continent. Beneath them, the
river plunged over a long low precipice with a roar that filled the
canyon for miles. Farther on, the flat banks encroached upon the
stream till it seemed narrowed to a silver thread among the jutting
rocks. Still farther, it widened again, swept grandly around a bend in
the distance, and passed from sight.

"_Tuum, tuum_," said the Indians to Cecil, in tones that imitated the
roar of the cataract. It was the "Tum" of Lewis and Clark, the
"Tumwater" of more recent times; and the place below, where the
compressed river wound like a silver thread among the flat black
rocks, was the far-famed Dalles of the Columbia. It was superb, and
yet there was something profoundly lonely and desolate about it,--the
majestic river flowing on forever among barren rocks and crags, shut
in by mountain and desert, wrapped in an awful solitude where from age
to age scarce a sound was heard save the cry of wild beasts or wilder
men.

"It is the very river of death and of desolation," thought Cecil. "It
looks lonely, forsaken, as if no eye had beheld it from the day of
creation until now."

Looking again at the falls, he saw, what he had not before noticed, a
large camp of Indians on the side nearest them. Glancing across the
river, he descried on a knoll on the opposite bank--what? Houses! He
could not believe his eyes; could it be possible? Yes, they certainly
were long, low houses, roofed as the white man roofs his. A sudden
wild hope thrilled him; his brain grew dizzy. He turned to one of the
Indians.

"Who built those houses?" he exclaimed; "white men like me?"

The other shook his head.

"No, Indians."

Cecil's heart died within him. "After all," he murmured, "it was
absurd to expect to find a settlement of white men here. How could I
think that any but Indians had built those houses?"

Still, as they descended the steep zigzag pathway leading down to the
river, he could not help gazing again and again at the buildings that
so reminded him of home.

It was Wishram, the ancient village of the falls, whose brave and
insolent inhabitants, more than a century later, were the dread of the
early explorers and fur traders of the Columbia. It was built at the
last and highest fishery on the Columbia, for the salmon could not at
that time ascend the river above the falls. All the wandering tribes
of the Upper Columbia came there to fish or to buy salmon of the
Wishram fishers. There too the Indians of th