improve some rapids above The Dalles, all of which, when completed, will add a notable feature to Columbia River travel.
There is comparatively little river travel on the Columbia above the Wallamet, all through passengers being carried on the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company's line to its connection with the Oregon Short Line through Idaho, or to a junction with the Northern Pacific on the north side of the Columbia. But sight-seeing is more satisfactory from the deck of a steamboat than from the window of a rapidly-moving and crowded car, and the tourist will do well to bear this in mind.
Aside from the river there is little to interest one about The Dalles. Just above the old garrison grounds is a fine view of Mount Adams and another of Mount Hood. Is seems to .the uneducated vision as if an hour's ride would take one up among the highest firs on Hood, quite to the glistening snow-fields; but it is a good forty miles, over a rough road, to the foot of the mountain where the climbing begins.
Opposite The Dalles is the unfinished village of Rockland, in the county of Klickitat, Washington. The name of Wasco, the county in which The Dalles is situated, was given to this locality —so runs the legend—in the following manner: The Indians being collected at the fishery Winquat, a favorite spot for taking salmon, about three miles from The Dalles, one of them was so unlucky as to lose his squaw, the mother of his children, one of whom was yet only a babe. This babe would not be comforted, and the other children, being young, were clamorous for their mother. In this trying position, with these wailing little ones on his awkward masculine hands, the father was compelled to give up fishing and betake himself to amusing his babies. Many expedients having failed, he at length found that they were diverted by seeing him pick cavities in the rocks in the form of basins, which they could fill with water or pebbles, and accordingly, as many a patient mother does every day, adapted himself to the taste and capacities of his children, and made any number of basins they required. Wasco being the name of a kind of horn basin which is in use among the Des Chutes, his associates gave the name to this devoted father in ridicule of his domestic qualities; and afterward, when he had resolved to found a village at Winquat, and drew many of his people after
