William Denison Lyman

“ When we reach Wenatchee on the Columbia,—a river, a lake, and a town of the same name, meaning in the native tongue the "butterfly,"—we find ourselves in the uppermost of those belts of fruit land which have made the River so famous. As we stroll through these model orchards and vines and berry patches and gardens, and see the wonders wrought on the arid soil by the life-giving waters of the Wenatchee, we are almost ready to join the throng that are continually accepting the invitation to "be independent on ten acres of land and find health, wealth, and happiness in Wenatchee." ”

“ Out of the ocean of cloud, the great peaks of Hood and St. Helens rose, cold and white, like icebergs on an Arctic sea. Coffee, ham, and hardtack, and then out on the ice and snow, just as the first warm flush of morning is gilding the mighty mass above us. The snow, hardened by the freezing morning, affords excellent footing, and in the sharp, bracing air we feel capable of any effort. We gain the summit of a bright red knob, one of the secondary volcanoes that girdle the mountain. ”

“ As we journey on delightedly through these glades, rising, terrace after terrace, we can read the history of the mountain in the rock beneath our feet and the expanding plains and hills below. All within the ancient amphitheatre is volcanic. There are four main summits, a central dome, vast, symmetrical, majestic, pure-white against the blue-black sky of its unsullied height. The three other peaks are broken crags of basalt, leaning as for support against the mighty mass at the centre. Around the snow-line of the mountain many minor cones have been blown up. ”

“ The Western pioneer had probably crossed the Blue Ridge or the Cumberland Mountains when a boy and was now in his prime. Rugged, hardy, and powerful of frame, he was full to overflowing with the love of adventure, and animated by a brave soul that scorned the very idea of fear. All had heard of the perpetually green hills and plains of Western Oregon, and how the warm breath of the vast Pacific tempered the air to the genial degree and drove winter back to the North. ”

“ Yosemite has loftier waterfalls and has cliffs that in some respects are even more imposing. Puget Sound has finer distant scenes, with lagoons and channels and archipelagoes. Each of these grand exhibitions of nature’s works is equal or even superior to the Columbia Gorge in some special feature. But the River has every feature. It has cliffs and mountains and waterfalls and cataracts, valleys and forests, broad marine views near and distant, colour and form, shore and sky, earth and air and water, a commingling of all elements of beauty, grandeur, and physical interest. ”

“ Within the circle of our vision is an area for an empire. Northward is a wilderness of mountains. High above all, Mt. Rainier lifts his white crown unbroken to the only majesty above him, the sky. The western horizon, more hazy than the eastern, is punctuated by the smooth dome and steely glitter of Mt. St. Helens. Far southward, across a wilderness of broken heights, rises the sharp pinnacle of Mt. Hood, and far beyond that, its younger brother, Jefferson. Still beyond, are the Alpine peaks of the Three Sisters, nearly two hundred miles distant. ”

“ As we bid good-bye to the Canadian Rockies, we may say that perhaps the world offers nowhere else such a sea of mountains, such knots and clusters and cordons of elevations, as in this strange and sublime region where the Columbia and its tributaries, the Kootenai, the Illecillewaet, the Wapta, the Beaver, the Canoe, seem to be playing hide-and-seek with the Thompson and the Fraser. ”

“ From the steamer, as we enter the mouth of the Willamette, or from the greater elevation of the lighthouse, one may command one of the lordliest views that even this land of lordly views affords. Five snow-peaks, Hood, Rainier-Tacoma, St. Helens, Adams, and Jefferson, rise snow white from the purple forests of the Cascade Range. Up the Columbia the great gorge through which we have passed stands open to view, while down-river the sinuous and hazy lines of low-lying shore betoken the nearer proximity of the ocean. ”

“ One must necessarily visit Spokane on a journey through the great wheat country. Spokane, the metropolis and the pride of Eastern Washington, is a wonder to the Eastern tourist. Such a city, over one hundred thousand people, with costly brick and stone buildings, four, six, ten stories high, impressive public buildings, schools, churches, hotels, hundred-foot avenues well-paved, private dwellings of architectural excellence,—and hardly a soul there thirty years ago! ”

“ Scarcely anything can be imagined in nature more picturesque and dramatic than this Chinook wind. The thermometer may be down nearly to zero, a foot of snow may rest like a pall on the earth, or a deadly fog may wrap the earth, when suddenly, as if by the breath of inspiration, the fog parts, the peaks of the mountains may be seen half stripped of snow, and then, roaring and whistling, the warm south wind comes like an army. ”

“ On every side except the one down which the creek descends, stupendous, glacier-crowned, and pinnacled peaks penetrate the blue-black sky at an elevation of ten or eleven thousand feet. At the south side of the park lies Glacier Lake, a mile long and half as wide, margined with vivid grass, brilliant flowers, and trees of the Alpine type, clear as crystal, unless darkened by some sudden scud from the heights. At the southern end of the lake is a bold bluff of five hundred feet, over which fall the waters of Railroad Creek, a white band across the darkness of the bluff. ”

“ This picturesque orchard valley is like an avenue of flowers leading to a marble temple. One of the finest points [Pg 355] in the vicinity of Hood River, seldom visited because it is off the road and buried in forests, is Lost Lake. Perhaps the grandest view of Mt. Hood is from this lake. The bold pinnacle, rising out of the broad fields of snow, they in turn most wondrously encircled in forests of rich hue, is mirrored in the clear water with a perfectness that scarcely can be matched among the many lakes of its kind in all the land. ”

“ And now the Canadians insisted upon having their New Year's holiday. Not even death and famine could rob the light-hearted voyageurs of their festivals. So with dance and song and with dog meat, roasted, boiled, fried, and fricasseed, they met the newly-crowned year with their Gallic happiness and abandon.
The Indians assured them that they could reach the Great River within three days. But they found it twice that, and their way led across another lofty chain of snowy mountains, before the canopy of clouds which hung above them parted. ”

“ The experience of crossing the plains was one which nothing else could duplicate;—the hasty rising in the chill damp of the morning, the preparing the cattle and horses for the long, hard drive, the rounds of the waggons to strengthen bolts and tires and tongues, the loading of the rifles for possible hostile Indians or buffalo, the setting forth of the scouts on horseback, the long train strung across the dusty plain, the occasional bands of wild Indians emerging like a whirlwind from the broad expanse, and then the approaching cool of night with its hurried rest on the rough prairie sod. ”

“ As we descend the steep grade from Stephen to Field, we catch glimpses of peak after peak, range after range, valley after valley, glacier after glacier, purple, saffron, red, dazzling white, glistening greens and blues. Mt. Stephen lifts its great wall over a mile of almost perpendicular height, and nearly opposite is the spire of Mt. Burgess. Mountain wonders and attractions of every sort lie in all directions from Field. ”

“ Perhaps the most attractive place on the Arrow Lakes is the point where the upper lake narrows into the stretch of fifteen miles of river joining the two lakes. The mountains on either hand, in great billows of forest green and blue, rise ever upward till they break against the eternal frost. The shores are clothed in dense forests, and on either hand bold promontories enclose sheltered bays, the very beau ideals of camping places. ”

“ Cabinet Rapids are less picturesque and interesting than Rock Island, but they offer even more serious obstacles to navigation, the channel being narrow and the water shallow. The river has cut this part of its course through the great plateau, and its banks on either side are rocky walls a thousand feet high, with occasional sandy stretches, sad, barren, and monotonous. There is, in fact, not so much to catch the eye or enlist the interest of the tourist (if he were here) in this dismal expanse of rock and sand as there is either above or below. It is practically uninhabited. ”

“ Well joined, in truth, are the sublime River and the sublime mountains. One cannot fully understand the River unless he has seen its cradle and the cradle of its affluents beneath the shadows of the great peaks of British Columbia. ”

“ To the visitor at the River’s mouth the fairest sight of all in connection with the fishing industry is the incoming fleet of boats in the early morning, or the outgoing fleet of evening. On a June night it scarcely grows really dark at all, and as the faint glow of the north turns at two or three o’clock into the morning flush, the lateen sails can be seen like a flock of gulls on the rim of the ocean. When the full radiance of the dawn, with its bars of carmine and saffron, has “turned to yellow gold the salt-green streams,” the fleet is within the outer headlands. ”

“ Finally, by reason of scenic grandeur, absorbing interest of physical features, the majesty and mystery of its origin in the greatest of American mountains, the swift might of its flow through some of the wildest as well as some of the most beautiful regions of the globe, and at the last by the peculiar grandeur of its entrance into the greatest of the oceans, this “Achilles of Rivers” attracts alike historian, scientist, poet, statesman, and lover of nature. ”

“ No one ever stood on the hill at Waiilatpu and viewed the mission home of Whitman in the fertile vale of the Walla Walla, the scene of martyrdom and anguish, without joining it in mind with the expanse of the Columbia at Vancouver and recalling “Old Whitehead,” and his large-minded and humane lordship for twenty years of the land of the Oregon. Nor can one withhold the thrill of indignation at the cold-blooded commercialism of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and at the petty ingratitude of some Americans, which together brought darkness to the old hero’s last days. ”

“ When the tidings reached Oregon it was as though a prairie fire were running over the country. Men went fairly mad. Throngs, hardly stopping to take their ploughs from the furrow, mounted their horses, galloped off up the Willamette, through the lonely valleys of the Umpqua and the Rogue River, over the Siskiyou, and down the Sacramento, where a fortune could be had for the digging.
All the stress and strain of American life and [Pg 251] history reached the utmost intensity in the fever strife for gold on the Sacramento. The Willamette and Columbia were almost equally stirred. ”

“ Thenceforth the navigators of all nations accepted as the primary object of their search some great river of the West. Hidden in the fogs of fancy, as it lay shrouded in truth in the mists of the ocean, the supposed Rio de Aguilar yet held the spell of enchantment over many an "ancient mariner" of many a land. Whatsoever nation could actually find the river and establish a definite claim to first discovery, would have, by the generally accepted usage of nations, the right of occupation and ownership. ”

“ With this rich larder, with the spacious buildings, with the annual arrivals and departures of ships by sea and fleets of bateaux by river, with hunting trips and Indian policies, with the intercoast traffic with the Russians on the north and the Spaniards on the south,—there was as much to engage and delight the minds of these people as if they had lived in the heart of civilisation. ”

“ Launches, scows, sailing craft of almost every kind, are in constant movement, loaded with every sort of commodity. Of all the means of transit, however, we will, if you please, float down the stately stream in our well-tried skiff. Independent as the Coyote god Speelyei when he used to pass up and down the river, transforming presumptuous beasts or mortals into rock at will, we will drift with the current, partaking of the very life of the rich and multifarious nature about us. We can pause as we wish on jutting crag or fir-crowned promontory or at the foot of spouting cataract. ”