Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands Part 20

The Dalles of the Columbia are simply a succession of falls and rapids, not reaching over as great a distance as the Cascades, but containing one feature much more remarkable than any thing which the Cascades afford, and indeed, so far as I know, found nowhere else.

The Columbia above the Dalles is still a first-cla.s.s river, comparable in depth and width, and in the volume of its water, only with the Lower Mississippi or the Amazon. It is a deep, rapidly-flowing stream, nearly a mile wide. But at one point in the Dalles the channel narrows until it is, at the ordinary height of the river, not over a hundred yards wide; and through this narrow gorge the whole volume of the river rushes for some distance. Of course water is not subject to compression; the volume of the river is not diminished; what happens, as you perceive when you see this singular freak of nature, is that the river is suddenly turned up on its edge. Suppose it is, above the Dalles, a mile wide and fifty feet deep; at the narrow gorge it is but a hundred yards wide--how deep must it be?

Certainly it can be correctly said that the stream is turned up on its edge.

The Dalles lie five or six miles above Dalles City; and you pa.s.s these rapids in the train which bears you to Celilo early the next morning after you arrive at Dalles City. Celilo is not a town; it is simply a geographical point; it is the spot where, if you were bound to the interior of the continent by water, you would take steamboat. There is here a very long shed to shelter the goods which are sent up into this far-away and, to us Eastern people, unknown interior; there is a wharf where land the boats when they return from a journey of perhaps a thousand miles on the Upper Columbia or the Snake; there are two or three laborers'

shanties--and that is all there is of Celilo; and your journey thither has been made only that you may see the Dalles, and Cape Horn, as a bold promontory on the river is called.

What I advise you to do is to take a hearty lunch with you, and, if you can find one, a guide, and get off the early Celilo train at the Dalles.

You will have a most delightful day among very curious scenery; will see the Indians spearing salmon in the pools over which they build their stages; and can examine at leisure the curious rapids called the Dalles.

A party of three or four persons could indeed spend several days very pleasantly picnicking about the Dalles, and in the season they would shoot hare and birds enough to supply them with meat. The weather in this part of Oregon, east of the Cascade range, is as settled as that of California, so that there is no risk in sleeping-out-of-doors in summer.

There is a singularly sudden climatic change between Western and Eastern Oregon; and if you ask the captain or pilot on the boat which plies between the Cascades and Dalles City, he can show you the mountain range on one side of which the climate is wet, while on the other side it is dry. The Cascade range is a continuation northward of the Sierra Nevada; and here, as farther south, it stops the water-laden winds which rush up from the sea. Western Oregon, lying between the Cascades and the ocean, has so much rain that its people are called "Web-feet;" Eastern Oregon, a vast grazing region, has comparatively little rain. Western Oregon, except in the Willamette and Rogue River valleys, is densely timbered; Eastern Oregon is a country of boundless plains, where they irrigate their few crops, and depend mainly on stock-grazing. This region is as yet spa.r.s.ely settled; and when we in the East think of Oregon, or read of it even, it is of that part of the huge State which lies west of the Cascades, and where alone agriculture is carried on to a considerable extent.

You will spend a day in returning from the Dalles to Portland, and arriving there in the evening can set out the next morning for Olympia, on Puget Sound, by way of Kalama, which is the Columbia River terminus for the present of the Northern Pacific Railroad. It is possible to go by steamer from Portland to Victoria, and then return down Puget Sound to Olympia; but to most people the sea-voyage is not enticing, and there are but slight inconveniences in the short land journey. The steamer leaving Portland at six A.M. lands you at Kalama about eleven; there you get dinner, and proceed about two by rail to Olympia. It is a good plan to telegraph for accommodations on the pretty and comfortable steamer _North Pacific_, and go directly to her on your arrival at Olympia.

Puget Sound is one of the most picturesque and remarkable sheets of water in the world; and the voyage from Olympia to Victoria, which shows you the greater part of the Sound, is a delightful and novel excursion, specially to be recommended to people who like to go to sea without getting sea-sick; for these land-encircled waters are almost always smooth.

When, at Kalama, you enter Washington Territory, your ears begin to be a.s.sailed by the most barbarous names imaginable. On your way to Olympia by rail you cross a river called the Skook.u.m-Chuck; your train stops at places named Newauk.u.m, Tumwater, and Toutle; and if you seek further, you will hear of whole counties labeled Wahkiak.u.m, or Snohomish, or Kitsap, or Klikatat; and Cowlitz, Hookium, and Nenolelops greet and offend you. They complain in Olympia that Washington Territory gets but little immigration; but what wonder? What man, having the whole American continent to chose from, would willingly date his letters from the county of Snohomish, or bring up his children in the city of Nenolelops? The village of Tumwater is, as I am ready to bear witness, very pretty indeed; but surely an emigrant would think twice before he established himself either there or at Toutle. Seattle is sufficiently barbarous; Steilacoom is no better; and I suspect that the Northern Pacific Railroad terminus has been fixed at Tacoma--if it is fixed there--because that is one of the few places on Puget Sound whose name does not inspire horror and disgust.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NANAIMO, VANCOUVER'S ISLAND.]

Olympia, which lies on an arm of Puget Sound, and was once a town of great expectations, surprises the traveler by its streets, all shaded with magnificent maples. The founder of the town was a man of taste; and he set a fashion which, being followed for a few years in this country of abundant rains, has given Olympia's streets shade trees by the hundred which would make it famous were it an Eastern place.

Unluckily, it has little else to charm the traveler, though it is the capital of the Territory; and when you have spent half an hour walking through the streets you will be quite ready to have the steamer set off for Victoria. The voyage lasts but about thirty-six hours, and would be shorter were it not that the steamer makes numerous landings. Thus you get glimpses of Seattle, Steilacoom, Tacoma, and of the so-called saw-mill ports--Port Madison, Port Gamble, Port Ludlow, and Port Townsend--the last named being also the boundary of our Uncle Samuel's dominions for the present, and the port of entry for this district, with a custom-house which looks like a barn, and a collector and inspectors, the latter of whom examine your trunk as you return from Victoria to save you from the sin of smuggling.

From Port Townsend your boat strikes across the straits of San Juan de Fuca to Victoria; and just here, as you are crossing from American to English territory, you get the most magnificent views of the grand Olympian range of mountains and of Mount Regnier. Also, the captain will point out to you in the distance that famous island of San Juan which formed the subject or object, or both, of our celebrated boundary dispute with great Britain, and you will wonder how small an object can nearly make nations go to war, and for what a petty thing we set several kings and great lords to studying geography and treaties and international law, and boring themselves, and filling enterprising newspapers with dozens of columns of dull history; and you will wonder the more at the stupid pertinacity of these English in clinging to the little island of San Juan when you reach Victoria, and see that we shall presently take that dull little town too, not because we want it or need it, but to save it from perishing of inanition.

It is something to have taste and a sense of the beautiful. Certainly the English, who discovered the little landlocked harbor of Victoria and chose it as the site of a town, displayed both. It is by natural advantages one of the loveliest places I ever saw, and I wonder, remote as it is, that it is not famous. The narrow harbor, which is not so big as one of the big Liverpool docks, is surrounded on both sides by the prettiest little miniature bays, rock-bound, with gra.s.sy knolls, and here and there shady clumps of evergreens; a river opening out above the town into a kind of lake, and spanned by pretty bridges, invites you to a boating excursion; and the fresh green of the lawn-like expanses of gra.s.s which reach into the bay from different directions, the rocky little promontories with boats moored near them, the fine snow-covered mountains in the distance, and the pleasantly winding roads leading in different directions into the country, all make up a landscape whose soft and gay aspect I suppose is the more delightful because one comes to it from the somewhat oppressive grandeur of the fir forests in Washington Territory.

In the harbor of Victoria the most conspicuous object is the long range of warehouses belonging to the Hudson Bay Company, with their little trading steamers moored alongside. These vessels bear the signs of traffic with a savage people in the high boarding nettings which guard them from stem to stern, and which are in their more solid parts pierced for musketry. Here, too, you see a queer little old steamboat, the first that ever vexed the waters of the Pacific Ocean with its paddle-wheels. And as your own steamer hauls up to the wharf, you will notice, arrayed to receive you, what is no doubt the most shocking and complete collection of ugly women in the world.

These are the Indians of this region. They are very light-colored; their complexion has an artificial look; there is something ghastly and unnatural in the yellow of the faces, penetrated by a rose or carmine color on the cheeks. They are hideous in all the possible aspects and varieties of hideousness--undersized, squat, evil-eyed, pug-nosed, tawdry in dress, ungraceful in every motion; they really mar the landscape, so that you are glad to escape from them to your hotel, which you find a clean and comfortable building, where, if you are as fortunate as the traveler who relates this, you may by-and-by catch a glimpse or two of a fresh, fair, girlish English face, which will make up to you for the precedent ugliness.

Victoria hopes to have its dullness enlivened by a railroad from the mainland one of these days, which may make it more prosperous, but will probably destroy some of the charm it now has for a tourist. It can hardly destroy the excellent roads by which you may take several picturesque drives and walks in the neighborhood of the town, nor the pretty views you have from the hills near by, nor the excursions by boat, in which you can best see how much Nature has done to beautify this place, and how little man has done so far to mar her work.

Silks and cigars are said to be very cheap in Victoria; and those who consume these articles will probably look through the shops and make a few purchases, not enough to satisfy, though sufficient to arouse the suspicions of the Collector of Customs at Port Townsend. If you use your time well, the thirty-six hours which the steamer spends at Victoria will suffice you to see all that is of interest there to a traveler, and you can return in her down the Sound, and make more permanent your impressions of its scenery.

You will perhaps be startled, if you chance to overhear the conversation of your fellow-pa.s.sengers, to gather that it concerns itself chiefly with millions, and these millions run to such extraordinary figures that you may hear one man pitying another for the confession that he made no more than a hundred millions last year. It is feet of lumber they are speaking of; and when you see the monstrous piles of sawdust which enc.u.mber the mill ports, the vast quant.i.ties of waste stuff they burn, and the huge rafts of timber which are towed down to the mills, as well as the ships which lie there to load for South America, Tahiti, Australia, and California, you will not longer wonder that they talk of millions.

Some of these mills are owned by very wealthy companies, who have had the good fortune to buy at low rates large tracts of the best timber lands lying along the rivers and bays. A saw-mill is the centre of quite a town--and a very rough town too, to judge from the appearance of the men who come down to the dock to look at the steamer, and the repute of the Indian women who go from port to port and seem at home among the mill men.

Having gone by sea to Oregon, I should advise you to return to California overland. The journey lies by rail through the fertile Willamette Valley, for the present the chief agricultural country of Oregon, to Roseburg, and thence by stage over and through some of the most picturesque and grand scenery in America, into California. If you are curious in bizarre social experiments, you may very well stop a day at Aurora, thirty miles below Portland, and look at some of the finest orchards in the State, the property of a strange German community which has lived in harmony and acquired wealth at this point.

Salem, too, the capital of Oregon, lying on the railroad fifty miles below Portland, is worth a visit, to show you how rich a valley the Willamette is. And as you go down by stage toward California you will enjoy a long day's drive through the Rogue River Valley, a long, narrow, winding series of nooks, remote, among high mountains, looking for all the world as though in past ages a great river had swept through here, and left in its dry bed a fertile soil, and s.p.a.ce enough for a great number of happy and comfortable homes.

May and June are the best months in which to see Oregon and Puget Sound.

With San Francisco as a starting-point, one may go either to Portland or to Victoria direct. If you go first to Victoria, you save a return journey across Puget Sound, and from Olympia to Kalama, but you miss the sail up the Columbia from Astoria to Portland. The following table of fares will show you the cost of traveling in the region I have described:

Time. Fare.

From San Francisco to Portland................... 3 days $30 00 From San Francisco to Victoria................... 3 " 30 00 From Portland to Celilo.......................... 1 day 7 00 Excursion tickets, good from Portland to Celilo and back............................................. 3 days 10 00 From Portland by Olympia to Victoria............. 3 " 12 25 From Portland to San Francis...o...b.. railroad and stage............................................ 79 hours 42 00

Meals on these journeys are extra, and cost from half a dollar to seventy-five cents. They are generally good. All these rates are in coin. On the steamer from San Francisco to Portland or Victoria meals are included in the fare.

When you are once in Portland, a vast region opens itself to you, if you are an adventurous tourist. You may take boat at Celilo, above the Dalles, and steam up to Wallula, where you take stage for Elkton, a station on the Pacific Railroad, in Utah; this journey shows you the heart of the continent, and is said to abound in magnificent scenery. I have not made it, but it is frequently done. If you have not courage for so long an overland trip, a journey up to the mouth of Snake River and back to Portland, which consumes but a week, will give you an intelligent idea of the vastness of the country drained by the main body of the great Columbia River.

The great plains and table-lands which lie east of the Cascades, and are drained by the Columbia, the Snake, and their affluents, will some day contain a vast population. Already enterprising pioneers are pushing into the remotest valleys of this region. As you sail up the Columbia, you will hear of wheat, barley, sheep, stock, wool, orchards, and rapidly growing settlements, where, to our Eastern belief, the beaver still builds his dams, unvexed even by the traps and rifle of the hunter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANCIENT HAWAIIAN IDOL.]

APPENDIX.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF A VENERABLE SAVAGE TO THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS.[A]

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF M. JULES REMY, BY WILLIAM T. BRIGHAM.

[I am indebted to Mr. William T. Brigham, of Boston, the translator of the following "Contributions of a venerable Savage,"

and the author of a valuable treatise on the volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands, as well as of several memoirs on the natural history of the Islands, for his kind permission to use this very curious fragment, with his additions, in my volume. The original I have not been able to lay my hands on. It gives a picturesque account of the Hawaiian people before they came into relations with foreigners. It should be remembered by the reader that Mr. Remy is a Frenchman, and that his relations with the Roman Catholic missionaries somewhat colored his views of the labors of the American missionaries on the Islands.

The "contributions" in this translation of Mr. Brigham were privately printed by him some years ago, and the following note by him explains their origin. It will be seen that Mr. Brigham translated the Mele, or chant of Kawelo, from the original.]

One evening, in the month of March, 1853, I landed at Hoopuloa, on the western sh.o.r.e of Hawaii. Among the many natives collected on the beach to bid me welcome and draw my canoe up over the sand, I noticed an old man of average size, remarkably developed chest, and whose hairs, apparently once flaxen, were h.o.a.ry with age. The countenance of this old man, at once savage and attractive, was furrowed across the forehead with deep and regular wrinkles. His only garment was a shirt of striped calico.

A sort of veneration with which his countrymen seemed to me to regard him only increased the desire I at first felt to become acquainted with the old islander. I was soon told that his name was Kanuha, that he was already a lad when Alapai[1] died (about 1752), that he had known Kalaniopuu, Cook, and Kamehameha the Great. When I learned his name and extraordinary age, I turned toward Kanuha, extending my hand. This attention flattered him, and disposed him favorably toward me. So I resolved to take advantage of this lucky encounter to obtain from an eye-witness an insight into Hawaiian customs before the arrival of Europeans.

A hut of panda.n.u.s had been prepared for me upon the lava by the care of a missionary. I made the old man enter, and invited him to partake of my repast of poi,[2] cocoa-nut, raw fish, and roast dog. While eating the poi with full fingers, Kanuha a.s.sured me that he had lived under King Alapai, and had been his runner, as well as the courier of Kalaniopuu, his successor. So great had been Kanuha's strength in his youth that, at the command of his chiefs, he had in a single day accomplished the distance from Hoopuloa to Hilo, more than forty French leagues. When Cook died, in 1779, the little children of Kanuha's children had been born. When I spoke of Alapai to my old savage, he told me that _it seemed to him a matter of yesterday_; of Cook, _it was a thing of to-day_.

From these facts it may be believed that Kanuha was not less than one hundred and sixteen years old when I met him on this occasion. This remarkable example of longevity was by no means unique at the Hawaiian Islands a few years since. Father Marechal knew at Ka'u, in 1844, an aged woman who remembered perfectly having seen Alapai. I had occasion to converse at Kauai with an islander who was already a grandfather when he saw Captain Cook die. I sketched, at this very Hoopuloa, the portrait of an old woman, still vigorous, Meawahine, who told any who would hear her that her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were completely developed when her chief gave her as wife to the celebrated English navigator.

Old Kanuha was the senior of all these centenaries. I took advantage of his willing disposition to draw from him the historical treasures with which his memory was stored. Here, in my own order, is what he told me during a night of conversation, interrupted only by the Hawaiian dances (_hulahula_), and by some pipes of tobacco smoked in turn, in the custom of the country.

OF GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY WITH THE ANCIENT HAWAIIANS.

The soil was the property of the king, who reserved one part of it for himself, a.s.signing another to the n.o.bles, and left the rest to the first occupant. Property, based on a possession more or less ancient, was transmitted by heritage; but the king could always dispose, according to his whims, of property of chiefs and subjects, and the chiefs had the same privilege over the people.

Taxes were not a.s.sessed on any basis. The king levied them whenever it seemed good to him, and almost always in an arbitrary way. The chiefs also, and the priests, received a tribute from the people. The tax was always in kind, and consisted of:

Kalo, raw and made into poi; Potatoes (_Convolvulus batatas_, L.) many varieties; Bananas (_maia_) of different kinds; Cocoa-nuts (called _niu_ by the natives); Dogs (destined for food);[3] Hogs; Fowls; Fish, crabs, cuttle-fish, sh.e.l.l-fish; Kukui nuts (_Aleurites moluccana_) for making relishes, and for illumination; Edible sea-weed (_limu_); Edible ferns (several species, among others the _hapuu_); Awa (_Piper methystic.u.m_, Forst.); Ki roots (_Cordyline ti_, Schott.), a very saccharine vegetable; Feathers of the _Oo_ (_Drepanis pacifica_), and of the _Iiwi_ (_Drepanis coccinea_): these birds were taken with the glue of the _ulu_ or bread-fruit (_Artocarpus incisa_); Fabrics of beaten bark (_kapa_) and fibre of the _olona_ (_Boehmeria_), of _wauke_ (_Broussonetia papyrifera_), of _hau_ (_Hilasens tiliasens_), etc.; Mats of Panda.n.u.s and of Scirpus; Pili (gra.s.s to thatch houses with); Canoes (_waa_); Wood for building; Calabashes (serving for food vessels, and to hold water); Wooden dishes; Arms and instruments of war, etc., etc.

A labor tax was also enforced, and it was perhaps the most onerous, because it returned almost regularly every moon for a certain number of days. The work was princ.i.p.ally cultivating the _loi_, or fields of kalo, which belonged to the king or chiefs.

The Hawaiian people were divided into three very distinct cla.s.ses; these were:

1. The n.o.bility (_Alii_), comprising the king and the chiefs of whatever degree;