Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14.djvu/720

710 and the captain. In both steamers we were accorded excellent opportunities for drawing and observation, getting seats in the pilot-house.

Above the rapids the river-banks were bold and rocky. The stream changed from its recent Niagara green to a brown like that of the Hudson; and under its waters, as we hugged the Oregon side, could be seen a submerged alluvial plateau, studded thick with drowned stumps, here and there lifting their splintered tops above the water, and measuring from the diameter of a sapling to that of a trunk which might once have been one hundred feet high.

Between Fort Vancouver and the cataract the banks of the river seem nearly as wild as on the day they were discovered by the whites. On neither the Oregon nor the Washington side is there any settlement visible,—a small wood-wharf, or the temporary hut of a salmon-fisher, being the only sign of human possession. At the Falls we noticed a single white house standing in a commanding position high up on the wooded ledges of the Oregon shore; and the taste shown in placing and constructing it was worthy of a Hudson-River landholder. This is, perhaps, the first attempt at a distinct country-residence made in Oregon, and belongs to a Mr. Olmstead, who was one of the earliest settlers and projectors of public improvements in the State. He was actively engaged in the building of the first portage-railroad, which ran on the Oregon side. The entire interests of both have, I believe, been concentrated in the newer one, and the Oregon road, after building itself by feats of business-energy and ingenuity known only to American pioneer enterprise, has fallen into entire or comparative disuse.

Above the Falls we found as unsettled a river-margin as below. Occasionally, some bright spot of color attracted us, relieved against the walls of trap or glacis of evergreen, and this upon nearer approach or by the glass was resolved into a group of river Indians,—part with the curiously compressed foreheads of the Flat-head tribe, their serene nakedness draped with blankets of every variety of hue, from fresh flaming red to weather-beaten army-blue, and adorned as to their cheeks with smutches of the cinnabar-rouge which from time immemorial has been a prime article of import among the fashionable native circles of the Columbia,—the other part round-headed, and (I have no doubt it appears a perfect sequitur to the Flat-head conservatives) therefore slaves. The captive in battle seems more economically treated among these savages than is common anywhere else in the Indian regions we traversed, (though I suppose slavery is to some extent universal throughout the tribes,)—the captors properly arguing, that, so long as they can make a man fish and boil pot for them, it is a very foolish waste of material to kill him.

At intervals above the Falls we passed several small islands of especial interest as being the cemeteries of river-tribes. The principal, called "Mimitus," was sacred as the resting-place of a very noted chief. I have forgotten his name, but I doubt whether his friends see the "Atlantic" regularly; so that oversight is of less consequence. The deceased is entombed like a person of quality, in a wooden mausoleum having something the appearance of a log-cabin upon which pains have been expended, and containing, with the human remains, robes, weapons, baskets, canoes, and all the furniture of Indian ménage, to an extent which among the tribes amounts to a fortune. This sepulchral idea is a clear-headed one, and worthy of Eastern adoption. Old ladies with lace and nieces, old gentlemen with cellars and nephews, might be certain that the solace which they received in life's decline was purely disinterested, if about middle age they should announce that their Point and their Port were going to Mount Auburn with them.

The river grew narrower, its banks becoming low, perpendicular walls of basalt, water-worn at the base, squarely cut and castellated at the top, and bare everywhere as any pile of masonry. The hills beyond became naked, or covered only