I went up the Columbia River to the Dalles the other day. At the Dalles was a camp for the night of about five hundred Chinamen, being transferred by the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company from work higher up the river to some of the heavy rock-cutting and tunneling between the Dalles and the Lower Cascades. I stood and watched them at their suppers. Divided into messes of twelve or fifteen each, they had supplied themselves with beef in the town. Holes were dug in the ground, sticks lighted in them, and large pans set on to boil, and, with plenty of salt and pepper, a savory smell soon arose. Large pans of rice were boiling by the side, and before long each man's portion was ladled out into a real China basin, which he held in one hand close to his mouth, while the chop-sticks moved at a terrible rate in the fingers of the other hand. Such uncouth figures!--bronzed in tint, short and heavy in form, clad in thick blanket-coats, with knee-boots; turbans round most heads made of heavy scarlet woolen comforters, and a few old hats among the crowd; and a constant gabble of voices, nearly deafening in the aggregate. Their little tents were pitched on the river-bank close at hand, and a huge pile of their unmistakable baggage lay heaped, with their shovels and axes, on the deck of the great scow hard by. The town was full of them, buying or bargaining in every store. I marked a group of four who wanted a pair of strong scissors. They were asked fifty cents in a store. They examined the scissors and tried to cheapen them in vain, and then left. They tried four stores in turn, but found no better article, and the same price; then returned to their first love, and strove hard for a reduction in vain. Again they went the round; again they came back: on the fourth visit the patience of the Jewish gentleman behind the counter gave way, and he told them to take it or leave it, they should not see the scissors again. Most unwillingly, and after a vast amount of breathing on the blades to see how quickly the vapor disappeared, the half-dollar came forth and the scissors changed owners. They are the closest buyers in the world. The next morning by seven o'clock the tents were struck, the Chinamen on board the steamer, and in the afternoon we passed them hard at work, spread in a long line on the face of a terrible rock, which looked as if five thousand Chinamen might work at it in vain for a year to make a fit passage for the train.