parated by the intervening "Dalles." It seemed somewhat
longer than the road around the Falls. Its exact length has escaped me,
but I think it about eight or nine miles.

With several officers of the road, who vied in giving us opportunities
of comfort and information, we set out, about three P.M., from a station
on the water-front below the town, whence we trundled through the long
main street, and were presently shot forth upon a wilderness of sand. An
occasional trap uplift rose on our right, but, as we were on the same
bluff-level as Dalles City, we met no lofty precipices. We were
constantly in view of the river, separated from its Oregon brink at the
farthest by about half a mile of the dreariest dunes of shifting sand
ever seen by an amateur in deserts. The most arid tracts along the
Platte could not rival this. The wind was violent when we left Dalles
City, and possessed the novel faculty of blowing simultaneously from all
points of the compass. It increased with every mile of advance, both in
force and faculty, until at Celilo we found it a hurricane. The
gentlemen of the Company who attended us told us, as seemed very
credible, that the highest winds blowing here (compared with which the
present might be styled a zephyr) banked the track so completely out of
sight with sand that a large force of men had to be steadily employed in
shovelling out trains that had been brought to a dead halt, and clearing
a way for the slow advance of others. I observed that the sides of some
of the worst sand-cuts had been planked over to prevent their sliding
down upon the road. Occasionally, the sand blew in such tempests as to
sift through every cranny of the cars, and hide the river-glimpses like
a momentary fog. But this discomfort was abundantly compensated by the
wonderfully interesting scenery on the Columbia side of our train.

The river for the whole distance of the portage is a succession of
magnificent rapids, low cataracts, and narrow, sinuous channels,--the
last known to the old French traders as "_Dales_" or "Troughs," and to
us by the very natural corruption of "Dalles." The alternation between
these phases is wonderfully abrupt. At one point, about half-way between
Dalles City and Celilo, the entire volume of the Columbia River (and how
vast that is may be better understood by following up on the map the
river itself and all its tributaries) is crowded over upon the Oregon
shore through a passage not more than fi