bordering the Northern Pacific Railroad. 341 



Western entrance to the gorge is now at tide-level and the 

 lower part of the river is, like the Hudson, an arm of the sea. 

 It is true that at present the "Cascades of the Columbia," form 

 a serious interruption to the navigation of the river, for they are 

 produced by a dam sixty-three feet high, which fills the channel 

 for three miles. But this dam is of recent date, as we know, 

 and has been caused b} r an avalanche from the sides of the 

 gorge. Above it the river is simply a long lake, and in low 

 water a series of stumps are seen coming up from below the 

 water-level which belonged to trees that could never have 

 grown in the places they occupy if the barrier of the Cascades 

 had existed. 



Steamboats navigate the Columbia from the Dalles down, 

 with a transfer at the Cascades, and this is much the better 

 route to take for those who would get a good view of the gorge 

 with its imposing- walls, its hanging forests and its picturesque 

 waterfalls which leap 1,000 feet from the cliffs, to say nothing 

 of the old Indian burial grove, and the multitude of silicified 

 tree trunks at the Cascades. 



The railroad is built along the face of the southern cliff, high 

 above the water, and although it gives only a one-sided view 

 of the gorge, it is generally chosen by travelers who prefer rapid 

 transit to beauty of scenery. 



ANCIENT GLACIERS OF THE CASCADE MOUNTAINS. 



As is well known, the Rocky Mountains from New Mexico to 

 British Columbia abound in evidences of ancient glaciation. 

 The same is true of the Uinta Mountains, the Wasatch, the 

 Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mountains. In the group of five 

 snowy peaks called in Oregon the Three Sisters — because only 

 three are visible from the Willamette valley, miniature glaciers 

 were found by our party in 1855 at the heads of McKenzie's 

 Fork and one of the tributaries of the Des Chutes, and on 

 Mt. Shasta and Mt. Rainier are many true glaciers, of which 

 some are several miles in length. But all the glaciers and snow- 

 fields now existing on the Cascade Mountains are insignificant 

 compared with those of the Glacial period. Then every gorge 

 was filled with snow and ice, the broader and more irregular 

 summits were covered with glaciers and these descended far 

 below the present line of perpetual snow. Now in many locali- 

 ties and over many square miles the rock surfaces are planed 

 smooth or grooved like a plowed field, and every projecting 

 crest of volcanic rock, rough and ragged as it was, is rounded 

 over and worn into a roche moutonnee. From the Three Sisters 

 glaciers descend into the valley of the Willamette on the west 

 and that of the Des Chutes on the east, and I traced glacial 



