This slot, or trough, is about a mile and a half long and about sixty yards wide at the narrowest place.  At ordinary times the river seems to be set on edge and runs swiftly but without much noisy surging with a descent of about twenty feet to the mile.  But when the snow is melting on the mountains the river rises here sixty feet, or even more during extraordinary freshets, and spreads out over a great breadth of massive rocks through which have been cut several other gorges running parallel with the one usually occupied.  All these inferior gorges now come into use, and the huge, roaring torrent, still rising and spreading, at length overwhelms the high jagged rock walls between them, making a tremendous display of chafing, surging, shattered currents, counter-currents, and hollow whirls that no words can be made to describe.  A few miles below the Dalles the storm-tossed river gets itself together again, looks like water, becomes silent, and with stately, tranquil deliberation goes on its way, out of the gray region of sage and sand into the Oregon woods.  Thirty-five or forty miles below the Dalles are the Cascades of the Columbia, where the river in passing through the mountains makes another magnificent display of foaming, surging rapids, which form the first obstruction to navigation from the ocean, a hundred and twenty miles distant.  This obstruction is to be overcome by locks, which are now being made.

Between the Dalles and the Cascades the river is like a lake a mile or two wide, lying in a valley, or canyon, about three thousand feet deep.  The walls of the canyon lean well back in most places, and leave here and there small strips, or bays, of level ground along the water’s edge.  But towards the Cascades, and for some distance below them, the immediate banks are guarded by walls of columnar basalt, which are worn in many places into a great variety of bold and picturesque forms, such as the Castle Rock, the Rooster Rock, the Pillars of Hercules, Cape Horn, etc., while back of these rise the sublime mountain walls, forest-crowned and fringed more or less from top to base with pine, spruce, and shaggy underbrush, especially in the narrow gorges and ravines, where innumerable small streams come dancing and drifting down, misty and white, to join the mighty river.  Many of these falls on both sides of the canyon of the Columbia are far larger and more interesting in every way than would be guessed from the slight glimpses one gets of them while sailing past on the river, or from the car windows.  The Multnomah Falls are particularly interesting, and occupy fern-lined gorges of marvelous beauty in the basalt.  They are said to be about eight hundred feet in height and, at times of high water when the mountain snows are melting, are well worthy of a place beside the famous falls of Yosemite Valley.