The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1876-01-07
EDIToRIAL CORRESPONDENCE.


week at the door of state-room on one |
of the o. S. n. Co.'s elegant steamers,
that lay at her wharf at Wallula, await
ing the coming morning.
Now, we are at home, cozily seated in
our Office chair; and as we resume the |
jottings of our subsequent journeyings,
up to date, we must rely wholly upon
memory that is badly confused by the
hum of loved ones voices, whose chat
ter makes US glad.
Long before daylight the good steam
ef's breath was laboring away at the
massive engine, and soon the whistle
woke the wild echoes in the mighty
rocks with its shrieking din, the bells
tingled and tinkled, and we went to
sleep again, to be reused to breakfast at
half-past six by rap at the door, from
the hand of an ebony and orderly stew
ard, who is as precise as polite. The
breakfast was elegant, the captain
obliging, the company first-class, and
the conversation enlivening. Besides,
we were homeward bound, and who
wouldn't have been happyP
Halted at Umatilla just long enough
to take a traveller or two on board and
cast goodbye glance at its wind-worn
desolation, and then on we went,
through swirling waters that sometimes
lashed the sunken rocks till their futile
efforts to destroy them made them
white with angry frothing, and then,
gloomily and sullenly, rushed on in tor
rents, leaving the next relay to make
the same attempt, only to meet like
repulse, and follow on, in the same dark
channels, forever chasing wave on wave
with melancholy roaring. Sometimes
great, bare, unsightly, and yet beauti-
! full basaltic headlands reared themselves
like sentinels upon one hand or the
other, under the lee of which we steered
with caution; sometimes, for many
miles, the great prairies rolled them
selves gently away from the river bank
and were lost in the distance, or
bounded at their base by blue lines of
mountains, that occasionally reared a
mighty snow-peak heavenward; and all
the time we journeyed amid scenes of
awful, silent, oppressive majesty, COM
pared to which man is a pigmy, hu-
manity an atom.
The steamer yakima" lies wounded
and bleeding near the mouth of John
Days River, and we all went out upon
the deck, in the teeth of a piercing gale,
to take a melancholy survey of her
crippled condition. Poor steamer
She looked up imploringly, with mute
appeal to US to bind her severed arteries,
through which her life was ebbing, till
your correspondent covered her eyes, Sc
very human did the poor creature seem
in her mortal misery. The "Tenino'i
was on duty as nurse, and well she
guarded her disabled charge. Some
hospital supplies were furnished from
} our steamers commissariat, and bid
ding the unfortunate, though by nc
means hopeless wreck regretful good.
| Uy6l we JOuTH6Gcu Ou anu Ous
Spent an hour in impatient waiting
| at Cello, and then took passage on the
train, that bore us to The Dalles.
The Umatilla House, well-kept anC
, ample, bade the wanderers welcome
: Night, black as Erebus, had settled like
a monster pail over the sodden earth
, the street lamps fiared fiickeringly
: through the misty atmosphere, and tn,
r whole town looked sickly, deserted
fossilized, and literally 'gone to seed.
A good supper and sound sleep re
: freshed us by morning, and then WI
:, went out upon the street to look up
place to lecture.
: Now, you must know, friendly reader
that there is "Butcher" at The Dalles
! called on show bills, Butcher, tn
;, sweet singer" who sometimes acts as
: negro minstrel, sometimes as an oppo
a nent of human rights, and sometime
as minister of the mans rights gospel
This Butcher" helps to feed portion
n of The Dalles people on "Beezley"-ins
and between the "Butcher" and tn
4 "Beezley"-ins the town has so nearl.
fallen asleep that it submits, after hav
ing builded the churches, to allow sal
Butcher" and "Beezley"-ins to loc
them in their faces when they want t
o use them; uttering weakly protests, it
s true, but yielding to the outrage upo
y their inalienable rights in the premise
:, like serfs. This being the case, W
e could get no appropriate place for
q course of lectures. In justice to th
e Methodist minister, we must not omt
d to state that he would have wilIingl
opened his church but for Pharisaics
J. trustee, who, like Butcher and Beezley
'e felt called upon to protect God from th
/ women with lock and key.
Of We look for that one righteous ma
le in ecclesiastical authority in The Dale
7, to leaven the whole lump by the tim
g of our return, for we assure our man
'e good friends and subscribers there WI
4 are justly indignant over our havin
Or been treated as malefactor, instead
Of a missionary, by the self-righteous al
OF thorities in the churches-who, with
s. spirit of persecution that would crucii
rs all refornoers if they were not too GOV