The scene changes, and we stand on the deck of a river steamer with its prow pointed eastward.

For hours we have steamed along in the shadows of the Cascade mountains, through deep, dark caÑons, with walls so high that the smoke-stack of our little boat seemed like a pipe-stem. “Puny thing” it is. Yet it bears us over boiling eddies and up rapids that shoot between high rocks like immense streams of silver from the great furnace of creation.

We are startled at the sound of the whistle on our deck, and grow anxious when the nearest caÑon answers back, and still another takes up the sound, and the echo turns to its original starting-point, and finds its own offspring talking back in fainter voice, until it dies away like the rumbling of some fast-retreating train rushing through the open field or wooded glens.

Soon we are on board the thundering train, whirling away toward the upper cascades, swinging around curves and beneath ledges, and overhanging the rushing floods hundreds of feet below. As we fly swiftly along, the conductor, or some one familiar with this cascade country, points out the battle-grounds where the red men fought white men for their homes. The battle was a fierce one, and lasted several days, when the Indians withdrew.

There are traditions yet among Indians and white settlers; and it is related that in former times the Indians who lived along the banks of the Columbia were employed to assist the white men in transporting goods over the portages (or carrying places), and they were ill-treated by their employers, and their rights disregarded.

The invasion of the country was not the most grievous complaint. They were furnished whiskey, were debauched, and corrupted as a people, until virtue was unknown among their women; the men themselves selling their wives and daughters for the basest purposes. Degraded, polluted, and in despair, they sought to wreak vengeance on their seducers.

If those who debased them were the only victims, no just condemnation could be pronounced against them.

There is a feeling of respect for the man, though a savage he may be, who defends his home, and resents imposition even at the risk of life. But humanity revolts against the butchery of innocent persons, no matter what the color may be, or the cause of provocation of race against race.

A few survivors of the Cascade tribes may be found now on Warm Springs and Yak-a-ma agencies.

The traveller on the Columbia meets, occasionally, a man and his family, still lingering around their old homes, living in bark-covered huts, sometimes employed in laboring for the Steam Navigation Company, who transport the commerce that passes through the mountain at this point. These stragglers are poor, miserably degraded savages, and are not fair specimens of their race.

An old Indian legend connected with the Cascades has been repeated to tourists over and over again. It has been written in verse, in elegant style and forceful expression, by S. A. Clark, Esq., of Salem, Oregon, published in February number of Harper’s Magazine for 1874. The poem is worthy of perusal, and ought to make the author’s fame as a poet.

The substance of the legend is to the effect, that many, many years ago, before the eyes of the pale-faces had gazed on the wonders of the Cascades, the river was bridged by a span of mountains, beneath which it passed to the ocean; that to this bridge the children of Mount Hood on the south, and those of Mount Adams on the north, made yearly pilgrimage, to worship the Great Spirit, and exchange savage courtesies, and to lay in stores of fish for winter use. The Great Spirit blessed them, and they came and went for generations untold.

They tell how the exchange of friendship continued, until at length a beautiful maiden, who had been chosen for a priestess, was wooed and won by a haughty Indian brave of another tribe. On her withdrawal from the office her people became indignant, and demanded her return. This was refused, and when, on their annual visit, they came from the north and from the south, bitter quarrels ensued, until, at last, fierce wars raged, and the rock spanning the river became a battle-ground. Soch-a-la tyee—God—was vexed at the children, and caused the bridge to fall. Thus he separated them, and bade each abide where he had placed them.

The legend still lives fresh in the memory of these Indians, and they respect the command. Few have changed their residences. The ragged mountains on either side support well the historic tale. High, bald summits stand confronting each other, and it requires no effort of the imagination to see the Great Bridge as it is said once to have stood, and to hear rising on the winds, the weird, wild songs of the people at the time of sacrifice.

At the place where this legend had its origin the “Columbia” is crowded by its banks into so narrow a channel that an Indian might, with his sling, make a stone to trace the curves of the ancient arch. The waters rush so swiftly that the keenest sight can scarcely keep the course of timber drift in view. The river’s bosom is smooth above this rapid flow, and, widening, takes the semblance of a lake, in whose depth may be seen the trees that once were growing green, but now to stone have turned; they never move before the breeze; they sway not, nor yet can yield to the gentle currents, still standing witnesses of the legend’s truth.

Midway between the shores an island stands, fashioned and fitted for a burial-ground of the tribes that had oft, in ages past, made use of it at nature’s invitation, and had borne to this resting-place the warriors whose spirits passed up to the happier lands; while the body resting here might wait for the coming of some Great Prophet, who should bid the bones to rise and become part and parcel of human forms, and mingle with those who remain to build the nightly fires and feed the mouldering bodies of their dead, until the great past should be re-born and live again attended by all the circumstances of savage life.

Sitting in the pilot-house of the steamer “Tenino,” beside “McNulty,” her captain, hear him tell how these people come, at certain times, to pay honor to their dead; how, in years gone by, from the “Tenino” he could see the old sachems sitting bolt upright in their wooden graves and calmly waiting, watching, with sightless eyes, for the coming hour foretold before they died; how, with fleshless hands, they clutched the rotting handle of the battle-axe of flint or fishing-spears.

Then see his eye kindle while he tells you of relic-hunters from the East, who came on board the “Tenino” with boxes and lines and other devices for relic-hunting, and requested that he would land them on the shores of this lone island. You will feel the fire of that eye warming your heart towards the dead, and living too, when it declares in full sympathy, with the rich Irish voice, “That while he commands the ‘Tenino’ no grave-robbers shall ever disturb the old heroes who sit patiently waiting for their resurrection. No sacrilegious foot shall leave his vessel’s deck to perpetrate so foul a deed!”

You will honor him still better when you learn that, in his whole-hearted generosity, he declares that “No man shall ever disturb the repose of the congregated dead, on that little island, while he lives, and escape unpunished.”

Brave, fearless captain, many years have you passed daily in sight, and scanned their sepulchres; self-appointed guardian, you have been true to the impulse of a noble heart; you have exalted our opinion of the race you represent; and for your fidelity to the cause of a common humanity, and especially to the race whose dark faces seldom light up from recognition by those whose power has been but the destruction of their own, do we thank you.

May many winters come and go before their snows shall bring to you old age; and when, at last, the “Tenino” shall be laid aside, may you still be guardian of this spot, so sacred to many a sad and hopeless heart.

Leaving behind, on our upward journey, the burial-ground of the mountain tribes, in charge of the faithful McNulty, we pass beneath high rock cliffs, sometimes near beautiful valleys, with farm cottages and lowing cattle on hill-side pastures. Through the deep caÑons that cut the table mountains in twain, as if made on purpose for tourists’ delight, Mount Hood, the father mountain, comes suddenly in view; the beauty much enhanced when seen through nature’s telescope, made by rifts in solid rocks, with sky-lights reaching to the stars above. Words may not give even a faint outline of the scene. McNulty, though for years he has gazed on this sublime painting,—at morning, when the shadows cover the telescope, but light the mountain up; and at evening, too, when both were shaded,—sees new beauties at every sight; and, not content to worship all alone, he rings his call to the engineer, and the vessel slackens her speed, and “rounds to” in proper place, while the captain calls his guests to the grandest banquet that earth affords, and points out the beauties as each one paints the panorama on his soul.

See, there the old Father Hood stands, with his wreath of snow, which he has worn since the time when man was unknown. Sometimes he hides his hoary head in clouds, unwilling to witness the injustice done the puny children who have played around his feet for generations past. We see his own sons, still in primeval manhood, with heads crowned with fir or laurel, standing at his side and looking up, are ever ready to bear the winter’s burdens that from his shoulders fall.

Again we glide on the smooth surface of the shining river until we hear repeated the captain’s call to witness now how impartial God has been, and to prevent any jealousy that might arise, has made on the other shore, looking northward, twin telescope to the first, and twin mountain, too, for now we see another hoary head, rich in clustered snow-banks that ornament her brow. Mother Adams stands calmly overlooking her daughters, who modestly wear garlands of wild wood-vines, and heavy-topped fragrant cedars. She feels her solitude, and when “Hood” draws his mantle over his majestic shoulders, she, too, puts on a silvery veil of misty wreath, or, in seeming anger, drapes in mourning and weeps; the deluge of her tears giving signs of willingness to make friends again. And then these two old mountains smile and nod, and looking above the clouds that covered the heads of younger ones, they, giants in solitude, become reconciled. The lesser ones then peep through the rising mist, and smile to catch their estranged parents making up.

Leaving these grand scenes, the mountains, smaller, waste away into gentle hills, and we feel that we have passed the portals of a paradise, shut out from ocean storms by great barriers of rocks. The river grows narrow, the banks are perpendicular walls of solid rocks of moderate height. Rounding a turn in the river, suddenly comes to view “The Dalles,” a small city near the river brink, nestling in an amphitheatre, formed by curved walls of rocky bluffs. In times past The Dalles was a starting-point for the mines of Eastern Oregon and Idaho, and was, also, the seat of a United States fort. Its streets have felt the tread of merchant princes, and miners of every grade and color; of the tramping of bands of Indian ponies brought here to be sold or to parade some red man’s wealth; of heavily ladened wheels bearing merchandise.

Busy throngs peopled then its streets, but now they are less merry; business has taken long strides toward surer success and larger life. Long years ago it was a great resort for Indians, who came to feast and gamble, and exchange captive slaves. Many old legends date from this post, and some of them are rich in historic truths; others in romance of human lives, and, others still, of fairy tales and ghostly stories.

A few miles above the city the river passes between almost perpendicular walls of stone, while through the narrow gorge the water leaps from ledge to ledge in quick succession, making huge billows of the rushing current, so rapid that no steamer or canoe has ever upward passed, though both have downward been in perfect safety. At this point the great schools of salmon, on their journey to the lakes and smaller streams, halt to rest, and thus prepare themselves for more severe struggles and more daring feats. Here the red men have, year after year, come to lay in supplies of salmon.

These fisheries are of great value, and, when the Portland, Dalles, and Salt Lake Railroad is completed, will become sources of untold wealth, furnishing Eastern markets with choicest salmon. Before leaving this fishery, I would state, for the information of by readers, that the Indians have some peculiar ideas about salmon. They “run” at regular seasons of the year, and the Indians gather on the banks and make preparations for catching and preserving them; but they do not take the first that come up, because they believe that, since the “Great Spirit” furnishes them, they should be permitted to pass, in his honor, and because the first that come are supposed to be bolder, and will succeed in getting to better spawning-grounds in higher streams.

The females always precede the males, who follow several weeks later. No Indian would make use of the first fish caught, because of the sacrilege. As soon, however, as the “run” fairly begins, the Indians, in their way, give thanks, by dancing and singing. The ceremonies of opening the fishing seasons are serious and solemn in character.

The manner of taking salmon varies. Sometimes they use dip nets, attached to long poles resting in a crotch or fork, or, maybe, pile of rocks, as a fulcrum. Others, with spears made of bone, pointed at each end, attached by a strong cord of sinew at the middle to a shaft made of hard wood, with three prongs in the end, of each of which a socket is made, wherein one end of the bone spear is thrust, the cord attachment being of sufficient length to permit the escape from the socket of the spear.

Thus equipped a fisherman thrusts the three-tined spear into the water at random, and when a salmon is struck, the spear leaves the shaft; but, still secure, turns athwart the fish, and his escape is impossible. When he is landed the fisherman’s work is done. The fish is turned over to the women and boys, and carried to a convenient camp, where the work of drying them is performed by first beheading and then splitting them in two lengthwise. They are spread on long scaffolds built on poles, and with occasional turning are soon dried by the air and sun. The average weight of salmon at this fishing is about fifteen pounds, though sometimes much greater. Some have been taken weighing sixty-five pounds each, and many of them forty pounds.

Another noticeable fact is that the nearer the ocean they are taken the better. Those which succeed in stemming the many rapids en route to the head-waters are poor and thin, and of little value. They often ascend streams so small that they can be caught with the hand. It is doubtful whether they ever return to the ocean.