ty to cross. We waited five days
outside in the fog, hearing all the time the deep, solemn warning of the
breakers, to keep off. Our steadfast captain, as long as he could see
nothing, refused to go on, knowing well the risk, though he sent the
ship's boats out at times to try to get his bearings. In all that time,
the fog never once lifted so that he could get the horizon-line. At the
end of the fifth day, he entered in triumph, with a clear view of the
river, the grandest sight I have ever seen. The passengers seemed hardly
to dare to breathe till we were over the bar. Some of them had witnessed
a frightful wreck there a few years before, when, after a similar
waiting in the fog for nearly a week, a vessel attempted to enter the
river, and struck on the bar. She was seen for two days from Astoria,
but the water was so rough that no life-boat could reach her. The
passengers embarked on rafts, but were swept off by the sea.

As we passed into the river, I sat on deck, looking about. All at once I
felt a heavy thump on my back, and a wave broke over my head,--a pretty
rough greeting from the sea. It seems that we slightly grounded, but
were off in an instant.

I had long looked forward to the wonderful experience of seeing this
immense river, seven miles broad, rolling seaward, and the great line of
breakers at the bar; but no one can realize, without actually seeing it,
how much its grandeur is enhanced by the surroundings of interminable
forest, and the magnificence of its snow-mountains. The character of the
river itself is in accordance with every thing about it, especially
where it breaks through the Cascade Mountains in four miles of rapids;
and still higher up, shut between basaltic walls, rushes with deafening
roar through the narrow passage of the Dalles, where it is compressed
into one-eighth of its width. For a long time I could not receive any
other sensation, nor admit any other thought, but of its terrific
strength. The Indians say that in former times the river flowed smoothly
where are now the whirling rapids of the Cascades, but that a landslide
from the banks dammed up the stream, and produced this great change. How
many generations have repeated the account of this wonderful occurrence,
from one to another, to bring it down to our times! This is now accepted
by scientific men as undoubtedly the fact.

It is hard to conceive the idea of the geologists, that this is only the
remnant of a vastly greater