g which the Cascades afford, and
indeed, so far as I know, found nowhere else.

The Columbia above the Dalles is still a first-class river, comparable
in depth and width, and in the volume of its water, only with the Lower
Mississippi or the Amazon. It is a deep, rapidly-flowing stream, nearly a
mile wide. But at one point in the Dalles the channel narrows until it is,
at the ordinary height of the river, not over a hundred yards wide; and
through this narrow gorge the whole volume of the river rushes for some
distance. Of course water is not subject to compression; the volume of the
river is not diminished; what happens, as you perceive when you see this
singular freak of nature, is that the river is suddenly turned up on its
edge. Suppose it is, above the Dalles, a mile wide and fifty feet deep;
at the narrow gorge it is but a hundred yards wide--how deep must it be?
Certainly it can be correctly said that the stream is turned up on its
edge.

The Dalles lie five or six miles above Dalles City; and you pass these
rapids in the train which bears you to Celilo early the next morning
after you arrive at Dalles City. Celilo is not a town; it is simply
a geographical point; it is the spot where, if you were bound to the
interior of the continent by water, you would take steamboat. There is
here a very long shed to shelter the goods which are sent up into this
far-away and, to us Eastern people, unknown interior; there is a wharf
where land the boats when they return from a journey of perhaps a thousand
miles on the Upper Columbia or the Snake; there are two or three laborers'
shanties--and that is all there is of Celilo; and your journey thither
has been made only that you may see the Dalles, and Cape Horn, as a bold
promontory on the river is called.

What I advise you to do is to take a hearty lunch with you, and, if you
can find one, a guide, and get off the early Celilo train at the Dalles.
You will have a most delightful day among very curious scenery; will
see the Indians spearing salmon in the pools over which they build their
stages; and can examine at leisure the curious rapids called the Dalles.
A party of three or four persons could indeed spend several days very
pleasantly picnicking about the Dalles, and in the season they would shoot
hare and birds enough to supply them with meat. The weather in this part
of Oregon, east of the Cascade range, is as settled as that of California,
so that there is no risk in