GORGE OF THE COLUMBIA 



15 



yond words — wild, aboriginal, yet with such beauty and 

 winsome gentleness and delicacy. The river was al- 

 most half the width of the Hudson and much more wind- 

 ing. The geologists speculated upon the formation as it 

 was laid bare in places; the botanists upon the wild flow- 

 ers that painted the shore; the ornithologists upon the 

 birds seen and heard. Swarms of cliff swallows were ob- 

 served about the basaltic rocks near the water. 



There were not many signs of rural life — here and there 

 low rude farmhouses on the deltas of land at the mouths of 

 the side gorges, and at least one very large fruit farm on a 

 low level area on our right. A novel sight was the long 

 wooden and wire wheat chutes for running the wheat down 

 from the farms back on the high 

 mountain table lands to the 

 river, where the boats could 

 pick it up. They were tokens 

 of a life and fertility quite un- 

 seen and unsuspected. 



MULTNOMAH FALLS. 



The ride in the train along 

 the south bank of the Columbia 

 toward Portland, past The Dal- 

 les, past the Cascades, past 

 Oneonta Gorge and the Mult- 

 nomah and Latourelle Falls, is 

 a feast of the beautiful and the 

 sublime — the most delicate 

 tints a n d colors of moss and 

 wild flowers setting off the most 

 rugged alpine scenery. In places the railroad embankment 

 is decked with brilliant patches of red and purple flowers, 

 as if garlanded for a festival. Presently the moss-covered 

 rocks are white-aproned with the clear mountain brooks 



LATOURELLE FALLS. 

 260 FEET HIGH. 



