Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14.djvu/715

1864.] tributaries or communicating lagoons which divide them into islands. The largest of these, measuring its longest border, has an extent of twenty miles, and is called Sauveur's. Another, called "Nigger Tom's," was famous as the seigniory of a blind African nobleman so named, living in great affluence of salmon and whiskey with three or four devoted Indian wives, who had with equal fervor embraced the doctrine of Mormonism and the profession of day's-washing to keep their liege in luxury due his rank. The land along the shore of the river was usually well timbered, and in the level openings looked as fertile as might be expected of an alluvial first-bottom frequently overflowed. At its junction with the Columbia the Willamette is about three-quarters of a mile in width, and the Columbia may be half a mile wider, though at first sight the difference seems more than that from the tributary's entering the main river at an acute angle and giving a diagonal view to the opposite shore. Before we passed into the Columbia, we had from the upper deck a magnificent glimpse to the eastward of Hood's spotless snow-cone rosied with the reflection of the dying sunset. Short and hurried as it was, this view of Mount Hood was unsurpassed for beauty by any which we got in its closer vicinity and afterward, though nearness added rugged grandeur to the sight.

Six miles' sail between low and uninteresting shores brought us from the mouth of the Willamette to Fort Vancouver, on the Washington-Territory side of the river. Here we debarked for the night, making our way, in an ambulance sent for us from the post, a distance of two minutes' ride, to the quarters of General Alvord, the commandant. Under his hospitable roof we experienced, for the first time in several months and many hundred miles, the delicious sensation of a family-dinner, with a refined lady at the head of the table and well-bred children about the sides. A very interesting guest of General Alvord's was Major Lugenbeel, who had spent his life in the topographical service of the United States, and combined the culture of a student with an amount of information concerning the wildest portions of our continent which I have never seen surpassed nor heard communicated in style more fascinating. He had lately come from the John-Day, Boisé, and Snake-River Mines, where the Government was surveying routes of emigration, and pronounced the wealth of the region exhaustless.

After a pleasant evening and a good night's rest, we took the Oregon Company's steamer, Wilson G. Hunt, and proceeded up the river, leaving Fort Vancouver about seven A.M. To our surprise, the Hunt proved an old acquaintance. She will be remembered by most people who during the last twelve years have been familiar with the steamers hailing from New York Bay. Though originally built for river-service such as now employs her, she came around from the Hudson to the Columbia by way of Cape Horn. By lessening her top-hamper and getting new stanchions for her perilous voyage, she performed it without accident.

Such a vivid souvenir of the Hudson reminded me of an assertion I had often heard, that the Columbia resembles it. There is some ground for the comparison. Each of the rivers breaks through a noble mountain-system in its passage to the sea, and the walls of its avenue are correspondingly grand. In point of variety the banks of the Hudson far surpass those of the Columbia,—trap, sandstone, granite, limestone, and slate succeeding each other with a rapidity which presents ever new outlines to the eye of the tourist. The scenery of the Columbia, between Fort Vancouver and the Dalles, is a sublime monotone. Its banks are basaltic crags or mist-wrapt domes, averaging below the cataract from twelve to fifteen hundred feet in height, and thence decreasing to the Dalles, where the escarpments, washed by the river, are low trap bluffs on a level with the steamer's walking-beam, and the mountains have retired, bare and brown, like those of the great continental basin