"Well," said Mr. Sturgis, "let's get down to Portland and then go up the Columbia River till we strike the railroad. I know General Sharpe, one of the officials of the road, and I think he will help us across the break between the end of the track in Washington Territory and the settlements in Montana. What do you say?"
"I say 'Bully!'" exclaimed Jack.
"It suits me," said Hugh, "but where will this bring us out?"
"Well," said Mr. Sturgis, "it ought to bring us out about Deer Lodge, and there is a little narrow-gauge road being built over from Corinne in Utah on the Union Pacific, which by this time must be somewhere near these Montana towns. Of course, when we get on a railroad that connects with the Union Pacific we are just about home."
The next morning the railroad carried them to Kalama, where they took the steamer to Portland. The sail between the two points was beautiful. At one time they could see from the steamer's deck no less than six different snow-covered peaks, which ranged from nine to fourteen thousand feet in height. These were Mt. Ranier, St. Helens, Adams, Hood, Jefferson, and the Three Sisters. From Portland the steamer took them up the Columbia River through a beautiful country to the Cascades. For the first few miles of the sail the bottom was wide and the hills were distant, but after a time they reached a stretch where the river flowed between walls of rock. A great sheet of lava covers the whole face of the country. From the hills, which stretch back from the river and are covered with long yellow grass, rose numberless walls and piles of lava rock which cast black shadows. The country was open, and the park-like slopes were dotted with dark spruces and pines. Along the river water and wind had worn the rocks into curious shapes, sometimes like columns or obelisks, or again like great ovals set on end.
Along the bank of the river at several points thousands of blue-bloused, broad-hatted Chinamen were busily at work, evidently on a railroad embankment.
"This," Mr. Sturgis said, "is a railroad being built by the O. R. & N. Company between Portland and the Dalles."
"Well," said Hugh, "it seems to be the same story everywhere; railroads being built, and then people following the railroads; farms and big towns growing up; the game all going, and when the game goes of course the Indian goes too."
"Yes," said Mr. Sturgis, "this is material prosperity for the United States. You and I have seen the beginning of it, but I don't believe that either of us have any notion at all of where it is going to end. But there is one thing that we can be sure of, that no consideration of game or Indian or other natural thing is going to be allowed to interfere with the material growth of the country. We people who know how things used to be, and who like them as they were, may grumble and think the change is for the worse; but nobody will pay any attention to our grumbling and the changes will go on."
At the Cascades they changed to a train which took them seven miles around the rapids, and, then boarding another steamer, proceeded, until, just at dusk, they reached the Dalles.