ny people who stood wear and improved on
intimacy as were ever vouchsafed to me by social indorsement from
somebody else. We are perpetually blaming our heads of Government
Bureaus for their poor knowledge of character,--their subordinates, we
say, are never pegs in the right holes. If we understood our civilized
system of introductions, we could not rationally expect anything else.
The great mass of polite mankind are trained _not_ to know character,
but to take somebody else's voucher for it. Their acquaintances, most of
their friendships, come to them through a succession of indorsers, none
of whom may have known anything of the goodness of the paper. A sensible
man, conventionally introduced to his fellow, must always wonder why the
latter does not turn him around to look for signatures in chalk down the
back of his coat; for he knows that Brown indorsed him over to Jones,
and Jones negotiated him with Robinson, through a succession in which
perhaps two out of a hundred took pains to know whether he represented
metal. You do not find the people of new countries making mistakes in
character. Every man is his own guaranty,--and if he has no just cause
to suspect himself bogus, there will be true pleasure in a frank opening
of himself to the examination and his eyes for the study of others. Not
to be accused of intruding radical reform under the guise of
belles-lettres, let me say that I have no intention of introducing this
innovation at the East.

After a night's rest, Bierstadt spent nearly the entire morning in
making studies of Hood from an admirable post of observation at the top
of one of the highest foot-hills,--a point several miles southwest of
the town, which he reached under guidance of an old Indian interpreter
and trapper. His work upon this mountain was in some respects the best
he ever accomplished, being done with a loving faithfulness hardly
called out by Hood's only rival, the Peak of Shasta. The result of his
Hood studies, as seen in the nearly completed painting, has a
superiority corresponding to that of the studies themselves, possessing
excellences not included even in the well-known "Lander's Peak."

In the afternoon, we were provided, by the courtesy of the Company, with
a special train on the portage-railroad connecting Dalles City with a
station known as Celilo. This road had but recently come into full
operation, and was now doing an immense freight-business between the two
river-levels se