TRAVELS IN OREGON, NO. 2 . 
457 
play of strength and management in surmounting the 
rapids. In transporting the goods, the load is secured 
on the back of a voyageur by a band which passes round 
the forehead and over and under the bale. He squats 
down, adjusts his load, and rises with ninety pounds on 
his back ; another places ninety pounds more on top, and 
off he trots, half-bent, to the end of the portage. One 
man, for a wager, carried six packages weighing ninety 
pounds each, on his back, one hundred yards. 
Forty miles from the cascades they came to the Dalles, 
near which is a Methodist mission. The Dalles may be 
called the Billingsgate of Oregon. The diversity of dress 
among the men was even greater than in the crowds 
of natives which Captain Wilkes saw at the Polynesian 
isles; but, he says, they lack the decency and care of 
their persons which the islanders exhibit. The women 
also go nearly naked, for they wear little else than what 
may be termed a breechcloth of buckskin, which is black 
and filthy with dirt; and some few have a piece of a 
blanket. The children go entirely naked, the boys wear¬ 
ing a small string round their bodies. To complete the 
picture of the degree of their civilization, it is only neces¬ 
sary to add that some forty or fifty live in a temporary 
hut, twenty feet by twelve, constructed of poles, mats 
and cedar bark. 
The Dalles is one of the most remarkable places on 
the Columbia. The river is here compressed into a nar¬ 
row channel, three hundred feet wide, and half a mile 
long; the walls are perpendicular, flat on the top, and 
composed of basalt; the river forms an elbow, being 
situated in an amphitheatre, extending several miles to the 
north-west, and closed in by a high basaltic wall. Be¬ 
sides the main channel, there are four or five other 
small canals, through which the water passes when the 
water is high ; these are but a few feet across. The 
river falls about fifty feet in the distance of two miles, 
