Portland and the Columbia it stands much as St. Louis to New Orleans and
the Mississippi. There is no reason why it should not some day have a
corresponding business, for whose wharfage-accommodation it has even
greater natural advantages.

Architecturally, the Dalles cannot be said to lean very heavily on the
side of beauty. The houses are mostly two-story structures of wood,
occupied by all the trades and professions which flock to a new
mining-entrepot. Outfit-merchants, blacksmiths, printing-office, (for
there is really a very well-conducted daily at the Dalles,) are cheek by
jowl with doctors, tailors, and Cheap Johns,--the latter being only less
merry and thrifty over their incredible sacrifices in everything, from
pins to corduroy, than that predominant class of all, the bar-keepers
themselves. The town was in a state of bustle when our steamer touched
the wharf; it bustled more and more from there to the Umatilla House,
where we stopped; the hotel was one organized bustle in bar and
dining-room; and bed-time brought no hush. The Dalles, like the
Irishman, seemed sitting up all night to be fresh for an early start in
the morning.

We found everybody interested in gold. Crowds of listeners, with looks
of incredulity or enthusiasm, were gathered around the party in the
bar-room which had last come in from the newest of the new mines, and a
man who had seen the late Fort-Hall discoveries was "treated" to that
extent that he might have become intoxicated a dozen times without
expense to himself. The charms of the interior were still further
suggested by placards posted on every wall, offering rewards for the
capture of a person who on the great gold route had lately committed
some of the grimmest murders and most talented robberies known in any
branch of Newgate enterprise. I had for supper a very good omelet,
(considering its distance from the culinary centres of the universe,)
and a Dalles editorial debating the claims of several noted cut-throats
to the credit of the operations ascribed to them,--feeling that in the
_ensemble_ I was enjoying both the exotic and the indigenous luxuries of
our virgin soil.

After supper and a stroll I returned to the ladies' parlor of the
Umatilla House, rubbed my eyes in vain to dispel the illusion of a piano
and a carpet at this jumping-off place of civilization, and sat down at
a handsome centre-table to write up my journal. I had reviewed my way
from Portland as far as Fort