STEEP TRAILS 



river rises here sixty feet, or even more during 

 extraordinary freshets, and spreads out over 

 a great breadth of massive rocks through 

 which have been cut several other gorges run- 

 ning parallel with the one usually occupied. 

 All these inferior gorges now come into use, 

 and the huge, roaring torrent, still rising and 

 spreading, at length overwhelms the high 

 jagged rock walls between them, making a 

 tremendous display of chafing, surging, shat- 

 tered currents, counter-currents, and hollow 

 whirls that no words can be made to describe. 

 A few miles below the Dalles the storm-tossed 

 river gets itself together again, looks like 

 water, becomes silent, and with stately, tran- 

 quil deliberation goes on its way, out of the 

 gray region of sage and sand into the Oregon 

 woods. Thirty-five or forty miles below the 

 Dalles are the Cascades of the Columbia, 

 where the river in passing through the moun- 

 tains makes another magnificent display of 

 foaming, surging rapids, which form the first 

 obstruction to navigation from the ocean, a 

 hundred and twenty miles distant. This ob- 

 struction is to be overcome by locks, which 

 are now being made. 



Between the Dalles and the Cascades the 

 river is like a lake a mile or two wide, lying 

 in a valley, or canon, about three thousand feet 

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