seen mirrored in the glassy surface, and it is with difficulty the eye can distinguish the line where the cliffs leave off and their reflected counterfeits begin.
OREGON NATIONAL PARK.
Townships 27, 28, 29, 30, and 31, in Ranges 5 and 6 east of the Willamette meridian, are asked to be set apart as the Oregon National Park. This area contains Crater Lake and its approaches. The citizens of Oregon unanimously petitioned the President for the reservation of this park, and a bill in conformity with the petition passed the United States Senate in February, 1888.