THE CASCADES.--"About forty miles below the Dalles, all navigation is suspended by a series of rapids called the Cascades. The wild grandeur of this place surpasses description. The river rushes furiously over a narrow bed filled with bowlders, and bordered by mountains which echo back the roar of the waters. The descent at the principal rapids is thirty-four feet; and the total fall at the Cascades, sixty-one feet. Salmon pass up the river in great numbers; and the Cascades, at certain seasons of the year, are a favorite fishing resort with the Indians, who build slight stagings over the water's edge, and spear the fish, or catch them in rude dip-nets, as they slowly force their way up against the current." We now return to our travellers. INDIAN MODE OF PACKING SALMON. Near our camp are five large huts of Indians engaged in drying fish, and preparing it for market. The manner of doing this is by first opening the fish, and exposing it to the sun on scaffolds. When it is sufficiently dried, it is pounded between two stones till it is pulverized, and is then placed in a basket, about two feet long and one in diameter, neatly made of grass and rushes, and lined with the skin of the salmon, stretched and dried for the purpose. Here they are pressed down as hard as possible, and the top covered with skins of fish, which are secured by cords through the holes of the basket. These baskets are then placed in some dry situation, the corded part upwards; seven being usually placed as close as they can be together, and five on the top of them. The whole is then wrapped up in mats, and made fast by cords. Twelve of these baskets, each of which contains from ninety to a hundred pounds, form a stack, which is now left exposed till it is sent to market. The fish thus preserved are kept sound and sweet for several years; and great quantities of it, they inform us, are sent to the Indians who live lower down the river, whence it finds its way to the whites who visit the mouth of the Columbia. We observe, both near the lodges and on the rocks in the river, great numbers of stacks of these pounded fish. Beside the salmon, there are great quantities of salmon-trout, and another smaller species of trout, which they save in another way. A hole of any size being dug, the sides and bottom are lined with straw, over which skins are laid. On these the fish, after being well dried, is laid, covered with other skins, and the hole closed with a layer of earth, twelve or fifteen inches deep. These supplies are for their winter food. The stock of fish, dried and pounded, was so abundant, that Capt. Clarke counted one hundred and seven stacks of them, making more than ten thousand pounds. THE INDIAN BOATMEN.