Before twelve we reach the Dalles at the eighty-seventh mile. I have kindly recollections of this place, for we broke our fast here. It was dinner hour for the passengers, and what was served was very good. Our hostess was an Ontario woman from Kingston, and the landlord one of those genial, imperturbable geniuses whom our neighbours so often produce, who have been everywhere and learned much. In his wanderings he had been in Canada, whence he had carried away his wife. He had so much to tell us of the Dominion that we looked upon him as a countryman. Dalles, in Indian phraseology, we learn from him, means “swift water,” or rapids. We continue the ascent of the southern bank of the Columbia. The valley is generally from two to three miles wide, in the centre of which the stream flows in its placid course. The banks are hilly and appear broken frequently by trap and balsaltic rock. For miles not a tree is to be seen. The light, dry sand is drifted with the wind, like snow in winter, and sand is often formed during storms into mounds and banks, which are more troublesome to the company than snow itself. We were told that the trains were often seriously delayed by it. From the car windows we could see the “dunes” which have accumulated in many places. An occasional house is visible, with the sand half concealing the windows; sometimes cast up to the very eaves. Persevering efforts have been made to arrest its progress by planting trees, and to prevent the saplings from being blown away the roots have been covered with paving stones. At other places the surface is shingled with boards to hold down the sand, so that it will not be blown on the railway track. The landscape has a dreary and forlorn look, which even the river fails fully to relieve. About one hundred and fifty miles from Portland the high river banks have disappeared. We run through a flat, level, barren country covered with sage brush, and we are probably less than three hundred feet above tide water. Umatilla, one hundred and ninety miles from Portland, is the ghost of a once flourishing centre, which existed when gold digging in the Blue Mountains was actively followed. To-day it is a picture of desolation, with deserted streets, with dilapidated wooden buildings surrounded by a desert of sage brush. There is one marked memorial of its prosperity: a graveyard, where many a poor miner lies in his last home. The fence which encloses it is maintained, and what makes it more remarkable, it is the only fence to be seen for many a mile.