30th. Left the kind people of the mission at ten o'clock for Fort Wallawalla. Travelled fifteen miles; face of the country dry, barren, swelling plains; not an acre capable of cultivation; some bunch grass, and a generous supply of wild wormwood. Encamped on the northern branch of the Wallawalla River.

{151} October 1. At ten o'clock to-day, I was kindly received by Mr. Pambrun at Fort Wallawalla.[223] This gentleman is a half-pay officer in the British army. His rank in the Hudson Bay Company, is that of "clerk in charge" of this post. He is of French extraction, a native of Canada. I breakfasted with him and his family. His wife, a half breed of the country, has a numerous and beautiful family. The breakfast being over, Mr. Pambrun invited me to view the premises. The fort is a plank stockade, with a number of buildings within, appropriated to the several uses of a store, blacksmith-shop, dwellings, &c. It has a bastion in the north-east corner, mounted with cannon. The country around has sometimes been represented as fruitful and beautiful. I am obliged to deny so foul an imputation upon the fair fame of dame Nature. It is an ugly desert; designed to be such, made such, and is such.

About seven miles up the Wallawalla River, are two or three acres of ground fenced with brush, capable of bearing an inferior species of Yankee pumpkin; and another spot somewhere, of the fourth of an acre, capable of producing anything that grows in the richest kind of unmoistened {152} sand. But aside from these distinguished exceptions, the vicinity of Fort Wallawalla is a desert. There is, indeed, some beauty and sublimity in sight, but no fertility. The wild Columbia sweeps along under its northern wall. In the east, roll up to heaven dark lofty ridges of mountains; in the north-west, are the ruins of extinct and terrible volcanic action; in the west, a half mile, is the entrance of the river into the vast chasm of its lower course, abutted on either side by splendidly castellated rocks, a magnificent gateway for its floods.

But this is all. Desert describes it as well as it does the wastes of Arabia. I tarried only two hours with the hospitable Mr. Pambrun. But as if determined that I should remember that I would have been a welcome guest a much longer time, he put some tea and sugar and bread into my packs, and kindly expressed regrets that our mutual admiration of Napoleon should be thus crowded into the chit-chat of hours instead of weeks. A fine companionable fellow; I hope he will command Fort Wallawalla as long as Britons occupy it, and live a hundred years afterwards.

Travelled down the south bank of the Columbia along the water-side; the river half {153} a mile in width, with a deep strong current; water very clear. A short distance from this brink, on both sides, rose the embankments of the chasm it has worn for itself, in the lapse of ages—a noble gorge, worthy of its mighty waters. The northern one might properly be termed a mountain running continuously along the water's edge, seven hundred or eight hundred feet in height, black, shining, and shrubless. The southern one consisted of earthy bluffs, alternating with cliffs from one hundred to four hundred feet above the stream, turreted with basaltic shafts, some twenty, others one hundred feet above the subjacent hills.

Passed a few horses travelling industriously from one wisp of dry bunch grass to another. Every thing unnatural, dry, brown, and desolate. Climbed the heights near sunset, and had an extensive view of the country south of the river. It was a treeless, brown expanse of dearth, vast rolling swells of sand and clay, too dry to bear wormwood. No mountains seen in that direction. On the north they rose precipitously from the river, and hid from view the country beyond. The Wallawalla Indians brought us drift-wood and fresh salmon, for which they desired "shmoke," tobacco.

{154} 2nd. Continued to descend the river. Early in the day, basalt disappeared from the bluffs; and the country north and south opened to view five or six miles from the stream. It was partially covered with dry bunch grass; groups of Indian horses occasionally appeared. But I was impressed with the belief that the journeyings from one quid of grass to another, and from these to water, were sufficient to enfeeble the constitution of the best horse in Christendom. The wild wormwood, of "blessed memory," greeted my eyes and nose, wherever its scrags could find sand to nourish them.

During the day I was gratified with the sight of five or six trees, and these a large species of willow, themselves small and bowed with age; stones and rocks more or less fused. A strong westerly wind buffeted me; and much of the time filled the air with drifting sand. We encamped at the water side about three o'clock. I had thus a fine opportunity of ascending the heights to view the southern plain. The slopes were well covered with grass, and seemed easy of ascent; but on trial proved extremely laborious. I however climbed slowly and patiently the long sweeps for two hours, and gained nothing. Nay, I could see the noble {155} river, like a long line of liquid fire blazing with the light of the western sun; and the rush wigwams of the Wallawallas, dotting the sands of the opposite shore; and the barren bluffs and rocks beyond them piled away into space. But to the south my vision was hemmed in by the constantly rising swells. No extensive view could be obtained from any of the heights.

The sun was fast sinking, and the hills rose as I advanced. I was so weary that I could go little further. But taking a careful view of the peaks which would guide me back to my camp, I determined to travel on till it should become too dark to see what might open before me. I climbed slowly and tediously the seemingly endless swells, lifting themselves over and beyond each other in beautiful, but to my wearied limbs, and longing eyes in most vexatious continuity, till the sun dipped his lower rim beneath the horizon.

A volcano burst the hills, thought I; and on I trudged with the little strength that a large quantity of vexation gave me. Fires blister your beautiful brows, I half uttered, as I dragged myself up the crowning eminence, and saw the plateau declining in irregular undulations far into the south-west—{156} a sterile waste, clothed in the glories of the last rays of a splendid sunset. The crests of the distant swells were fringed with bunch grass; not a shrub or a tree on all the field of vision; and evidently no water nearer than the Columbia. Those cattle which are, in the opinions of certain travellers, to depasture these plains in future time, must be of sound wind and limb to gather food and water the same day. I found myself so wearied on attaining this goal of my wishes, that, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, I was literally compelled to seek some rest before attempting to descend.

I therefore seated myself, and in the luxury of repose permitted darkness to commence creeping over the landscape, before I could rouse myself to the effort of moving. When I did start, my style of locomotion was extremely varied, and withal sometimes not the most pleasant to every portion of the mortal coil. My feet were not unfrequently twice or thrice the length of that measure in advance of my body. But the reader must not suppose that this circumstance diminished my speed. I continued to slide down the hills, using as vehicles the small sharp stones beneath me, until an opportunity offered to put my {157} nether extremities under me again. Once I had nearly plunged headlong from a precipice some fifty feet high, and saved myself by catching a wormwood bush standing within three feet of the brink. Finally, without any serious mishap, I arrived in camp, so completely exhausted, that, without tasting food, I threw myself on my couch for the night.

3rd. The earthy bluffs continued to bind the chasm of the river till mid-day, when buttresses of basalt took their place. A little bunch grass grew among the wild wormwood. Turkeys, grouse, and a species of large hare frequently appeared; many ducks in the stream. For three hours before sunset the trail was rugged and precipitous, often overhanging the river, and so narrow that a mis-step of four inches would have plunged horse and rider hundreds of feet into the boiling flood. But as Skyuse horses never make such disagreeable mistakes, we rode the steeps in safety. Encamped in a small grove of willows. The river along the day's march was hemmed in by lofty and rugged mountains. The rocks showed indubitable evidences of a volcanic origin. As the sun went down, the Wallawalla village on the opposite shore {158} sang a hymn in their own language, to a tune which I have often heard sung in Catholic Churches, before the image of the Virgin. The country in the south, as seen from the heights, was broken and barren; view limited in all directions by the unevenness of the surface.

4th. Awakened this morning by the fall of a hundred tons of rock from the face of the mountain near us. The earth trembled as if the slumbering volcanoes were wrestling in its bowels. We were brought to our feet, and opened and rubbed our eyes with every mark of despatch. My "poor crane" and his hopeful son condescended to appear shocked; an event in an Indian's life that occurs as seldom as his birth. I had stationed myself near the fallen rocks as the sun's first rays awoke the morning hymn of the Indian village.

It was a sweet wild tune that they sung to God among the dark mountains of the Columbia. And sweeter, perhaps, in such a place, where every motion of the heart is a monition that one is alone, and every thought brings with it the remembrance that the social affections are separated from the objects of their fondness, and where every moral sensibility is chilled by a sense of {159} desolation and danger, calling into exercise the resisting and exterminating propensities, and where the holy memories of home find no response but in some loved star in the unchanging heavens. In such a place how far sweeter than anything beside is the evidence of the religious principle—the first teaching of a mother's love, rising over the wastes of nature from the altar of a pure heart—the incense of love going up to the heavenly presence.

At eight o'clock we were en route; at nine o'clock approached the bend in the river, where it changes from a south-west to a north-west course.[224] At this place the cliffs which overhang the southern bank presented a fine collection of basaltic columns. Along the margin of the river lay hillocks of scoriÆ, piled together in every imaginable form of confusion. Among them grew considerable quantities of bunch grass, on which a band of Wallawalla horses were feeding. Sand-hills on the opposite shore rose one thousand feet in the air. Basalt occurred at intervals, in a more or less perfect state of formation, till the hour of noon, when the trail led to the base of a series of columns extending three-fourths of a mile down the bank. These were more perfectly formed than any previously seen.

{160} They swelled from a large curve of the mountain side, like the bastions of ancient castles; and one series of lofty columns towered above another, till the last was surmounted by a crowning tower, a little above the level of the plain beyond. And their pentagonal form, longitudinal sections, dark shining fracture, and immense masses strewn along my way, betokened me if not in the very presence of the Giant's Causeway, yet on a spot where the same mighty energies had exerted themselves which built that rare, beautiful wonder of the Emerald Isle. The river was very tortuous, and shut in by high dykes of basalt and sand hills the remainder of the day; saw three small rapids in the Columbia; encamped at sunset; too weary to climb the heights.

5th. Arose at break of day, and ordering my guide to make arrangements for starting as soon as I should return, I ascended the neighbouring heights. Grassy undulating plains in all directions south of the river. Far in the north-east towered the frozen peak of Mount Washington, a perfect pyramid, clothed with eternal snows.[225] The view in the north was hemmed in by mountains which rose higher than the place of observation. On descending, my guide Crickie complained of ill-health; and assigned that {161} circumstance as a reason why he should not proceed with me to the Dalles. I was much vexed with him at the time, for his unseasonable desertion, and believed that the real inducement to his course was the danger to be apprehended from the Indians at the Shutes. But I was sorry to learn from Dr. Whitman afterwards that the poor fellow was actually sick, and that he suffered much at the sand bank encampment, where I left him. After paying Crickie for his faithful services thus far along, and giving him four days' provision for himself and boy, a Wallawalla Indian who had encamped with us the previous night, took charge of Crickie's horses, bearing myself and packs, and led the way down the river.

The "poor crane" was an honest, honourable man; and I can never think of all his kind acts to me, from the time I met him in the plains beyond the Wallawalla mission, till I left him sick on the bank of the Columbia, without wishing an opportunity to testify my sense of his moral worth and goodness of heart in some way which shall yield him a substantial reward for all he suffered in my service. Two hours' ride brought to my ears the music of the "tum tum orter;" {162} the Indian-English for the "thundering waters" of the Shutes.[226] These are the only perpendicular falls of the Columbia, in its course from the junction of its great northern and southern branches, to the ocean. And they do indeed thunder. A stratum of black rock forming the bed of the river above, by preserving its horizontal position, rises at this place above the natural surface of the stream, and forms an abrupt precipice, hanging sixty feet in height over the bed below.

The river, when I passed was unfortunately at its lower stage—still the Shutes were terribly grand. The main body of the water swept around near its southern bank, and being there compressed into, a narrow rough channel, chafed its angry way to the brink, where, bending a massive curve, as if hesitating to risk the leap, it plunged into a narrow cavern sixty feet deep, with a force and volume which made the earth tremble. The noise was prodigious, deafening, and echoed in awful tumult among the barren mountains. Further towards the other shore, smaller jets were rushing from the imprisoned rocks which clustered near the brow of the cliff, into other caverns; {163} and close under the north bank, and farther down the stream, thundered another, nearly equal in grandeur to the one first described.

On the portions of the rocky stratum left by the chafing waters, in wearing out numerous channels below the present situation of the Shutes, were the flag huts of one hundred Wallawalla fishermen. They were taking salmon with scoop nets and bone pointed spears. These people are filthy and naked. Some sat by fires swallowing roasted salmon; others greasing themselves with the oil of that fish; others were dressing and drying them; others stood down on the projections in the chasms, sweeping their nets in the foaming waters; untaught, un-elevated, least intelligent, least improvable human nature! It was not deemed safe to remain long among these savages, who had begun to examine my packs with more interest than strictly honest intentions towards them seemed to require, and I took to the trail again on a fast trot.

Some of them endeavoured to follow on foot, demanding a tribute of "smoke" for the privilege of passing their dominions. But having none at hand I pushed on, without regarding their suit, over sand hills, {164} beds of volcanic stones, and hanging declivities, till rounding a basaltic buttress, I came in view of the little plain on the south western shore of the Dalles. The "Dalles," a French term for "flat stones," is applied to a portion of the river here, where, by a process similar to that going on at Niagara, the waters have cut channels through an immense stratum of black rock, over which they used to fall as at the Shutes.[227]

At low stages these are of sufficient capacity to pass all the waters. But the annual floods overflow the "flat stones," and produce a lashing and leaping, and whirling of waters, too grand for the imagination to conceive. These "Dalles" are covered with the huts of the Chinooks, a small band of a tribe of the same name, which inhabits the banks of Columbia from this place to its mouth.[228] They flatten their heads and perforate the septum of the nose, as do the Wallawallas, Skyuse and Nez PercÉs.

The depression of the southern embankment of the chasm of the river at the Dalles, extends eight miles along the stream, and from a half mile to a mile in width. It is broken by ledges bursting through the {165} surface, and in parts loaded with immense boulders of detached rocks. Along the north-western border are groves of small white oaks; and on the highlands in that direction are forests of pine, spruce and other evergreens, clothing the whole country westward to the snowy peaks of the President's Range.

In the south-west, specked with clusters of bunch grass, is an open rolling plain, which stretches beyond the reach of vision. In the north rise sharp mountains, thinly clad with evergreen trees; through an opening among the peaks of which, appeared the shining apex of Mount Adams.[229] In the north-east sweep away in brown barrenness, naked cliffs and sandy wastes. I had taken a bird's-eye view of the Dalles and the region round about, when my Indian cried out "Lee house." And there it was, a mission house of the American P. E. Methodist Church, in charge of Messrs. Lee and Perkins.[230]

I spent a week at the Dalles' mission, eating salmon and growing fat; an event that had not lately occurred in the republic of the members of my mortal confederacy.

The buildings of the mission, are a dwelling-house, {166} a house for worship and for school purposes, and a workshop, &c. The first is a log structure thirty by twenty feet, one and a half floor high, shingle roofs, and floors made of plank cut with a whip-saw from the pines of the hills. The lower story is divided into two rooms—the one a dining-room, the other the family apartment of Mr. Perkins and lady. These are lined overhead and at the sides with beautiful rush mats manufactured by the Indians. The upper story is partitioned into six dormitories, and a school-room for Indian children; all neatly lined with mats. Underneath is an excellent cellar. The building designed for a house of worship, was being built when I arrived. Its architecture is a curiosity.

The frame is made in the usual form, save that instead of four main posts at the corners, and others at considerable distances, for the support of lateral girders, there were eleven on each side, and six on each end, beside the corner posts—all equal in size and length. Between these billets of wood were driven transversely, on which as lathing, mortar made of clay, sand and straw, were laid to a level with their exterior and interior faces. There is so little falling {167} weather here, that this mode of building was considered sufficiently substantial.

Messrs. Lee and Perkins were formerly connected with the mission on the Willamette. Eighteen months before I had the happiness of enjoying their hospitality, they came to this spot with axes on their shoulders, felled trees, ploughed, fenced, and planted twenty acres of land with their own hands, and erected these habitations of civilization and Christianity on the bosom of the howling wilderness. Their premises are situated on elevated ground, about a mile south-west from the river. Immediately back is a grove of small white oaks and yellow pines; a little north, is a sweet spring bursting from a ledge of rocks which supplies water for house use, and moistens about an acre of rich soil. About a mile to the south, are two or three hundred acres of fine land, with groves of oaks around, and an abundant supply of excellent water. Here it was the intention of the mission to open a farm under the care of a layman from the States.

A mile and a half to the north, is a tract of about two hundred acres, susceptible of being plentifully irrigated by a number of large streams that pour down upon it from {168} the western mountains. Here, too, they intended to locate laymen to open farms, and extract from the idle earth the means of feeding themselves, the Indians, and the wayworn white man from the burnt solitudes of the mountains. No location, not even the sacred precincts of St. Bernard, on the snows of the Alps, could be better chosen for the operations of a holy benevolence.

The Indians from many quarters flock to the Dalles and the Shutes in the spring, and autumn, and winter to purchase salmon; the commercial movements between the States and the Pacific will pass their door; and there in after-days, the sturdy emigrants from the States will stop, (as did the pilgrims on Plymouth rock,) to give grateful praise to Him who stood forth in their aid, not indeed while struggling on the foamy billow, but on the burning plain and the icy cliff, and in the deadly turmoil of Indian battles on the way, and will seek food and rest for their emaciated frames, before entering the woody glen and flowing everglades of Lower Oregon.

A saw-mill, a grist-mill, and other machinery necessary to carry out a liberal plan of operations, are in contemplation. The {169} fruit of the oak, it is supposed, will support 1,000 hogs from the middle of August to the middle of April; the products of the arable soil will suffice to make that number into marketable pork; and as the grass and other vegetation grow there during the winter months, twenty-five or thirty square miles of pasturage round about, will enable them to raise, at a trifling expense, immense numbers of sheep, horses and cattle. Five acres of ground cultivated in 1839, produced twenty-five bushels of the small grains, seventy-five bushels of potatoes, and considerable quantities of other vegetables. This was an experiment only on soil not irrigated. Gentlemen suppose it capable of producing double that amount, if irrigated. The season, too, was unusually dry.

Around about the mission are clusters of friable sand-stone rocks of remarkable form. Their height varies from ten to thirty feet; their basilar diameters from three to ten feet: their shape generally resembles that of the obelisk. These (fifteen or twenty in number) standing among the oaks and pines, often in clusters, and sometimes solitary, give a strange interest of antiquity to the spot. And this illusion is increased by a {170} rock of another form, an immense boulder resting upon a short, slender pedestal, and strikingly resembling the Egyptian sphynx. The Indian tradition in regard to them is, that they were formerly men, who, for some sin against the Great Spirit, were changed to stone.

At the Dalles is the upper village of the Chinooks. At the Shutes, five miles above, is the lower village of the Wallawallas. One of the missionaries, Mr. Lee, learns the Chinook language, and the other, Mr. Perkins, the Wallawalla; and their custom is to repair on Sabbath days each to his own people, and teach them the Christian religion. The Chinooks flatten their heads more, and are more stupid than any other tribe on the Columbia. There was one among the Dalles' band, who, it was said, resisted so obstinately the kind efforts of his parents to crush his skull into the aristocratic shape, that they abandoned him to the care of nature in this regard; and much to the scandal of his family, his head grew in the natural form. I saw him every day while I staid there. He was evidently the most intelligent one of the band. His name is Boston; so called, because the form of his head resembles that of Americans, {171} whom the Indians call "Boston," in order to distinguish them from "King George's men,"—the Hudson Bay Company gentlemen. Boston, although of mean origin, has, on account of his superior energy and intelligence, become the war chief of the Dalles.

On the morning of the 14th, I overhauled my baggage, preparatory to descending the river. In doing so, I was much vexed to find that the Indians had, in some manner, drawn my saddle to the window of the workshop in which it was deposited, and stripped it of stirrups, stirrup-straps, surcingle, girths, and crupper. They had also stolen my bridle.

The loss of these articles, in a region where they could not be purchased—articles so necessary to me in carrying out my designs of travelling over the lower country, roused in me the bitterest determination to regain them at all hazards. Without reflecting for a moment upon the disparity of numbers between my single self and forty or fifty able-bodied Indians, I armed myself completely, and marched my solitary battalion to the camp of the principal chief, and entered it. He was away. I explained to some persons there by signs {172} and a few words, the object of my search, and marched my army to an elevated position and halted.

I had been stationed but a short time, when the Indians began to collect in their chief's lodge, and whisper earnestly. Ten minutes passed thus, and Indians were constantly arriving and entering. I was supported in the rear by a lusty oak, and so far as I remember, was ready to exclaim with the renowned antagonist of Roderick Dhu,

"Come one, come all;" &c.

but never having been a hero before or since, I am not quite certain that I thought any such thing. My wrath, however, was extreme. To be robbed for the first time by Indians, and that by such cowardly wretches as these Chinooks were; and robbed too of my means of exploring Oregon, when on the very threshold of the most charming part of it, was an inconvenience and an ignominy worth a battle to remove.

Just at the moment of this lofty conclusion, thirty-eight or forty Indians rushed around me; eight or ten loaded muskets were levelled at my chest, within ten feet of me, and the old chief stood within five feet, with {173} a duelling pistol loaded, cocked, and pointed at my heart. While this movement was being made, I brought my rifle to bear upon the old chief's vital organs. Thus both armies stood for the space of five minutes, without the movement of tongue or muscle. Then one of the braves intimated that it was "not good" for me to be out with arms; and that I must immediately accommodate myself within doors. But to this proposition the bravery of my army would not submit. I accordingly informed him to that effect; whereupon the opposing army went into a furious rage.

At this juncture of affairs, Mr. Lee came up, and acted as interpreter. He inquired into the difficulty, and was told that the "whole Chinook tribe was threatened with invasion, and all the horrors of a general war, on what account they knew not." The commander of my army reported that they had robbed him, and deserved such treatment; and that he had taken arms to annihilate the tribe, unless they had restored to him what they had stolen.

I was then told that "it was not good for me to appear in arms—that it was good for me to go into the house." To this, my army with one voice replied, "Nay, never, {174} never leave the ground, or the Chinooks alive, tribe or chief, if the stolen property be not restored;" and wheeling my battalion, drove first one flank and then the other of the opposing hosts, fifty yards into the depths of the forests.

During this movement, worthy of the best days of Spartan valour, the old chief stood amazed to see his followers, with guns loaded and cocked, fly before such inferior numbers. After effecting the complete rout of the opposing infantry, the army under my command took up the old position without the loss of a single man. But the old chief was still there, as dogged and sullen as Indian ever was. On approaching him, he presented his pistol again near my chest, whereupon my rifle was instantly in a position to reach his; and thus the renowned leaders of these mighty hosts stood for the space of an hour without bloodshed.

Perhaps such another chief was never seen; such unblenching coolness—excepting always the heat which was thrown off in a healthful and profuse perspiration—and such perfect undauntedness, except an unpleasant knocking of the knees together, produced probably by the anticipated blasts of December. But while these exhibitions {175} of valour were being enacted, one stirrup was thrown at my feet, and then the other, and then the straps, the crupper, &c., until all the most valuable articles lost, were piled before me. The conquest was complete, and will doubtless shed immortal lustre upon the gallant band, who, in the heart of the wilderness, dared to assert and maintain, against the encroachments of a numerous and well-disciplined foe, the "Élite" of the Chinook army, the rights and high prerogative of brave freemen and soldiers. The number of killed and wounded of the enemy had not been ascertained, when the troops under my command departed for the lower country.

In the evening which succeeded this day of carnage, the old chief assembled his surviving followers, and made war speeches until midnight. His wrath was immeasurable. On the following morning, the Indians in the employ of the mission left their work.

About ten o'clock, one of the tribe appeared with a pack-horse, to convey Mr. Lee's and my own packs to the water-side. The old chief also appeared, and bade him desist. He stood armed before the house an hour, making many threats against the {176} Bostons, individually and collectively; but finally retired. As soon as he had entered his lodge, the horse of his disobedient subject was loaded, and rushed to the river. An effort was made to get oarsmen for our canoe, but the old hero of a legion of devils told them, "the high Bostons would kill them all, and that they must not go with him." Mr. Lee, however, did not despair.

We followed the baggage towards the river. When within a quarter of a mile of it, two Americans, members of Richardson's party, Mr. Lee and an Indian or two, whom the old chief had not succeeded in frightening took the canoe from the bushes, and bore it to the river on their shoulders.

The natives were stationed beyond rifle-shot upon the rocks on either side of the way, bows and arrows, and guns in hand. Indian Boston was in command. He stood on the loftiest rock, grinding his teeth, and growling like a bloodhound, "Bostons ugh;" and springing upon his bow, drove his arrows into the ground with demoniac madness. I stopped, and drew my rifle to my face, whereupon there was a grand retreat behind the rocks. My army marched slowly and majestically on, as became the dignity {177} of veteran victors. The women and children fled from the wigwams by the way; and the fear of the annihilation of the whole tribe only abated when my wrath was, to their understanding, appeased by the interference of Mr. Lee. Thus the tribe was saved from my vengeance—the whole number, fifty or sixty stout savages, were saved! an instance of clemency, a parallel to which will scarcely be found in the history of past ages.

Being convinced, at last, that my intentions towards them had become more pacific, six oarsmen, a bowsman, and steersman, were readily engaged by Mr. Lee, and he shoved off from that memorable battle-ground on a voyage to the Willamette. These Indians have been notorious thieves ever since they have been known to the whites. Their meanness has been equally well known. Destitute of every manly and moral virtue, they and their fathers have hung around the Dalles, eaten salmon, and rotted in idleness and vice; active only in mischief, and honest only in their crouching cowardice towards those they suppose able to punish their villany.[231]

There is some very curious philosophy among them: as for example, they believe {178} human existence to be indestructible by the laws of nature; and never diseased, unless made so by the Medicine men or conjurers, who are believed to enter into the system in an unseen manner, and pull at the vitals. They also hold that one Medicine man can cast out another. Accordingly, when one of them is called to a patient and does not succeed in restoring him to health, he is believed to be accessory to his death, and is punished as such by the relatives of the deceased.

Their mode of treating patients is to thrust them into a sweat oven, and thence, reeking with perspiration, into the cold streams. After this, they are stretched out at length on the ground, wrapped very warmly, and kneaded, and rolled, and rubbed, with great severity. The abdomen is violently pressed down to the spine, and the forehead pressed with the might of the operator; the arms and limbs, pinched and rubbed, rolled and bruised. Meanwhile, the conjuror is uttering most beastly noises. As might be supposed, patients labouring under the febrile diseases, are soon destroyed.

In order, however, to keep up their influence among the people, the conjurors of {179} a tribe, male and female, have cabalistic dances. After the darkness of night sets in, they gather together in a wigwam, build a large fire in the centre, spread the floor with elk skins, set up on end a wide cedar board, and suspend near it a stick of wood in a horizontal position. An individual seizes the end of the stick, swings the other end against the cedar board, and thus beats noisy time to a still more noisy chant. The dance is commenced sometimes by a man alone, and often by a man and woman. And various and strange are the bodily contortions of the performers. They jump up and down, and swing their arms with more and more violence, as the noise of the singing and thumping accompaniment increases, and yelp, and froth at the mouth, till the musician winds up with the word "ugh"—a long, strong, gutteral grunt; or until some one of the dancers falls apparently dead.

When the latter is the case, one of the number walks around the prostrate individual, and calls his or her name loudly at each ear, at the nose, fingers, and toes. After this ceremony, the supposed dead shudders greatly, and comes to life. And thus they continue to sing, and thump, and {180} dance, and die, and come to life through the night. They are said to be very expert at sleight of hand.

The Chinooks, like all other Indians, believe in existence after death; but their views of the conditions of that existence, I could not learn. The conjurors teach them, that they themselves shall be able to visit their tribe after the body shall have decayed; and when approaching the end of their days, inform the people in what shape they will manifest themselves. Some choose a horse, others a deer, others an elk, &c., and when they die, the image of their transmigrated state is erected over their remains.[232]

The reader is desired to consider Mr. Lee and myself gliding, arrow-like, down the deep clear Columbia, at two o'clock in the afternoon of the 15th, and to interest himself in the bold mountain embankments clothed with the deep, living green of lofty pine and fir forests, while I revert to the kind hospitalities of the Dalles' mission. Yet how entirely impossible is it to relate all that one enjoys in every muscle of the body, every nerve and sense, and every affection of the spirit when he flies from the hardships and loneliness of deserts to the {181} comforts of a bed, a chair, and a table, and the holy sympathy of hearts moulded and controlled by the higher sentiments. I had taken leave of Mr. and Mrs. Perkins with the feelings that one experiences in civilized lands, when leaving long-tried and congenial friends.

The good man urged me to return and explore with him, during the rainy season in the lower country, some extensive and beautiful prairies, which the Indians say lie sixty or seventy miles in the north, on the east side of the President's range; and Mrs. Perkins kindly proposed to welcome my return for that object with a splendid suit of buckskin, to be used in my journeyings.

But I must leave my friends to introduce the reader to the "Island of the Tombs."[233] Mr. Lee pointed to it, as the tops of the cedar board houses of the dead peered over the hillocks of sand and rock among which they stood. We moored our canoe on the western side, and climbed up a precipice of black shining rocks two hundred feet; and winding among drifts of sand the distance of one hundred yards came to the tombs. They consisted of boxes ten or twelve feet square on the ground, eight or ten high, made of cedar {182} boards fastened to a rough frame, in an upright position at the sides, and horizontally over the top. On them, and about them, were the cooking utensils, and other personal property of the deceased. Within were the dead bodies, wrapped in many thicknesses of deer and elk skins, tightly lashed with leather thongs, and laid in a pile with their heads to the east. Underneath the undecayed bodies were many bones from which the flesh and wrappings had fallen: in some instances a number of waggon loads. Three or four of the tombs had gone to ruins, and the skulls and other bones lay strewn on the ground. The skulls were all flattened. I picked up one with the intention of bringing it to the States. But as Mr. Lee assured me that the high veneration of the living for the dead would make the attempt very dangerous, I reluctantly returned it to its resting place.[234]

We glided merrily down the river till sunset, and landed on the northern shore to sup. The river had varied from one to one and a half miles in width, with rather a sluggish current; water clear, cool, and very deep. Various kinds of duck, divers, &c., were upon its beautiful surface. The {183} hair seal was abundant.[235] The mountains rose abruptly on either side from five hundred to two thousand feet, in sweeping heights, clad with evergreen trees. Some few small oaks grew in the nooks by the water side. Among these were Indian wigwams, constructed of boards split from the red cedar on the mountains. I entered some of them. They were filthy in the extreme. In one of them was a sick man. A withered old female was kneading and pinching the devil out of him. He was labouring under a bilious fever. But as a "Medicine man" was pulling at his gall, it was necessary to expel him; and the old hag pressed his head, bruised his abdomen, &c., with the fury and groaning of a bedlamite.

Not an acre of arable land appeared along the shores. The Indians subsist on fish and acorns of the white oak. The former they eat fresh during the summer; but their winter stores they dry and preserve in the following manner:—The spine of the fish being taken out, and the flesh being slashed into checks with a knife, so as to expose as much surface as possible, is laid on the rocks to dry. After becoming thoroughly {184} hard, it is bruised to powder, mixed with the oil of the leaf fat of the fish, and packed away in flag sacks. Although no salt is used in this preparation, it remains good till May of the following year. The acorns, as soon as they fall from the trees, are buried in sand constantly saturated with water, where they remain till spring. By this soaking their bitter flavour is said to be destroyed.

After supper, Mr. Lee ordered a launch, and the Indian paddles were again dipping in the bright waters. The stars were out on the clear night, twinkling as of old, when the lofty peaks around were heaved from the depths of the volcano. They now looked down on a less grand, indeed, but more lovely scene. The fires of the natives blazed among the woody glens, the light canoe skimmed the water near the shore, the winds groaned over the mountain tops, the cascades sang from cliff to cliff, the loon shouted and dove beneath the shining wave; it was a wild, almost unearthly scene, in the deep gorge of the Columbia. The rising of the moon changed its features. The profoundest silence reigned, save the dash of paddles that echoed faintly from the shores; our canoe sprang lightly over {185} the rippling waters, the Indian fires smouldered among the waving pines; the stars became dim, and the depths of the blue sky glowed one vast nebula of mellow light. But the eastern mountains hid awhile the orb from sight.

The south-western heights shone with its pale beams, and cast into the deeply sunken river a bewitching dancing of light and shade, unequalled by the pencil of the wildest imagination. The grandeur, too, of grove, and cliff, and mountain, and the mighty Columbia wrapped in the drapery of a golden midnight! It was the new and rapidly opening panorama of the sublime wilderness. The scene changed again when the moon was high in heaven.

The cocks crew in the Indian villages; the birds twittered on the boughs; the wild fowl screamed, as her light gilded the chasm of the river, and revealed the high rock Islands with their rugged crags and mouldering tombs. The winds from Mount Adams were loaded with frosts, and the poetry of the night was fast waning into an ague, when Mr. Lee ordered the steersman to moor. A crackling pine fire was soon blazing, and having warmed our shivering {186} frames, we spread our blankets, and slept sweetly till the dawn.

Early on the morning of the 16th, our Indians were pulling at the paddles. The sky was overcast, and a dash of rain occasionally fell, the first I had witnessed since leaving Boyou Salade.[236] And although the air was chilly, and the heavens gloomy, yet when the large clear drops pattered on my hat, and fell in glad confusion around our little bark, a thrill of pleasure shot through my heart. Dangers, wastes, thirst, starvation, eternal dearth on the earth, and dewless heavens, were matters only of painful recollection. The present was the reality of the past engrafted on the hopes of the future; the showery skies, the lofty green mountains, the tumbling cataracts, the mighty forests, the sweet savour of teeming groves, among the like of which I had breathed in infancy, hung over the threshold of the lower Columbia, the goal of my wayfaring.

Hearken to that roar of waters! see the hastening of the flood! hear the sharp rippling by yonder rock; the whole river sinks from view in advance of us. The bowsman dips his paddle deeply and quickly; the frail canoe shoots to the {187} northern shore between a string of islands and the main land; glides quickly down a narrow channel; passes a village of cedar board wigwams on a beautiful little plain to the right; it rounds the lower island; behold the Cascades!—an immense trough of boulders of rocks, down which rushes the "Great River of the West." The baggage is ashore; the Indians are conveying the canoe over the portage, and while this is being done, the reader will have time to explore the lower falls of the Columbia, and their vicinage.[237]

The trail of the Portage runs near the torrent, along the rocky slope on its northern bank, and terminates among large loose rocks, blanched by the floods of ages, at the foot of the trough of the main rapid. It is about a mile and a half long. At its lower end voyagers reembark when the river is at a low stage, and run the lower rapids. But when it is swollen by the annual freshets, they bear their boats a mile and a half farther down, where the water is deep and less tumultuous. In walking down this path, I had a near view of the whole length of the main rapids. As I have intimated, the bed of the river here is a vast inclined trough of white rocks, sixty {188} or eighty feet deep, about four hundred yards wide at the top, and diminishing to about half that width at the bottom. The length of this trough is about a mile. In that distance the water falls about one hundred and thirty feet; in the rapids, above and below it, about twenty feet, making the whole descent about one hundred and fifty feet. The quantity of water which passes here is incalculable. But an approximate idea of it may be obtained from the fact that while the velocity is so great, that the eye with difficulty follows objects floating on the surface, yet such is its volume at the lowest stage of the river, that it rises and bends like a sea of molten glass over a channel of immense rocks, without breaking its surface, except near the shores, so deep and vast is the mighty flood!

In the June freshets, when the melted snows from the western declivities of seven hundred miles of the Rocky Mountains, and those on the eastern sides of the President's Range, come down, the Cascades must present a spectacle of sublimity equalled only by Niagara. This is the passage of the river through the President's Range, and the mountains near it on either {189} side are worthy of their distinguished name. At a short distance from the southern shore they rise in long ridgy slopes, covered with pines, and other terebinthine trees of extraordinary size,[238] over the tops of which rise bold black crags, which, elevating themselves in great grandeur one beyond another, twenty or thirty miles to the southward, cluster around the icy base of Mount Washington. On the other side of the Cascades is a similar scene. Immense and gloomy forests, tangled with fallen timber and impenetrable underbrush, cover mountains, which in the States, would excite the profoundest admiration for their majesty and beauty, but which dwindle into insignificance as they are viewed in presence of the shining glaciers, and massive grandeur of Mount Adams, hanging over them.

The river above the Cascades runs north-westwardly; but approaching the descent, it turns westward, and, after entering the trough, south-westwardly, and having passed this, it resumes its course to the north west. By this bend, it leaves between its shore and the northern mountains, a somewhat broken plain, a mile in width, and about four miles in length. At the upper end of the rapids, this plain is {190} nearly on a level with the river, so that an inconsiderable freshet sets the water up a natural channel half way across the bend. This circumstance, and the absence of any serious obstruction in the form of hills, &c., led me to suppose that a canal might be cut around the Cascades at a trifling expence, which would not only open steamboat navigation to the Dalles, but furnish at this interesting spot, an incalculable amount of water power.[239]

The canoe had been deposited among the rocks at the lower end of the trough, our cocoa and boiled salmon, bread, butter, potatoes, &c., had been located in their proper depositories, and we were taking a parting gaze at the rushing flood, when the sound of footsteps, and an order given in French to deposit a bale of goods at the water side, drew our attention to a hearty old gentleman of fifty or fifty-five, whom Mr. Lee immediately recognized as Dr. McLaughlin.[240] He was about five feet eleven inches in height, and stoutly built, weighing about two hundred pounds, with large green blueish eyes, a ruddy complexion, and hair of snowy whiteness. He was on his return from London with dispatches from the Hudson's Bay Company's Board in {191} England, and with letters from friends at home to the hundreds of Britons in its employ in the north-western wilderness. He was in high spirits. Every crag in sight was familiar to him, had witnessed the energy and zeal of thirty years' successful enterprise; had seen him in the strength of ripened manhood, and now beheld his undiminished energies crowned with the frosted locks of age. We spent ten minutes with the doctor, and received a kind invitation to the hospitalities of his post; gave our canoe, freighted with our baggage, in charge of the Indians, to take down the lower rapids, and ascended the bluff to the trail which leads to the tide-water below them. We climbed two hundred feet among small spruce, pine, fir, and hemlock trees, to the table land.

The track was strewn with fragments of petrified trees, from three inches to two feet in diameter, and rocks, (quartz and granite, ex loco), mingled with others more or less fused. Soon after striking the path on the plain, we came to a beautiful little lake, lying near the brink of the hill. It was clear and deep; and around its western, northern, and eastern shores, drooped the boughs of a thick hedge of small evergreen {192} trees, which dipped and rose charmingly in its waters. All around stood the lofty pines, sighing and groaning in the wind. Nothing could be seen, but the little lake and the girding forest; a gem of perfect beauty, reflecting the deep shades of the unbroken wilderness. A little stream creeping away from it down the bluff, babbled back the roar of the Cascades.[241]

The trail led us among deep ravines, clad with heavy frosts, the soil of which was a coarse gravel, thinly covered with a vegetable mould. A mile from the lake, we came upon a plain level again. In this place was a collection of Indian tombs, similar to those upon the "Island of tombs." These were six or eight in number, and contained a great quantity of bones. On the boards around the sides were painted the figures of death, horses, dogs, &c. The great destroyer bears the same grim aspect to the savage mind that he does to ours.—A skull and the fleshless bones of a skeleton piled around, were his symbol upon these rude resting places of the departed.[242] One of them, which our Indian said, contained the remains of a celebrated "Medicine man," bore the figure of a horse rudely carved {193} from the red cedar tree. This was the form in which his posthumous visits were to be made to his tribe. Small brass kettles, wooden pails, and baskets of curious workmanship, were piled on the roof.

Thence onward half a mile over a stony soil, sometimes open, and again covered with forests, we reached our canoe by the rocky shore at the foot of the rapids. Mr. Lee here pointed out to me a strong eddying current on the southern shore, in which Mr. Cyrus Shepard and Mrs. Doctor White and child, of the Methodist Mission on the Willamette, were capsized the year before, in an attempt to run the lower rapids.[243] Mr. Shepard could not swim—had sunk the second time, and rose by the side of the upturned canoe, when he seized the hand of Mrs. White, who was on the opposite side, and thus sustained himself and her, until some Indians came to their relief. On reaching the shore, and turning up the canoe, the child was found entangled among the cross-bars, dead!

The current was strong where we re-entered our canoe, and bore us along at a brisk rate.—The weather, too, was very agreeable; the sky transparent, and glowing with a mild October sun. The scenery {194} about us was truly grand. A few detached wisps of mist clung to the dark crags of the mountains on the southern shore, and numerous cascades shot out from the peaks, and tumbling from one shelf to another, at length plunged hundreds of feet among confused heaps of rocks in the vale. The crags themselves were extremely picturesque; they beetled out so boldly, a thousand feet above the forests on the sides of the mountain, and appeared to hang so easily and gracefully on the air. Some of them were basaltic. One appeared very remarkable. The mountain on which it stood was about one thousand two hundred feet high. On its side there was a deep rocky ravine. In this, about three hundred feet from the plain, arose a column of thirty or forty feet in diameter, and, I judged more than two hundred feet high, surmounted by a cap resembling the pediment of an ancient church.

Far up its sides grew a number of shrub cedars, which had taken root in the crevices, and, as they grew, sunk down horizontally, forming an irregular fringe of green around it. A short distance further down was seen a beautiful cascade. The stream appeared to rise near the very apex of the {195} mountain, and having run a number of rods in a dark gorge between two peaks, it suddenly shot from the brink of a cliff into the copse of evergreen trees at the base of the mountain. The height of the perpendicular fall appeared to be about six hundred feet. Some of the water was dispersed in spray before reaching the ground; but a large quantity of it fell on the plain, and sent among the heights a noisy and thrilling echo.[244] On the north side of the river, the mountains were less precipitous, and covered with a dense forest of pines, cedars, firs, &c.

The bottom lands of the river were alternately prairies and woodlands; the former clad with a heavy growth of the wild grasses, dry and brown—the latter, with pine, fir, cotton-wood, black ash, and various kinds of shrubs. The river varied in width from one to two miles, generally deep and still, but occasionally crossed by sand-bars. Ten or twelve miles below the cascades we came upon one, that, stretching two or three miles down the river, turned the current to the southern shore. The wind blew freshly, and the waves ran high in that quarter; so it was deemed expedient to lighten the canoe. To this {196} end Mr. Lee, the two Americans and myself, landed on the northern shore for a walk, while the Indians should paddle around to the lower point of the bar. We travelled along the beach. It was generally hard and gravelly.

Among the pebbles, I noticed several splendid specimens of the agate. The soil of the flats was a vegetable mould, eighteen inches or two feet in depth, resting on a stratum of sand and gravel, and evidently overflown by the annual floods of June. The flats varied from a few rods to a mile in width. While enjoying this walk, the two Americans started up a deer, followed it into the woods, and, loth to return unsuccessful, pursued it till long after our canoe was moored below the bar. So that Mr. Lee and myself had abundant time to amuse ourselves with all manner of homely wishes towards our persevering companions till near sunset, when the three barges of Dr. McLaughlin, under their Indian blanket sails and sapling masts, swept gallantly by us, and added the last dreg to our vexation. Mr. Lee was calm, I was furious. What, for a paltry deer, lose a view of the Columbia hence to the Fort! But I remember with satisfaction that no one was materially {197} injured by my wrath, and that my truant countrymen were sufficiently gratified with their success to enable them to bear with much resignation, three emphatic scowls, as they made their appearance at the canoe.

The dusk of night was now creeping into the valleys, and we had twenty miles to make. The tide from the Pacific was setting up, and the wind had left us; but our Indians suggested that the force of their paddles, stimulated by a small present of "shmoke" (tobacco,) would still carry us in by eleven o'clock. We therefore gave our promises to pay the required quantum of the herb, ensconced ourselves in blankets, and dozed to the wild music of the paddles, till a shower of hail aroused us. It was about ten o'clock. An angry cloud hung over us, and the rain and hail fell fast; the wind from Mounts Washington and Jefferson chilled every fibre of our systems; the wooded hills, on both sides of the river were wrapped in cold brown clouds; the owl and wolf were answering each other on the heights; enough of light lay on the stream to show dimly the islands that divided its waters, and the fires of the wigwams disclosed the naked groups of savages around them.

{198} It was a scene that the imagination loves. The canoe, thirty feet in length, (such another had cut those waters centuries before); the Indians, kneeling two and two, and rising on their paddles; their devoted missionary surveying them and the villages on the shores, and rejoicing in the anticipation, that soon the songs of the redeemed savage would break from the dark vales of Oregon; that those wastes of mind would soon teem with a harvest of happiness and truth, cast a breathing unutterable charm over the deep hues of that green wilderness, dimly seen on that stormy night, which will give me pleasure to dwell upon while I live. "On the bar!" cried Mr. Lee; and while our Indians leaped into the water, and dragged the canoe to the channel, he pointed to the dim light of the Hudson Bay Company's saw and grist mill two miles above on the northern shore.

We were three miles from Vancouver. The Indians knew the bar, and were delighted to find themselves so near the termination of their toil. They soon found the channel, and leaping aboard plied their paddles with renewed energy. And if any one faltered, the steersman rebuked him with his own hopes of "shmoke" and "scheotecut," (the Fort) which never failed {199} to bring the delinquent to duty. Twenty minutes of vigorous rowing moored us at the landing. A few hundred yards below, floated a ship and a sloop, scarcely seen through the fog. On the shore rose a levee or breastwork, along which the dusky savages were gliding with stealthy and silent tread; in the distance were heard voices in English speaking of home. We landed, ascended the levee, entered a lane between cultivated fields, walked a quarter of a mile, where, under a long line of pickets, we entered Fort Vancouver—the goal of my wanderings, the destination of my weary footsteps![245]

Mr. James Douglass, the gentleman who had been in charge of the post during the absence of Dr. McLaughlin, conducted us to a room warmed by a well-fed stove; insisted that I should change my wet garments for dry ones, and proffered every other act that the kindest hospitality could suggest to relieve me of the discomforts resulting from four months' journeying in the wilderness.[246]

[223] For a brief sketch of Pambrun see our volume xxi, p. 280, note 74. In her letters Mrs. Whitman speaks repeatedly of kindness received from this Hudson's Bay Company factor, whose death she deplores. See Oregon Pioneer Association Transactions, 1891, pp. 88, 103, 139, 140.—Ed.