On October 16th, after a rapid passage of the Kooskooskee, the party entered the Columbia; and from that point to the Pacific the journey was without particular adventure, save for the difficulty of passing numerous rapids and cascades. Indian villages were everywhere upon the banks; but their people were of a very low order,--very jackals of humanity; dirty, flea-bitten packs, whose physical and moral constitutions plainly showed the debilitating effects of unnumbered generations of fish-eating, purposeless life. Physical and moral decency usually go hand in hand, even in a state of nature. The Columbia tribes had no conception of either; they were in the same condition then as now, mean-spirited, and strangers to all those little delicacies of behavior that had distinguished the mountain tribes. The passage of the Narrows, above the Falls of the Columbia, trusting to their fire-hollowed logs, demanded much daring and self-possession. Captain Clark wrote:-- "As the portage of our canoes over this high rock would be impossible with our Strength, and the only danger in passing thro those narrows was the whorls and swills arriseing from the compression of the water, and which I thought (as also our principal waterman Peter Crusat) by good stearing we could pass down safe, accordingly I deturmined to pass through this place, not with standing the horred appearance of this agitated gut swelling, boiling & whorling in every direction which from the top of the rock did not appear as bad as when I was in it; however we passed safe to the astonishment of the Inds." At other times they were not so successful in this sort of undertaking. The canoes were often overset in the swift water, by being caught in whirlpools or colliding with rocks, causing great inconvenience and resulting in some serious losses of baggage. And the men were performing this arduous labor upon a diet of dog-meat, and almost nothing besides.