The second is sixteen miles below the first,
forty-two miles in length, and two and a half wide. Innumerable arrows
were sticking in the crevices of the rocks. Formerly every Indian who
passed deposited an arrow,--intended probably as an offering to the
spirit that rules over the chase, just as the Indian medicine-man, when
he gathers his roots, makes an offering to the earth.

The Catholic missionaries were much surprised to find crosses erected
sometimes in lonely places, and at first supposed some other priests
must have preceded them; but learned that they were set up by the
Indians, in honor of the moon, to induce her to favor their nightly
expeditions for robbery or the chase.

JULY 22, 1866.

We have been on an excursion to Kettle Falls on the Columbia, where the
river dashes over the huge rocks in a most picturesque way. These falls
were called _La Chaudiere_ by the Canadian _voyageurs_, because the
pool below looks like a great boiling caldron. We noticed that limestone
there replaced the black basalt, of which we had seen so much, the water
falling over a tabular bed of white marble.

There we saw some Indians engaged in spearing salmon, as the fish were
attempting to leap the falls, in their passage up the stream to their
breeding-places. They do not always succeed in passing the falls at
their first leap, sometimes falling back two or three times. Many of
them are dashed on the rocks at the Cascades, and at other points where
the river presents obstacles to their progress. An immense number become
victims to the nets of the fishermen, and the traps and spears of the
Indians; and those that escape these dangers, and reach the upper
waters, are very much bruised and battered,--"spent salmon" they are
called. After their long journey of six or seven hundred miles from the
sea, it seems as if they would be filled with despair at the sight of
these boiling cataracts. They refuse bait on the way, apparently never
stopping for food, from the time they leave the salt water. Often with
fins and tails so worn down as to be almost useless, their noses worn to
the bone, their eyes sunken, sometimes wholly extinguished, they
struggle on to the last gasp, to ascend the streams to their sources. In
calm weather they swim near the surface, and close to the shore, to
avoid the strong current; and they are so possessed with this one
purpose, and so regardless of every thing about them, that the Indians
catch hundreds