Lewis R. Freeman

“ Sooner or later—and usually sooner—something or somebody will put you right. A broken oar and all but a mess-up in an inconsiderable riffle was all that was needed to quench the glow of pride that I felt over having won through the roughly tumbling left-hand channel of Rock Island Rapids with only a short length of lining. And it was a steady-eyed old river captain who brought me back to earth the night I told him—somewhat boastfully, I fear—that I had slashed my skiff straight down the middle of the final pitch of Umatilla Rapids, where Lewis and Clark had felt they had to portage. ”

“ Blackmore led the way back through his apple orchard and down a stairway that descended the steeply-sloping river bank to his boat-house. The Columbia, a quarter of a mile wide and with just a shade of grey clouding its lucent greenness to reveal its glacial origin, slid swiftly but smoothly by with a purposeful current of six or seven miles an hour. A wing-dam of concrete, evidently built to protect the works of a sawmill a bit farther down stream, jutted out into the current just above, and the boat-house, set on a raft of huge logs, floated in the eddy below. ”

“ The Nile, the Niger, the Amazon, the Yangtse, the Mississippi—all of the other great rivers—find their way to the sea through miasmic swamps; only the Columbia finishes in a setting worthy of that in which it takes its rise. Nay, more than that. Superlative to the last degree as is the scenery along the Columbia, from its highest glacial sources in the Rockies and Selkirks right down to the Cascades, there is not a gorge, a vista, a panorama, a cascade of which I cannot truthfully say: “That reminds me of something I have seen before.” ”

“ The black-walled gorge of Rock Island is one of the grimmest-looking holes on the Columbia, and of all hours of the day sunset, when the deep shadows are banking thick above the roaring waters, is the least cheery time to pay it a visit. Somewhat as at Hell Gate, the river splits upon a long, rocky island, the broader, shallower channel being to the right, and the narrower, deeper one to the left. ”

“ It was all but full night as the roar of Foster Creek Rapids began to drown the rattle of the engine, with [Pg 280] only a luminous lilac mist floating above the south-western mountains to mark where the sun had set; but it was enough—just enough—to throw a glow of pale amethyst on the frothy tops of the white-caps, leaving the untorn water to roll on in fluid anthracite. Earl barely eased her at the head, and then plunged her down a path of polished ebony, with the blank blur of rocks looming close on the right and an apparitional line of half-guessed rollers booming boisterously to the left. ”

“ We are rushing forward at a fearful rate, owing to the combined exertions of the Indians and the racing current, and we shudder at the thought of striking any of the huge black rocks near which we glide. Now we are fairly in the rapids, and our boat is rushing madly through the foam and billows; the Indians are shouting at every stroke in their wild, savage glee; it is infectious; we shout too, and feel the wild exultation which comes to men in moments of great excitement and danger. ”

“ Imbedded in the face of one of these cliffs not far from the tumultuous run of Gualquil Rapids, is a landmark that has been famous among Columbia voyageurs for over a hundred years. This is huge log, barkless and weather-whitened, standing on end in the native basalt. Over a thousand feet above the river and almost an equal distance from the brink of the sheer wall of rock, there is no possible question of its having been set there by man. ”

“ Knowing there was no really bad water ahead, the Captain let her slide through a couple of easy riffles, the white-topped waves barely guessed as they flagged us with ghostly signals. But a deepening growl, borne on the wings of the slight up-river night-breeze, demanded more consideration. No one but a lunatic goes into a strange rapid in a poor light, to say nothing of complete darkness. Pulling into an eddy by the left bank, we stopped and listened. ”

“ Two or three rotting hulks on the mud by the old landing at Golden are all that remain of one of the most picturesque steamer services ever run, for those old stern-wheelers used to flounder up the Columbia to Windermere, on through Mud and Columbia Lakes to Canal Flats, through a log-built lock to the Kootenay watershed, and then down the winding canyons and tumbling rapids of that tempestuous stream to Jennings, Montana. ”

“ It is a callous traveller who, in strange lands and seas, does not render heart homage to the better men that have gone before him. Just as you cannot sail the Pacific for long without fancying that Cook and [Pg xviii] Drake and Anson are sharing your night watches, so on the Columbia it is Thompson and Cox and Lewis and Clark who come to be your guiding spirits. At the head of every one of the major rapids you land just as you know they must have landed, and it is as through their eyes that you survey the work ahead. ”

“ What had been merely a swiftly-flowing river with a streak of silver riffles down the middle had changed to a tumultuous tumble of cascades that gleamed in solid white from bank to bank like the churned snow of a freshly descended avalanche. There was no green water whatever; not even a streak that was tinged with green. All that relieved the coruscating, sun-silvered tumble of whiteness were the black tips of jutting bedrock, sticking up through the foam they had churned. ”

“ Of a lake which is one of the loveliest in all the world in the sunlight, nothing was to be seen save a stretch of grey-white, wind-whipped waters beating upon grey-brown rocky shores. That the wind and waves headed us did not make the pulling any lighter, for the boat’s considerable freeboard gave both a lot of surface to play upon. The exertion of rowing kept Andy and me warm, however, which gave us at least that advantage over Roos and Blackmore. ”

“ The water looks terribly cold as we think of his failing eyesight. Then an order, a shout, backing on one side and pulling on the other, and a quick stroke of the steering oar, and the rock appears on our right hand. Another command, and answering shout, and the oars bend like willows as the Indians struggle to get the boat out of the strong eddy into which Pierre had thrown her. Finally she shoots ahead and passes the rock like a flash, within less than an oar’s length of it, and we shout for joy and breathe freely again.... ”

“ No point in the whole length of the Columbia, not even Astoria, has associations more calculated to stir the imagination than this tiny patch of silt-covered overflow flat which has been formed by the erosive action of three torrential rivers tearing at the hearts of three great mountain ranges. Sand and soil of the Rockies, Selkirks and the Gold Range, carried by the Columbia, Canoe and Wood rivers, meet and mingle to form the remarkable halting place, where the east and westbound pioneering traffic of a century stopped to gather breath for the next stage of its journey. ”

“ With the golden sunset light streaming through the trees, Roos, always strong for “pathetic human touches” to serve as a sombre background for his Mack Sennett stuff, could not resist the opportunity for a picture. Andy and Blackmore and I were to come climbing up to the grave from the lake, read the inscription, and then look at each other and shake our heads ominously, as though it was simply a matter of time until we, too, should fall prey to the implacable river. ”

“ If the sand had been blowing thick enough to obscure the farther shore, and if the wind had blown in the right direction to throw up a line or two of surf, I could have stood with one foot on that beach, the other on Imshallah’s bow, elbow on knee, chin in hand, and registered “fulfilment,” and none could have told it from the real Pacific. Indeed, that bit of backwash from Pasco’s outfall sewer, with the sand-barrage and surf I have postulated, would have “shot” more like the Pacific than many spots I can think of looking off to the Columbia bar. ”

“ A solid jetty of stone could not have broken the rollers more effectually. On one side was a wild wallow of tossing water; on the other—as far as the surface of the river was concerned—an almost complete calm.
It was a horrible indignity to heap upon Imshallah (and, after the way she had displayed her resentment following her garbage shower under the Wenatchee bridge, I knew that spirited lady would make me pay dear for it if ever she had the chance) ; still—dead beat as I was—there was nothing else to do but to head into that oleaginous belt of calm and make the best of it. ”

“ Strings of lofty glacier-set summits marked the line of the back-bone of the Selkirks to southeast and northwest, each of them sending down rain-swollen torrents to tumble into the lake in cataracts and cascades. Behind, or east of us, we knew the Rockies reared a similar barrier of snow and ice, but this was cut off from our vision by the more imminent lake-wall under which we were camped. If Kinbasket Lake is ever made accessible to the tourist its fame will reach to the end of the earth. ”

“ What had been a gentle ten-miles-an-hour breeze on the river above began resolving itself into a succession of fitful gusts of twenty or thirty as I approached the rock-walled bend. Even a steady head-wind makes steering awkward in going into a rapid; a gusty one is a distinct nuisance. ”

“ A sky-line of brown [Pg 327] mountains, with a double-turreted butte as their most conspicuous feature, marks the point where the Columbia finally turns west for its assault on the Cascades and its plunge to the Pacific. That bend is the boundary of the fertile plains extending from the Yakima to the Walla Walla, and the beginning of a new series of gorges, in some respects the grandest of all. The matchless panorama of the Cascade gorges is a fitting finale to the stupendous scenic pageant that has been staged all the way from the glacial sources of the Columbia. ”

“ The deeper rumble of Death Rapids became audible above the higher-keyed grind of Rock Slide as we worked down toward the head of the intervening eddy. Of all the cataracts and cascades with sinister records on the Columbia this Dalles of the Dead has undoubtedly been the one to draw to itself the greatest share of execration. ”

“ One berg, floating on another, had been reduced by the sun to the seeming of a gigantic view camera—box, bellows and lens. A number of famous groups of statuary were there, but of course very much in the rough. “The Thinker” was perhaps the best of these, but even Rodin would have wanted to do a bit more “finishing” on the glacial cave-man humped up on his icy green pedestal. Roos, who had never heard of Rodin, said it reminded him of me drying out after my shower-bath in the ice-cave. His facile imagination also discovered something else. ”

“ The swift stroke by which the Cascades were parted for the Columbia left “The Achilles of Rivers” unimpaired in vigour. It rolls out of the mountains with a force which endless æons have not weakened to a point where it was incapable of carrying the silt torn down by its erosive actions far out into the sea. It is the one great river that does not run for scores, perhaps hundreds, of miles through a flat, monotonous delta; the one great stream that meets the ocean strength for strength. ”

“ It was the battle ground of two rival avalanches, Nixon explained, two great slides which, with the impetus of six or eight thousand feet of run driving uncounted millions of tons of snow and earth, met there every spring in primeval combat. No man had ever seen the fantastic onslaught (for no man could reach that point in the springtime) , but it was certain that the remains of it made a mighty dam all the way across the valley. Then the creek would be backed up half way to the glacier, when it would accumulate enough power to sweep the obstruction away and scatter it down to the Columbia. ”

“ A flake of the sputtering calcium kicked back up his sleeve and inflicted a raw, round burn with half the colours of the spectrum showing in its concentric rings of singed cuticle. The chap displayed astonishing nerve in refusing to relinquish his grip on the handle of the flare and thus ruin the picture. I most certainly would never have done so myself. Roos described the glittering ice walls as a “veritable Aladdin’s Cave of jewels,” and only regretted that he couldn’t have had that lighting on my shower-bath. ”

“ For a hundred miles or more of the Bend, now just as much as in years long gone by, an upset with the loss of an outfit is more likely than not to spell disaster and probably tragedy. But in my own passage of the Big Bend I can claim no personal credit that those miles of tumbling water were run successfully. I was entirely in the hands of a pair of seasoned old river hands, and merely pulled an oar in the boat and did a few other things when I was told. ”

“ Nothing but the most careful computations, based on speed of current and area of cross-section, will give anything approximating the real discharge of a river.
I was a good deal interested in the Pend d’Oreille, because it was on one of its upper tributaries, the Flathead in Montana, that I had made my first timid effort at rapid-running a good many years previously. It hadn’t been a brilliant success—for two logs tied together with ropes hardly make the ideal of a raft; but the glamour of the hare-brained stunt had survived the wetting. ”