2-752-550 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

'Middle Block-house, Cascades', 1872. The Columbia River, USA: 'The Cascades are the fierce and whirling rapids wherein the river falls forty feet, twenty feet of it being taken almost at a leap. But for five miles the river is a seething whirlpool, and a queer little railroad on the Washington side affords the portage. The track runs so near the water's edge that one has a view of these rapids for the whole way, from the Middle Block-house, relic of not unremote Indian wars, to the drowned forest above the upper landing. The whole river-bed is gigantic rocks, sometimes hidden by the water, sometimes tearing through the water to make sharp and naked islands, between which the current rushes down, white with foam and with a roar like the sea'. From "Picturesque America; or, The Land We Live In, A Delineation by Pen and Pencil of the Mountains, Rivers, Lakes...with Illustrations on Steel and Wood by Eminent American Artists" Vol. I, edited by William Cullen Bryant. [D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1872]