The river, when I passed was unfortunately at its lower stage—still the Shutes were terribly grand. The main body of the water swept around near its southern bank, and being there compressed into, a narrow rough channel, chafed its angry way to the brink, where, bending a massive curve, as if hesitating to risk the leap, it plunged into a narrow cavern sixty feet deep, with a force and volume which made the earth tremble. The noise was prodigious, deafening, and echoed in awful tumult among the barren mountains. Further towards the other shore, smaller jets were rushing from the imprisoned rocks which clustered near the brow of the cliff, into other caverns; {163} and close under the north bank, and farther down the stream, thundered another, nearly equal in grandeur to the one first described.
On the portions of the rocky stratum left by the chafing waters, in wearing out numerous channels below the present situation of the Shutes, were the flag huts of one hundred Wallawalla fishermen. They were taking salmon with scoop nets and bone pointed spears. These people are filthy and naked. Some sat by fires swallowing roasted salmon; others greasing themselves with the oil of that fish; others were dressing and drying them; others stood down on the projections in the chasms, sweeping their nets in the foaming waters; untaught, un-elevated, least intelligent, least improvable human nature! It was not deemed safe to remain long among these savages, who had begun to examine my packs with more interest than strictly honest intentions towards them seemed to require, and I took to the trail again on a fast trot.
Some of them endeavoured to follow on foot, demanding a tribute of "smoke" for the privilege of passing their dominions. But having none at hand I pushed on, without regarding their suit, over sand hills, {164} beds of volcanic stones, and hanging declivities, till rounding a basaltic buttress, I came in view of the little plain on the south western shore of the Dalles. The "Dalles," a French term for "flat stones," is applied to a portion of the river here, where, by a process similar to that going on at Niagara, the waters have cut channels through an immense stratum of black rock, over which they used to fall as at the Shutes.[227]
At low stages these are of sufficient capacity to pass all the waters. But the annual floods overflow the "flat stones," and produce a lashing and leaping, and whirling of waters, too grand for the imagination to conceive. These "Dalles" are covered with the huts of the Chinooks, a small band of a tribe of the same name, which inhabits the banks of Columbia from this place to its mouth.[228] They flatten their heads and perforate the septum of the nose, as do the Wallawallas, Skyuse and Nez Percés.
The depression of the southern embankment of the chasm of the river at the Dalles, extends eight miles along the stream, and from a half mile to a mile in width. It is broken by ledges bursting through the {165} surface, and in parts loaded with immense boulders of detached rocks. Along the north-western border are groves of small white oaks; and on the highlands in that direction are forests of pine, spruce and other evergreens, clothing the whole country westward to the snowy peaks of the President's Range.
In the south-west, specked with clusters of bunch grass, is an open rolling plain, which stretches beyond the reach of vision. In the north rise sharp mountains, thinly clad with evergreen trees; through an opening among the peaks of which, appeared the shining apex of Mount Adams.[229] In the north-east sweep away in brown barrenness, naked cliffs and sandy wastes. I had taken a bird's-eye view of the Dalles and the region round about, when my Indian cried out "Lee house." And there it was, a mission house of the American P. E. Methodist Church, in charge of Messrs. Lee and Perkins.[230]
I spent a week at the Dalles' mission, eating salmon and growing fat; an event that had not lately occurred in the republic of the members of my mortal confederacy.
The buildings of the mission, are a dwelling-house, {166} a house for worship and for school purposes, and a workshop, &c. The first is a log structure thirty by twenty feet, one and a half floor high, shingle roofs, and floors made of plank cut with a whip-saw from the pines of the hills. The lower story is divided into two rooms—the one a dining-room, the other the family apartment of Mr. Perkins and lady. These are lined overhead and at the sides with beautiful rush mats manufactured by the Indians. The upper story is partitioned into six dormitories, and a school-room for Indian children; all neatly lined with mats. Underneath is an excellent cellar. The building designed for a house of worship, was being built when I arrived. Its architecture is a curiosity.
The frame is made in the usual form, save that instead of four main posts at the corners, and others at considerable distances, for the support of lateral girders, there were eleven on each side, and six on each end, beside the corner posts—all equal in size and length. Between these billets of wood were driven transversely, on which as lathing, mortar made of clay, sand and straw, were laid to a level with their exterior and interior faces. There is so little falling {167} weather here, that this mode of building was considered sufficiently substantial.