“And I tell you,” said the honest Captain, as he swung the “Queen” around a sharp headland, and the monument and island vanished, “he has got his wish.  He don’t lay among the whites, and there isn’t a day in summer when the name of Vic.  Trevet ain’t mentioned, either on yon train or on a boat, just as I am telling it to you now.  When he died in San Francisco five years ago, some of his old friends had him brought back to ‘The Dalles,’ and one lovely Sunday (being an off day) we buried him on Memaloose Isle, and then we put up the monument.  His earthly immortality is safe and sure, for that stone will stand as long as the island stays.  She’s eight feet square at the base, built of the native rock right on the island, then three feet of granite, then a ten-foot column.  It cost us $1,500, and Vic. is bricked up in a vault underneath.  Yes, sir, he’s there for sure till resurrection day.  Queer idea?  Why, blame it all, if he thought he could get in along with the Chinooks it’s all right, ain’t it?  Don’t want a man to lose any chances, do you?”

[Illustration:  Multnomah falls, Columbia river, ore.  On the Union Pacific Ry.]

So much has been said of this mighty river that the preconceived idea of the tourist is of a surging flood of unknown depth rushing like a mountain torrent.  The plain facts are that the Lower Columbia is rather a placid stream, with a sluggish current, and the channel shoals up to eight feet, then falling to twelve, fifteen and seventeen feet, and suddenly dropping to 100 feet of water and over.  In the spring months it will rise from twenty-five to forty feet, leaving driftwood high up among the trees on the banks.  The tide ebbs and flows at Portland from eighteen inches to three feet, according to season, and this tidal influence is felt, in high water, as far up as the Cascades.  It is fifty miles of glorious beauty from “The Dalles” to the Cascades.  Here we leave the steamer and take a narrow-gauge railway for six miles around the magnificent rapids.  At the foot of the Cascades we board a twin boat, fitted up with equal taste and comfort.

The middle Columbia.

Swinging once more down stream we pass hundreds of charming spots, sixty miles of changeful beauty all the way to Portland; Multnomah Falls, a filmy veil of water falling 720 feet into a basin on the hillside and then 130 feet to the river; past the rocky walls of Cape Horn, towering up a thousand feet; past that curious freak of nature, Rooster Rock, and the palisades; past Fort Vancouver, where Grant and Sheridan were once stationed, and just at sunset leaving the Columbia, which by this time has broadened into noble dimensions, we ascend the Willamette twelve miles to Portland.  And the memory of that day’s journey down the lordly river will remain a gracious possession for years to come.

The legend of the Cascades.