Page:All Over Oregon and Washington.djvu/86

80 at this point, where once they lived in large numbers, and had a famous fishing station; and where, in still earlier times, they exacted toll from whoever passed that way.

The fall of the river in the five miles of rapids is about sixty feet; but nowhere is there a perceptible fall of many feet together. The bed of the stream seems to be choked up with rocks, in such a manner as to suggest recent volcanic agency. At the Upper Cascades the river widens out again in a lake-like expanse, made picturesque with islands and handsomely wooded shores. In truth, all that portion of the Columbia, between the Upper Cascades and the Dalles, might very correctly be termed a lake—so little current has it, and so uniformly great is the depth of water—averaging forty feet, or twice the depth of the river below the rapids. From this fact, and that of the submergence of a belt of trees on either side of the river, for a long distance, the character of the hinderance to the flow of the Columbia may be very readily conjectured. At some period, long subsequent to the passage of the river through these mountains—a passage which evidently it forced for itself—by some violent means, a great quantity of rock was thrown into the bed of the stream, and, by forming a dam, raised the level of the water to its present height.

An effort has been made to secure the aid of Congress in removing this impediment to navigation. Great as would be the benefit, in a commercial point of view, of removing the dam at the Cascades, it presents itself unfavorably to the mind of the worshiper at Nature's shrines—one of whose happiest emotions must ever spring from the thought, that it