The portage-road is six miles in length, leading nearly all the way close along the edge of the North Bluff, which, owing to a recession of the mountains, seems here only from fifty to eighty feet in height. From the windows of the train we enjoyed an almost uninterrupted view of the rapids, which are only less grand and forceful in their impression than those above Niagara. They are broken up into narrow channels by numerous bold and naked islands of trap. Through these the water roars, boils, and, striking projections, spouts upward in jets whose plumy top blows off in sheets of spray. It is tormented into whirlpools; it is combed into fine threads, and strays whitely over a rugged ledge like old men's hair; it takes all curves of grace and arrow-flights of force; it is water doing all that water can do or be made to do. The painter who spent a year in making studies of it would not throw his time away; when he had finished, he could not misrepresent water under any phases.
At the upper end of the portage-road we found another and smaller steamer awaiting us, with equally kind provision for our comfort made by the Company and the captain. In both steamers we were accorded excellent opportunities for drawing and observation, getting seats in the pilot-house.
Above the rapids the river-banks were bold and rocky. The stream changed from its recent Niagara green to a brown like that of the Hudson; and under its waters, as we hugged the Oregon side, could be seen a submerged alluvial plateau, studded thick with drowned stumps, here and there lifting their splintered tops above the water, and measuring from the diameter of a sapling to that of a trunk which might once have been one hundred feet high.
Between Fort Vancouver and the cataract the banks of the river seem nearly as wild as on the day they were discovered by the whites. On neither the Oregon nor the Washington side is there any settlement visible,--a small wood-wharf, or the temporary hut of a salmon-fisher, being the only sign of human possession. At the Falls we noticed a single white house standing in a commanding position high up on the wooded ledges of the Oregon shore; and the taste shown in placing and constructing it was worthy of a Hudson-River landholder. This is, perhaps, the first attempt at a distinct country-residence made in Oregon, and belongs to a Mr. Olmstead, who was one of the earliest settlers and projectors of public improvements in the State. He was actively engaged in the building of the first portage-railroad, which ran on the Oregon side. The entire interests of both have, I believe, been concentrated in the newer one, and the Oregon road, after building itself by feats of business-energy and ingenuity known only to American pioneer enterprise, has fallen into entire or comparative disuse.