Twelve miles below "The Dalles" there is a lonely, rugged island anchored
amid stream. It is bare, save for a white monument which rises from its
rocky breast. No living thing, no vestige of verdure, or tree, or shrub,
appears. And Captain McNulty, as he stood at the wheel and steadied the
"Queen," said:
"That monument? It's Victor Trevet's. Of course you never heard of him,
but he was a great man, all the same, here in Oregon in the old times.
Queer he was, and no mistake. Member of one of the early legislatures;
sort of a general peacemaker; everybody went to him with their troubles,
and when he said a lawsuit didn't go, it didn't, and he always stuck up
for the Indians, and always called his own kind 'dirty mean whites.' I
used to think that was put on, and maybe it was, but anyhow that's the
way he used to talk. And a hundred times he has said to me, 'John, when
I die, I want to be buried on Memaloose Isle.' That's the 'Isle of the
Dead,' which we just passed, and has been from times away back the burial
place of the Chinook Indians. It's just full of 'em. And I says to him,
'Now, Vic., it's fame your after.' 'John,' says he, 'I'll tell you: I'm
not indifferent to glory; and there's many a big gun laid away in the
cemetery that people forget in a year, and his grave's never visited
after a few turns of the wheel; but if I rest on Memaloose Isle, I'll not
be forgotten while people travel this river. And another thing: You know,
John, the dirty, mean whites stole the Indian's burial ground and built
Portland there. Everyday the papers have an account of Mr. Bigbug's
proposed palace, and how Indian bones were turned up in the excavation. I
won't be buried alongside any such dirty, mean thieves. And I'll tell you
further, John, that it may be if I am laid away among the Indians, when
the Great Day comes I can slip in kind of easy. They ain't going to have
any such a hard time as the dirty whites will have, and maybe I won't be
noticed, and can just slide in quiet along with their crowd.'
"And I tell you," said the honest Captain, as he swung the "Queen" around
a sharp headland, and the monument and island vanished, "he has got his
wish. He don't lay among the whites, and there isn't a day in summer when
the name of Vic. Trevet ain't mentioned, either on yon train or on a boat,
just as I am telling it to you now. When he died in San Francisco five
years ago, some of his old friends had him brought back to 'The Dalles,'
and one lovely Sunday (being an off day) we buried him on Memaloose Isle,
and then we put up the monument. His earthly immortality is safe and sure,
for that stone will stand as long as the island stays. She's eight feet
square at the base, built of the native rock right on the island, then
three feet of granite, then a ten-foot column. It cost us $1,500, and
Vic. is bricked up in a vault underneath. Yes, sir, he's there for sure
till resurrection day. Queer idea? Why, blame it all, if he thought he
could get in along with the Chinooks it's all right, ain't it? Don't want
a man to lose any chances, do you?"
[Illustration: MULTNOMAH FALLS, COLUMBIA RIVER, ORE. On the Union Pacific
Ry.]
So much has been said of this mighty river that the preconceived idea
of the tourist is of a surging flood of unknown depth rushing like a
mountain torrent. The plain facts are that the Lower Columbia is rather
a placid stream, with a sluggish current, and the channel shoals up to
eight feet, then falling to twelve, fifteen and seventeen feet, and
suddenly dropping to 100 feet of water and over. In the spring months
it will rise from twenty-five to forty feet, leaving driftwood high up
among the trees on the banks. The tide ebbs and flows at Portland from
eighteen inches to three feet, according to season, and this tidal
influence is felt, in high water, as far up as the Cascades. It is
fifty miles of glorious beauty from "The Dalles" to the Cascades. Here
we leave the steamer and take a narrow-gauge railway for six miles
around the magnificent rapids. At the foot of the Cascades we board a
twin boat, fitted up with equal taste and comfort.