far above the junction of the Umatilla and Columbia the great river makes a long bend, receiving, after it takes the north and south direction, the rivers flowing east from the Cascade Range in East Washington, as well as the tumultuous Lewis or Snake River, which divides Oregon from Idaho.
It is nearly sunset when the steamer quits Umatilla to finish the voyage we have entered upon, at Wallula,—a distance of twenty-five miles farther up stream, in a direction a little east of north. We steam along in the rosy sunset and purple twilight, by which the hills are clothed in royal dyes. About eight in the evening we arrive at Wallula, too late to be aware of the waste of sand and gravel in which it is situated. Wallula has been the port for the Walla Walla Valley ever since the occupation of the country by white people. It was formerly a post of the Hudson's Bay Company, some of the old adobe buildings being still standing.
The bluffs bordering the Columbia at this place repeat those harmonies of grandeur with grace, which won remark from us on other portions of the river. The Walla Walla River, which comes in just here, is a very pretty stream, with, however, very little bottom-land near the Columbia.
The sand of Wallula is something to be dreaded. It insinuates itself everywhere. You find it scattered over the plate on which you are to dine; piled up in little hillocks in the corner of your wash-stand; dredged over the pillows on which you thoughtlessly sink your weary head, without stopping to shake them; setting your teeth on edge with grit, everywhere. And this ocean of sand extends several miles back from the river. In sight of the Columbia and Snake Rivers, it seems to cry out, like the Ancient Mariner,—
"Water, water everywhere,
And never a drop to drink."
Bathed in a rosy sunset, with a royal purple twilight stealing over the hills, it has a simple and chaste grandeur about it that appertains to desert scenes, making one think of the Nile; the more so, as the rising moon touches with a soft gilding the summit of a great rock that might be the pyramid of Cheops. And so good-night to it.
