The voyage up the river presents a constant succession of wild and picturesque scenery; immense rocky capes jut out into the broad stream; for miles the banks are precipitous, like the Hudson River Palisades, only often much higher, and for other miles the river has worn its channel out of the rock, whose face looks bare and clean cut, as though it had been of human workmanship.  The first explorer of the Columbia, even if he was a very commonplace mortal, must have passed days of the most singular exhilaration, especially if he ascended the stream in that season when the skies are bright and blue, for it seems to me one of the most magnificent sights in the world.  I am not certain that the wildness does not oppress one a little after a while, and there are parts of the river where the smoothly cut cliffs, coming precipitously down to the water’s edge, and following down, sheer down, to the river’s bottom, make you think with terror of the unhappy people who might here be drowned, with this cold rock within their reach, yet not affording them even a momentary support.  I should like to have seen the rugged cliffs relieved here and there by the softness of smooth lawns, and some evidences that man had conquered even this rude and resisting nature.

But for a century or two to come the traveler will have to do without this relief; nor need he grumble, for, with all its rugged grandeur, the scenery has many exquisite bits where nature has a little softened its aspect.  Nor is it amiss to remember that but a little way back from the river there are farms, orchards, cattle, and sheep.  At one point the boat for a moment turned her bow to the shore to admit a young man, who brought with him a wonderful bouquet of wild flowers, which he had gathered at his home a few miles back; and here and there, where the hill-sides have a more moderate incline, you will see that some energetic pioneer has carved himself out a farm.

Nevertheless it is with a sense of relief at the change that you at last approach a large island, a flat space of ten or twelve hundred acres, with fences and trees and grain fields and houses, and with a gentle and peaceful aspect, doubly charming to you when you come upon it suddenly, and fresh from the preceding and somewhat appalling grandeur.  Here the boat stops; for you are here at the lower end of the famous Cascades, and you tranship yourself into cars which carry you to the upper end, a distance of about six miles, where again you take boat for Dalles City.

[Illustration:  MAP OF PUGET SOUND AND VICINITY.]

The Cascades are rapids.  The river, which has ever a swift and impetuous current, is nearly two miles wide just above these rapids.  Where the bed shoals it also narrows, and the great body of water rushes over the rocks, roaring, tumbling, foaming—­a tolerably wild sight.  There is nowhere any sudden descent sufficient to make a water-fall; but there is a fall of a good many feet in the six miles of cascades.