Falls.--Salmon-Catching.--Salmon-Dance.--Goose-Dance.

FORT COLVILLE, July 20, 1866.

We have just returned from a trip on the Columbia River, extending two
hundred miles north into British Columbia, on the little steamer built
in this vicinity for the purpose of carrying passengers and supplies to
the Big Bend and other mines in the upper country. We did not get to the
"Rapids of the Dead." The boat, this time, did not complete her ordinary
trip. Some of the passengers came to the conclusion that the river was
never intended to be navigated in places she attempted to run through.
It is a very adventurous boat, called the "Forty-nine," being the first
to cross that parallel,--the line separating Washington Territory from
British Columbia. The more opposition she meets with, and the more
predictions there are against her success, the more resolute she is to
go through; on which account, we were kept three weeks on the way, the
ordinary length of the passage being four days. I was surprised, when we
came to the first of what was called the "bad water," to see the boat
aim directly for it. It was much better, the captain said, to go "head
on," than to run the risk of being carried in by an eddy. I never saw
any river with such a tendency to whirl and fling itself about as the
Upper Columbia has. It is all eddies, in places where there is the least
shadow of a reason for it, and even where there is not; influenced, I
suppose, by the adjoining waters. Some of these whirl-pits are ten or
fifteen feet deep, measured by the trees that are sucked down into them.

The most remarkable part of the river is where it is compressed to
one-sixth of its width, in passing through a mountain gorge
three-quarters of a mile long. The current is so strong there, that it
takes from four to six hours for the steamer to struggle up against it,
and only one minute to come down. The men who have passed down through
it, in small boats, say that it is as if they were shot from the mouth
of a cannon.

When we reached this canyon, our real difficulties began. We attempted
to enter it in the afternoon, but met with an accident which delayed us
until the next morning. Meanwhile the river began to rise. It goes up
very rapidly, fifty, sixty, I believe even seventy, feet, sometimes. We
waited twelve days in the woods for it to subside. The captain cut us a
trail with his axe; and we sat and looked at the great snow-fields up on
the mountains, so b