Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14.djvu/722

712 as one might almost say, out of the same spring as the Snake,—certainly out of the same ridge of the Rocky Mountains.

"The Dalles" is a town of one street, built close along the edge of a bluff of trap thirty or forty feet high, perfectly perpendicular, level on the top as if it had been graded for a city, and with depth of water at its base for the heaviest draught boats on the river. In fact, the whole water-front is a natural quay,—which wants nothing but time to make it alive with steam-elevators, warehouses, and derricks. To Portland and the Columbia it stands much as St. Louis to New Orleans and the Mississippi. There is no reason why it should not some day have a corresponding business, for whose wharfage-accommodation it has even greater natural advantages.

Architecturally, the Dalles cannot be said to lean very heavily on the side of beauty. The houses are mostly two-story structures of wood, occupied by all the trades and professions which flock to a new mining-entrepot. Outfit-merchants, blacksmiths, printing-office, (for there is really a very well-conducted daily at the Dalles,) are cheek by jowl with doctors, tailors, and Cheap Johns,—the latter being only less merry and thrifty over their incredible sacrifices in everything, from pins to corduroy, than that predominant class of all, the bar-keepers themselves. The town was in a state of bustle when our steamer touched the wharf; it bustled more and more from there to the Umatilla House, where we stopped; the hotel was one organized bustle in bar and dining-room; and bed-time brought no hush. The Dalles, like the Irishman, seemed sitting up all night to be fresh for an early start in the morning.

We found everybody interested in gold. Crowds of listeners, with looks of incredulity or enthusiasm, were gathered around the party in the bar-room which had last come in from the newest of the new mines, and a man who had seen the late Fort-Hall discoveries was "treated" to that extent that he might have become intoxicated a dozen times without expense to himself. The charms of the interior were still further suggested by placards posted on every wall, offering rewards for the capture of a person who on the great gold route had lately committed some of the grimmest murders and most talented robberies known in any branch of Newgate enterprise. I had for supper a very good omelet, (considering its distance from the culinary centres of the universe,) and a Dalles editorial debating the claims of several noted cut-throats to the credit of the operations ascribed to them,—feeling that in the ensemble I was enjoying both the exotic and the indigenous luxuries of our virgin soil.

After supper and a stroll I returned to the ladies' parlor of the Umatilla House, rubbed my eyes in vain to dispel the illusion of a piano and a carpet at this jumping-off place of civilization, and sat down at a handsome centre-table to write up my journal. I had reviewed my way from Portland as far as Fort Vancouver, when another illusion happened to me in the shape of a party of gentlemen and ladies, in ball-dresses, dress-coats, white kids, and elaborate hair, who entered the parlor to wait for further accessions from the hotel. They were on their way with a band of music to give some popular citizen a surprise-party. The popular citizen never got the fine edge of that surprise. I took it off for him. If it were not too much like a little Cockney on Vancouver's Island who used the phrase on all occasions, from stubbing his toe to the death of a Cabinet Lord, I should say, "I never was more astonished in me life!"

None of them had ever seen me before,—and with my books and maps about me, I may have looked like some public, yet mysterious character. I felt a pleasant sensation of having interest taken in me, and, wishing to make an ingenuous return, looked up with a casual smile at one of the party. Again to my surprise, this proved to be a very charming young lady, and I timidly became aware that