| OCR Text |
Show THE WAY TO OREGON. 403 of little Importance except for shipping salmon. The call to a late breakfast showed the fifty cabin passengers all on hand, each one spec-ulating humorously as to how many would sit down to the next meal ; for we could already see the white foam on the bar, and knew that a " high sea was running outside." The Columbia bar was long the terror of navigators, but it appears to have been such only through ignorance; and, since proper soundings have been made, no more ac-cidents have occurred in the last twenty years than at the mouths of other large rivers. We passed it in an hour, without difficulty, and soon were upon the " heaving ocean," of which we read. It was a rough introduction. The heaviest sea encountered on the voyage was at the start. One minute the bow appeared to be rearing up to square off at the midday sun, and the next to get down and root for something at the bottom of the ocean. Bets were made as to who would be the " first to fall," and a large party of us went to the hurricane deck to stand it out. " With songs, shouts, and laughter we danced about on unsteady footing, attempting an " Ethiopian walk- around " on the heaving deck, determined to fight off the sickness to the last moment. Then we practiced balancing against the waves, watching the water in the hollows of the deck, and seizing on the moment when it started one way to throw ourselves to the opposite. While enjoying this pas-time, a lad of some fifteen years suddenly sank to the deck, then rose and emptied his stomach at one vast hfeave. There was a yell of laughter as he started below, but in a minute two more followed suit. Then they fell away rapidly, and in an hour only five of us remained. As I gazed on the bow, admiring the majestic sweep of its rise and fall, it suddenly appeared to stop, then stood dead still, and the \ vhole body of the ocean appeared to rise and fall instead, and in a moment my head seemed to rise and fall with it, leaving the bow between us quite fixed. I had been warned not to look at the bow, but I forgot it. I tried in vain to restore the natural order, but the illusion had become to me a reality : the bow was still, and my head and the ocean alone moved. At every rise my neck seemed to stretch out longer, my head get farther from my body, and my stomach to rise and fall with the ocean. Lunch was called, and I went below. One mouth-ful of soup I swallowed, but felt it coming back. I clapped my hand upon my mouth and rushed to my berth, badly defeated. Next door to me was a family of four, making their first trip away from Oregon. As I passed, the little girl and boy were lying in the lower berth, with their heads over a basin, moaning with sickness; the young mother lay above, pale as the sheet, and unable even to resist the motion of |
