Beginning first with the Columbia River, the traveler will find solid comfort on any one of the boats belonging to the Union Pacific Railway fleet. This River Division is separated into three subdivisions: the Lower Columbia from Portland to Astoria, the Middle Columbia from Portland to Cascade Locks, and the Upper Columbia from the Cascades to The Dalles.
THE UPPER COLUMBIA.
First Tour—
Passengers will remember that, arriving at The Dalles, on the Union Pacific Railway, they have the option of proceeding into Portland either by rail or river, and their ticket is available for either route.
The river trip will be found a very pleasant diversion after the long railway ride, and a day's sail down the majestic Columbia is a memory-picture which lasts a life-time. It is eighty-eight miles by rail to Portland, the train skirting the river bank up to within a few miles of the city. By river, it is forty-five miles to the Upper Cascades, then a six-mile portage via narrow-gauge railway, then sixty miles by steamer again to Portland. The boat leaves The Dalles at about 7 in the morning, and reaches Portland at 6 in the evening. The accommodations on these boats are first-class in every respect; good table, neat staterooms, and courteous attendants.
This tour is planned for those who may wish to start from Portland by the Union Pacific Railway. Take the evening train from Portland to The Dalles. Arriving at The Dalles, walk down to the boat, which lies only a few yards down stream from the station. Sleep on board, so that you may be ready early in the morning for the stately panorama of the river. Another plan is to give a day to the interesting country in the near vicinity. The Dalles proper of the Columbia begin at Celilo, fourteen miles above this point, and are simply a succession of rapids, until, nearing The Dalles Station, the stream for two and a half miles narrows down between walls of basaltic rock 130 feet across. In the flood-tides of the spring the water in this chasm has risen 126 feet. The word "Dalles" is rather misleading. The word is French, "dalle," and means, variously, "a plate," "a flagstone," "a slab," alluding to the oval or square shaped stones which abound in the river bed and the valley above. But the early French hunters and trappers called a chasm or a defile or gorge, "dalles," meaning in their vernacular "a trough"—and "Dalles" it has remained. There is a quaint Indian legend connected with the spot which may interest the curious, and it runs something on this wise, Clark's Fork and the Snake river, it will be remembered, unite at Ainsworth to form the Columbia. It flows furiously for a hundred miles and more westward, and when it reaches the outlying ridges of the Cascade chain it finds an immense low surface paved with enormous sheets of basaltic rock. But here is the legend:
THE LEGEND OF THE DALLES.
In the very ancient far-away times the sole and only inhabitants of the world were fiends, and very highly uncivilized fiends at that. The whole Northwest was then one of the centres of volcanic action. The craters of the Cascades were fire breathers and fountains of liquid flame. It was an extremely fiendish country, and naturally the inhabitants fought like devils. Where the great plains of the Upper Columbia now spread was a vast inland sea, which beat against a rampart of hills to the east of The Dalles. And the great weapon of the fiends in warfare was their tails, which were of prodigious size and terrible strength. Now, the wisest, strongest, and most subtle fiend of the entire crew was one fiend called the "Devil." He was a thoughtful person and viewed with alarm the ever increasing tendency among his neighbors toward fighting and general wickedness. The whole tribe met every summer to have a tournament after their fashion, and at one of these reunions the Devil arose and made a pacific speech. He took occasion to enlarge on the evils of constant warfare, and suggested that a general reconciliation take place and that they all live in peace. The astonished fiends could not understand any such unwarlike procedure from him, and with one accord, suspecting treachery, made straight at the intended reformer, who, of course, took to his heels. The fiends pressed him hard as he sped over the plains of The Dalles, and as he neared the defile he struck a Titanic blow with his tail on the pavement—and a chasm opened up through the valley, and down rushed the waters of the inland sea. But a battalion of the fiends still pursued him, and again he smote with his tail and more strongly, and a vaster cleft went up and down the valley, and a more terrific torrent swept along. The leading fiends took the leap, but many fell into the chasm—and still the Devil was sorely pursued. He had just time to rap once more and with all the vigor of a despairing tail. And this time he was safe. A third crevice, twice the width of the second, split the rocks, riving a deeper cleft in the mountain that held back the inland sea, making a gorge through the majestic chain of the Cascades and opening a way for the torrent oceanward. It was the crack of doom for the fiends. Essaying the leap, they fell far short of the edge, where the Devil lay panting. Down they fell and were swept away by the flood; so the whole race of fiends perished from the face of the earth. But the Devil was in sorry case. His tail was unutterably dislocated by his last blow; so, leaping across the chasm he had made, he went home to rear his family thoughtfully. There were no more antagonists; so, perhaps, after all, tails were useless. Every year he brought his children to The Dalles and told them the terrible history of his escape. And after a time the fires of the Cascades burned away; the inland sea was drained and its bed became a fair and habitable land, and still the waters gushed through the narrow crevices roaring seaward. But the Devil had one sorrow. All his children born before the catastrophe were crabbed, unregenerate, stiff-tailed fiends. After that event every new-born imp wore a flaccid, invertebrate, despondent tail—the very last insignium of ignobility. So runs the legend of The Dalles—a shining lesson to reformers.