66 FISH HARVESTING. 
transport of coals and provisions necessary to 
keep the life-stove burning, floated free of freight 
up to the very doors of the Indian’s wigwam. 
The way he harvests this store, and preserves 
it for winter use, we shall see as we follow the 
course of the salmon in their ascent of the 
Columbia river. 
The Cascades, where the salmon first meet 
with a hindrance to their upward course, is a 
lovely spot. The vast river here breaks its way 
through the Cascade Mountains, a mountain-gap 
unequalled, I should say, in depth and extent, 
by any in the world. Some parts are massive 
walls of rock, and others wooded slopes like to 
a narrow valley. One can hardly imagine the 
possibility of so great a change in climate, and 
consequently vegetation, as there is betwixt 
this place and the Dalles, only a few miles 
farther up the river. I have left the Dalles 
when the ground was covered with snow, and 
within a distance of forty miles entered this gap, 
and found the climate to be that of summer. 
The sloping forests brightly green, shrubs of 
various sorts, tropical in appearance, immense 
ferns, the emerald moss clothing the rocks, over 
which dozens of waterfalls, unbroken for a thou- 
sand feet, tumble from the hills into the river 
