In due process of time the "Fire-canoes," as the natives called steamers, let loose their trails of smoke amid the tops of the "continuous woods." The _Beaver_, a small steamship belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company and sent from England, entered the River in 1836, the first steamer to ply these waters. The Company afterwards sent her to Puget Sound, and, if we are correctly informed, she is still afloat on the Gulf of Georgia. In 1850 the first American steamship, the _Carolina_, crossed the Bar. In the same year a little double-ender, called the _Columbia_, began running between Portland and Astoria. [Illustration: Tirzah Trask, a Umatilla Indian Girl--Taken as an Ideal of Sacajawea. Photo. by Lee Moorehouse, Pendleton.] The first river steamer of any size to ply upon the Willamette and Columbia was the _Lot Whitcomb_. This steamer was built by Whitcomb and Jennings. J. C. Ainsworth was the first captain, and Jacob Kamm was the first engineer. Both these men became leaders in every species of steamboating enterprise. In 1851 Dan Bradford and B. B. Bishop inaugurated a movement to connect the up-river region with the lower river by getting a small iron propeller called the _Jason P. Flint_ from the East and putting her together at the Cascades, whence she made the run to Portland. The _Flint_ has been named as first to run above the Cascades, but the author has the authority of Mr. Bishop for stating that the first steamer to run above the Cascades was the _Eagle_. That steamer was brought in sections by Allen McKinley to the upper Cascades in 1853, there put together, and set to plying on the part of the river between the Cascades and The Dalles. In 1854, the _Mary_ was built and launched above the Cascades, the next year the _Wasco_ followed, and in 1856 the _Hassalo_ began to toot her jubilant horn at the precipices of the mid-Columbia. In 1859 R. R. Thompson and Lawrence Coe built the _Colonel Wright_, the first steamer on the upper section of the River. In the same year the same men built at the upper Cascades a steamer called the _Venture_. This craft met with a curious catastrophe. For on her very first trip she swung too far into the channel and was carried over the upper Cascades, at the point where the Cascade Locks are now located. She was subsequently raised, rebuilt, and rechristened the _Umatilla_. This part of the period of steamboat building was cotemporary with the Indian wars of 1855 and 1856. The steamers, _Wasco_, _Mary_, and _Eagle_ were of much service in rescuing victims of the murderous assault on the Cascades by the Klickitats. While the enterprising steamboat builders were thus making their way up-river in the very teeth of Indian warfare, steamboats were in course of construction on the Willamette. The _Jennie Clark_ in 1854 and the _Carrie Ladd_ in 1858 were built for the firm of Abernethy, Clark & Company. These both, the latter especially, were really elegant steamers for the time.