15th.--We continued to-day our work at the portage.
About noon, the two barges of the express from Montreal arrived at the upper portage landing, which, for large boats, is on the right bank of the river. They were a fine-looking crew, and among them I remarked a fresh-looking woman and her daughter, emigrants from Canada. It was satisfactory to see the order and speed with which these experienced water-men effected the portage, and passed their boats over the cascades. They had arrived at noon, and in the evening they expected to reach Vancouver. These bateaux carry the express of the Hudson Bay Company to the highest navigable point of the North Fork of the Columbia, whence it is carried by an overland party to Lake Winipec, where it is divided; part going to Montreal, and part to Hudson Bay. Thus a regular communication is kept up between three very remote points.
The Canadian emigrants were much chagrined at the change of climate, and informed me that, only a few miles above, they had left a country of bright blue sky and a shining sun. The next morning the upper parts of the mountains which directly overlook the cascades, were white with the freshly fallen snow, while it continued to rain steadily below.
Late in the afternoon we finished the portage, and, embarking again, moved a little distance up the right bank, in order to clear the smaller rapids of the cascades, and have a smooth river for the next morning. Though we made but a few miles, the weather improved immediately; and though the rainy country and the cloudy mountains were close behind, before us was the bright sky; so distinctly is climate here marked by a mountain boundary.
17th.--We had to-day an opportunity to complete the sketch of that portion of the river down which we had come by night.
Many places occur along the river, where the stumps, or rather portions of the trunks of pine-trees, are standing along the shore, and in the water, where they may be seen at a considerable depth below the surface, in the beautifully clear water. These collections of dead trees are called on the Columbia the _submerged forest_, and are supposed to have been created by the effects of some convulsion which formed the cascades, and which, by damming up the river, placed these trees under water and destroyed them. But I venture to presume that the cascades are older than the trees; and as these submerged forests occur at five or six places along the river, I had an opportunity to satisfy myself that they have been formed by immense landslides from the mountains, which here closely shut in the river, and which brought down with them into the river the pines of the mountain. At one place, on the right bank, I remarked a place where a portion of one of these slides seemed to have planted itself, with all the evergreen foliage, and the vegetation of the neighboring hill, directly amidst the falling and yellow leaves of the river trees. It occurred to me that this would have been a beautiful illustration to the eye of a botanist.