Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 29).djvu/22

 and having borne it on their shoulders eight or ten rods, launched it upon a narrow neck of water by the shore; reloaded, and rowed to the deep water above.

The scene, however, was too interesting to be left so soon, and I tarried awhile to view it. The cataract roared loudly among the caverns, and sent a thousand foaming eddies into the stream below. Countless numbers of salmon were leaping and falling upon the fretted waters; savages almost naked were around me, untrained by the soothing influences of true knowledge, and the hopes of a purer world; as rude as the rocks on which they trod; as bestial as the bear that growled in the thicket. On either hand was the primeval wilderness, with its decaying and perpetually-renewing energies; nothing could be more intensely interesting. I had passed but a moment in these pleasant yet painful reflections, when my Indians, becoming impatient, called me to pursue my voyage.

A mile above the falls a large creek comes in from the west. It is said to rise among the mountains near the Columbia, and to run south and south-east and eastwardly through a series of fine prairies, interspersed {205} with timber. Above the falls, the mountains rise immediately from the water's edge, clothed with noble forests of pine, &c.; but at the distance of fifteen miles above, their green ridges give place to grassy and wooded swells on the west, and timbered and prairie plains on the eastern side. This section of the river appeared navigable for any craft that could float in the stream below the falls.

It was dark when I arrived at the level country; and