Leaving The Dalles in the morning, a splendid panorama begins to unfold on this lordly stream—"Achilles of rivers," as Winthrop called it. It is difficult to describe the charm of this trip. Residents of the East pronounce it superior to the Hudson, and travelers assert there is nothing like it in the Old World. It is simply delicious to those escaped from the heat and dust of their far-off homes to embark on this noble stream and steam smoothly down past frowning headlands and "rocks with carven imageries," bluffs lined with pine trees, vivid green, past islands and falls, and distant views of snowy peaks. There is no trip like it on the coast, and for a river excursion there is not its equal in the United States.
THE ISLE OF THE DEAD.
Twelve miles below "The Dalles" there is a lonely, rugged island anchored amid stream. It is bare, save for a white monument which rises from its rocky breast. No living thing, no vestige of verdure, or tree, or shrub, appears. And Captain McNulty, as he stood at the wheel and steadied the "Queen," said:
"That monument? It's Victor Trevet's. Of course you never heard of him, but he was a great man, all the same, here in Oregon in the old times. Queer he was, and no mistake. Member of one of the early legislatures; sort of a general peacemaker; everybody went to him with their troubles, and when he said a lawsuit didn't go, it didn't, and he always stuck up for the Indians, and always called his own kind 'dirty mean whites.' I used to think that was put on, and maybe it was, but anyhow that's the way he used to talk. And a hundred times he has said to me, 'John, when I die, I want to be buried on Memaloose Isle.' That's the 'Isle of the Dead,' which we just passed, and has been from times away back the burial place of the Chinook Indians. It's just full of 'em. And I says to him, 'Now, Vic., it's fame your after.' 'John,' says he, 'I'll tell you: I'm not indifferent to glory; and there's many a big gun laid away in the cemetery that people forget in a year, and his grave's never visited after a few turns of the wheel; but if I rest on Memaloose Isle, I'll not be forgotten while people travel this river. And another thing: You know, John, the dirty, mean whites stole the Indian's burial ground and built Portland there. Everyday the papers have an account of Mr. Bigbug's proposed palace, and how Indian bones were turned up in the excavation. I won't be buried alongside any such dirty, mean thieves. And I'll tell you further, John, that it may be if I am laid away among the Indians, when the Great Day comes I can slip in kind of easy. They ain't going to have any such a hard time as the dirty whites will have, and maybe I won't be noticed, and can just slide in quiet along with their crowd.'
"And I tell you," said the honest Captain, as he swung the "Queen" around a sharp headland, and the monument and island vanished, "he has got his wish. He don't lay among the whites, and there isn't a day in summer when the name of Vic. Trevet ain't mentioned, either on yon train or on a boat, just as I am telling it to you now. When he died in San Francisco five years ago, some of his old friends had him brought back to 'The Dalles,' and one lovely Sunday (being an off day) we buried him on Memaloose Isle, and then we put up the monument. His earthly immortality is safe and sure, for that stone will stand as long as the island stays. She's eight feet square at the base, built of the native rock right on the island, then three feet of granite, then a ten-foot column. It cost us $1,500, and Vic. is bricked up in a vault underneath. Yes, sir, he's there for sure till resurrection day. Queer idea? Why, blame it all, if he thought he could get in along with the Chinooks it's all right, ain't it? Don't want a man to lose any chances, do you?"
So much has been said of this mighty river that the preconceived idea of the tourist is of a surging flood of unknown depth rushing like a mountain torrent. The plain facts are that the Lower Columbia is rather a placid stream, with a sluggish current, and the channel shoals up to eight feet, then falling to twelve, fifteen and seventeen feet, and suddenly dropping to 100 feet of water and over. In the spring months it will rise from twenty-five to forty feet, leaving driftwood high up among the trees on the banks. The tide ebbs and flows at Portland from eighteen inches to three feet, according to season, and this tidal influence is felt, in high water, as far up as the Cascades. It is fifty miles of glorious beauty from "The Dalles" to the Cascades. Here we leave the steamer and take a narrow-gauge railway for six miles around the magnificent rapids. At the foot of the Cascades we board a twin boat, fitted up with equal taste and comfort.
THE MIDDLE COLUMBIA.
Swinging once more down stream we pass hundreds of charming spots, sixty miles of changeful beauty all the way to Portland; Multnomah Falls, a filmy veil of water falling 720 feet into a basin on the hillside and then 130 feet to the river; past the rocky walls of Cape Horn, towering up a thousand feet; past that curious freak of nature, Rooster Rock, and the palisades; past Fort Vancouver, where Grant and Sheridan were once stationed, and just at sunset leaving the Columbia, which by this time has broadened into noble dimensions, we ascend the Willamette twelve miles to Portland. And the memory of that day's journey down the lordly river will remain a gracious possession for years to come.
THE LEGEND OF THE CASCADES.
