From the Dalles to the Cascades the river has scarcely a perceptible current, either side being bounded by perpendicular walls of mountains. Tradition says, that once the river had a uniformly swift course the entire way, and that where the Cascades now are, the water passed at that time under a huge arch that reached from side to side. Afterwards an earthquake tumbled it down, the ruins of the arch still existing as a chain of islands across the head of the rapids; the river, having gradually carried away the fragments, forming now the long rapid. The river, thus suddenly thrown back, flooded the forests up to the Dalles, and to this day stumps of trees are to be seen sticking out of the water many hundred yards from the shore. Below the Cascades, before reaching the flat district about Fort Vancouver, the scenery is bold and massive; immense hills densely wooded, bold promontories, and grassy glades are passed successively as the steamer dashes on her downward trip. At the Cascades there is now a railway, over which goods and passengers are conveyed to the steamers above the rapids, which are so swift that canoes plied by experienced Indians dare not venture to run them. Wandering along by this foaming rush of water, one sees numberless scaffoldings erected amongst the boulders—rude clumsy contrivances, constructed of poles jammed between large stones, and lashed with ropes of bark to other poles, that cross each other to form stages. Indian lodges, pitched in the most picturesque and lovely spots imaginable, are dotted along from one end of the rapids to the other. Indians from long distances and of several tribes have come here to await the arrival of the salmon. Leaning against the trees, or supported by the lodges, are numbers of small round nets (like we catch shrimps with in rocky pools), fastened to handles forty and fifty feet in length. Hollow places are cunningly enclosed, with low walls of boulders, on the riverside of each stage. It is early in June; the salmon have arrived, and a busy scene it is. On every stage plying their nets are Indian fishers, guiltless of garments save a piece of cloth tied round the waist. Ascending the rapids, salmon seek the slack-waters at the edges of the current, and are fond of lingering in the wake of a rock or any convenient hollow; the rock-basins constructed by the sides of the stages are just the places for idling and resting. This the crafty fisher turns to good account, and skilfully catches the loiterer by plunging his net into the pool at its head, and letting the current sweep it down, thus _hooping_ salmon after salmon, with a certainty astounding to a looker-on. Thirty salmon an hour is not an unusual take for two skilled Indians to land on a stage. As soon as one gets tired, another takes his place, so that the nets are never idle during the ‘run.’