Page:All Over Oregon and Washington.djvu/93

Rh For this clear and true tradition— As the learned like me and you do— And made the gross abbreviation Of Mt. Hood from Mountain Hoo-doo.

After this pleasant flight of imagination, we feel more than ever prepared to appreciate and enjoy our day's travel amid scenes so suggestive, only regretting that the author of the poem is unknown to us.

Badinage aside, the grandeur of the Columbia, for some miles above the Cascades, is so great and overpowering that one feels little disposed to attempt description. The Hudson, which has so long been the pride of America, is but the younger brother of the Columbia. Place a hundred Dunderbergs side by side, and you have some idea of these stupendous bluffs; double the height of the Palisades, and you can form an idea of these precipitous cliffs. Elevate the dwarfed evergreens of the Hudson highlands into firs and pines like these, and then you may compare. Considering the history, together with the scenery of this river, there is no other so complete in the impressions it conveys of grandeur.

Down this river, sixty-six years ago, floated those adventurous explorers, Lewis and Clarke. Seven years later the survivors of that part of the Astor expedition which came overland, were struggling along these wild mountain shores, among inhospitable tribes, trying to reach the fort at the mouth of the river. A few years later still, the "brigade" of the Hudson's Bay Company, annually, floated down from their hunting-grounds in the Rocky Mountains, jubilant at the prospect of soon reaching head-quarters—singing and dipping their oars in time, while their noisy gayety was echoed and re-echoed from these towering mountain walls.