The Columbia River is one of the most interesting and remarkable on the continent.  Rising, as it does, quite near the source of the Missouri River, it runs, by a very circuitous route, to the Pacific Ocean, being in places very narrow, and in others abnormally wide.  The Dalles of the Columbia are known the world over.  They are situated some sixty or seventy miles west of the city of Portland, and are within easy distance of the American Mount Blanc.  They extend from Dalles Station, a small town on the Union Pacific Railroad, to Celilo, another station about fifteen miles farther east.  Between these two points the bed of the Columbia is greatly reduced in width, and its boundaries are two huge walls of rock, which rise almost perpendicularly from the water level.  The width of the chasm, through which the water rushes wildly, varies considerably, but at no point in the western section does it exceed 130 feet, although on either side of the Dalles the width of the river itself ranged from about 2,000 to much more than 2,500 feet.

As the volume of water is enormous at this point, especially after rain and much melting of snow, there is often a rise of fifty feet in a few hours in the narrow channel of the Dalles.  Sometimes the rise exceeds seventy feet, and an effect most extraordinary in character results.  From many points along the river banks, Mount Hood can be seen towering away up into the clouds.  The bluffs themselves are marvels of formation, very difficult to explain or account for.  When the water is low, there is an exposure of almost vertical cliffs.  The bluffs vary in height to a remarkable extent, and the lower the water, the more grotesque the appearance of the figures along them.  When the water is very low, there is a cascade, or waterfall, every few feet, presenting an appearance of continuous uproar and froth, very attractive to the sightseer, but very objectionable from the standpoint of navigation.

When the water is high, these cascades are lost sight of, and the rocks which form them are covered with one raging torrent, which seems inclined to dash everything to one side in its headlong course towards the Pacific Ocean.  Logging is a most important use to which the Columbia River is put, and when immense masses of timber come thundering down the Dalles, at a speed sometimes as great as fifty miles an hour, all preconceived notions of order and safety are set at naught.  There is one timber shoot, more than 3,000 feet long, down which the logs rush so rapidly that scarcely twenty seconds is occupied in the entire trip.  The Dalles generally may be described as a marvelous trough, and the name is a French word, which well signifies this feature.