e earliest
settlers and projectors of public improvements in the State. He was
actively engaged in the building of the first portage-railroad, which
ran on the Oregon side. The entire interests of both have, I believe,
been concentrated in the newer one, and the Oregon road, after building
itself by feats of business-energy and ingenuity known only to American
pioneer enterprise, has fallen into entire or comparative disuse.

Above the Falls we found as unsettled a river-margin as below.
Occasionally, some bright spot of color attracted us, relieved against
the walls of trap or glacis of evergreen, and this upon nearer approach
or by the glass was resolved into a group of river Indians,--part with
the curiously compressed foreheads of the Flat-head tribe, their serene
nakedness draped with blankets of every variety of hue, from fresh
flaming red to weather-beaten army-blue, and adorned as to their cheeks
with smutches of the cinnabar-rouge which from time immemorial has been
a prime article of import among the fashionable native circles of the
Columbia,--the other part round-headed, and (I have no doubt it appears
a perfect _sequitur_ to the Flat-head conservatives) therefore slaves.
The captive in battle seems more economically treated among these
savages than is common anywhere else in the Indian regions we traversed,
(though I suppose slavery is to some extent universal throughout the
tribes,)--the captors properly arguing, that, so long as they can make a
man fish and boil pot for them, it is a very foolish waste of material
to kill him.

At intervals above the Falls we passed several small islands of especial
interest as being the cemeteries of river-tribes. The principal, called
"Mimitus," was sacred as the resting-place of a very noted chief. I have
forgotten his name, but I doubt whether his friends see the "Atlantic"
regularly; so that oversight is of less consequence. The deceased is
entombed like a person of quality, in a wooden mausoleum having
something the appearance of a log-cabin upon which pains have been
expended, and containing, with the human remains, robes, weapons,
baskets, canoes, and all the furniture of Indian _menage_, to an extent
which among the tribes amounts to a fortune. This sepulchral idea is a
clear-headed one, and worthy of Eastern adoption. Old ladies with lace
and nieces, old gentlemen with cellars and nephews, might be certain
that the solace which they received in life's decline w