-dinner, with a
refined lady at the head of the table and well-bred children about the
sides. A very interesting guest of General Alvord's was Major Lugenbeel,
who had spent his life in the topographical service of the United
States, and combined the culture of a student with an amount of
information concerning the wildest portions of our continent which I
have never seen surpassed nor heard communicated in style more
fascinating. He had lately come from the John-Day, Boise, and
Snake-River Mines, where the Government was surveying routes of
emigration, and pronounced the wealth of the region exhaustless.

After a pleasant evening and a good night's rest, we took the Oregon
Company's steamer, Wilson G. Hunt, and proceeded up the river, leaving
Fort Vancouver about seven A.M. To our surprise, the Hunt proved an old
acquaintance. She will be remembered by most people who during the last
twelve years have been familiar with the steamers hailing from New York
Bay. Though originally built for river-service such as now employs her,
she came around from the Hudson to the Columbia by way of Cape Horn. By
lessening her top-hamper and getting new stanchions for her perilous
voyage, she performed it without accident.

Such a vivid souvenir of the Hudson reminded me of an assertion I had
often heard, that the Columbia resembles it. There is some ground for
the comparison. Each of the rivers breaks through a noble
mountain-system in its passage to the sea, and the walls of its avenue
are correspondingly grand. In point of variety the banks of the Hudson
far surpass those of the Columbia,--trap, sandstone, granite, limestone,
and slate succeeding each other with a rapidity which presents ever new
outlines to the eye of the tourist. The scenery of the Columbia, between
Fort Vancouver and the Dalles, is a sublime monotone. Its banks are
basaltic crags or mist-wrapt domes, averaging below the cataract from
twelve to fifteen hundred feet in height, and thence decreasing to the
Dalles, where the escarpments, washed by the river, are low trap bluffs
on a level with the steamer's walking-beam, and the mountains have
retired, bare and brown, like those of the great continental basin
farther south, toward Mount Hood in that direction, and Mount Adams on
the north. If the Palisades were quintupled in height, domed instead of
level on their upper surfaces, extended up the whole navigable course of
the Hudson, and were thickly clad with evergre