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Occasionally rapids appeared, of a serious character; but as a rule the river was broad and deep, majestic in size and volume. On the banks were frequent Indian villages, with their hardy little ponies browsing around--apparently on nothing but sage-brush and cobble-stones. These Indians fancied spotted or
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horses, as the Oregonians called them, and very few of their ponies were of a single color. They spend the summer mostly in the Mountains, making long excursions in all directions; but as winter approaches, they return to the Columbia, and eke out a precarious subsistence by fishing, etc., till spring comes. Timber was scarce, and frequently we saw numbers of them in canoes, paddling up and down the river in search of drift-wood, for their winter's supply of fuel. Past Owyhee rapids and the seething caldron of Hell-Gate, we reached Celilo, eighty-five miles from Umatilla, with its long warehouse (935 feet), and its mosquito fleet of five or six pigmy steamers, that formed the up-river line. Here we disembarked, and took the Railroad around the
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or rapids, some fourteen miles, to still water again below. The shrill whistle of the locomotive and the rattle of the cars were delightful sounds, after our long exile from them, and soon convinced us we were on the right road to civilization again. This portage had formerly been made by pack-mules, and then by wagons; but recently a railroad had been constructed, after much hard blasting and costly wall-work, and now
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Riding on a rail, there, with the Columbia boiling and roaring at your side, like the Rapids above Niagara, was exhilarating and superb. At very high water, these