Columbia River

“ Whether viewed artistically, commercially, financially, socially, or historically, this fair metropolis of the Columbia River Empire is in a class by herself. Only by personal acquaintance can the student of the West satisfy himself as to Portland.
But once more we must address ourselves to the River. One may go to Astoria by rail down the southern bank, or he may, if he prefer, as we certainly do, go by water. He can go by almost every species of boat known to man, from an ocean steamship to one of the lateen-sailed fishing boats which abound on the lower River. ”

“ In the tremendous movement now sweeping over our country to improve waterways, the Columbia will bear its part and receive its improvement. It will be a great day for the storied and scenic River of the West when some magnificent excursion steamer descends the thousand miles from Revelstoke to the outer headlands. And with canals at Celilo, Priest Rapids, and Kettle Falls, with some improvements at minor points, at no immoderate expense, the thing can be done. ”

“ While the enduring bronze tablets and imposing columns with their impressive emblematic historical representations, will stand as appealing sentinels, daily reminding the dwellers at these sites of a heroic and romantic past, the enthusiastic receptions given the Columbia River Expedition at the larger cities, like Great Falls, Spokane, Portland and Astoria, may kindle an influence with even more vital results through the prestige thus given regional history. ”

“ The three peaks which may be considered as especially belonging to the Columbia River are Hood, Adams, and St. Helens. As the traveller on the River views the unsullied spires and domes of these great [Pg 354] temples of nature, he longs to worship in their more immediate presence. As a logical consequence of this sentiment, after having floated down the Columbia from The Dalles to Rooster Rock, we feel that life would be at least partly in vain if we should fail to plant feet on the topmost snows of at least two of these great heights. ”

“ At times of extreme flood, the high water covers the entire three-mile width of valley and extends from Vancouver to the city limits of Portland.
The Columbia River at the bridge site is 3,500 ft. wide, with a maximum depth of 30 ft. at extreme low water and with variation from extreme low to extreme high water of 33 ft. The water rises each spring to about 20 ft. and about once in four years to 25 ft. So far as known it has reached 33 ft. only once. The bed of the river consists of sand, with small amounts of gravel, extending to great depths. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Don't want a man to lose any chances, do you?"
So much has been said of this mighty river that the preconceived idea of the tourist is of a surging flood of unknown depth rushing like a mountain torrent. The plain facts are that the Lower Columbia is rather a placid stream, with a sluggish current, and the channel shoals up to eight feet, then falling to twelve, fifteen and seventeen feet, and suddenly dropping to 100 feet of water and over. In the spring months it will rise from twenty-five to forty feet, leaving driftwood high up among the trees on the banks. ”

“ Sea-captains tell us that ten miles from the River’s mouth—so powerfully does the mighty current cleave the sea—they can dip up fresh water. But now, to west and north and south, the deep blue, though crossed by the pale green of the River water, assures us that we are fairly upon the Bar. The River of the West is all behind us. If it be very clear, we can just discern upon the horizon’s verge, cameo-like and glistening white, Mt. Hood, monarch of the Oregon Cascades, for ever standing guard over the disappearing River.
Bridal Veil Bluff, Columbia River, Ore. ”

“ This is but a fraction of what will come with the full development of the Columbia Valley and with the needed improvements to navigation. The Federal Government maintains life-saving stations on both sides of the River. Many a tale of daring could these heroes of the beach tell, should we stop to question them. We are at the point of the jetty. The buoys rise and fall behind us. The horrible blare of the fog-horn sounds across the thunder of the surf, as we cross the imaginary line from headland to headland. ”

“ Far beyond that parallel stretches chain after chain of divisions of the great Continental Range, the Selkirks, the Gold Range, Purcell’s Range, sky-piercing heights, snow-clad and glaciated. Up and down these interlocking chains the Columbia and the Kootenai, with their great lakes and unexplored tributaries, seem to be playing at hide-and-seek with each other. ”

“ All rivers must reach the sea, and all journeys must end. And so both our River and our journey find their end in the ocean. From Astoria we can see the outer headlands and the ocean space between. As we survey this merging of the Great River with the greater deep, our eyes turn in fancy to that clear, bright lake, fourteen hundred miles away in the snowy peaks of British Columbia, from which the River flows. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The splendid River, a mile and a half in width, offers limitless facilities for shipping, while, beginning at the water’s edge, a [Pg 377] gradually rising slope of land extends in a superb swell several miles to the north. Every feature of scenery that could delight the eye—Mt. Hood with the Cascades to the east, the Willamette Valley to the south, the Portland and Scappoose hills to the west, the River blending all—seems to have been lavished on Vancouver. ”

“ It has hewn its way down to the level of the ocean and no longer needs to fret and storm. It has conquered a peace. Below Rooster Rock, the shores are flats with low hills in the background, and the River expands to a width of from one to two miles. If we still imagine ourselves in a small boat, we find the most delightful of sensations in gliding past the grassy islands and shores thick with fir or cottonwood. ”

“ This is the first effort to present a book distinctively on the Columbia River. It is the intention of the author to give some special prominence to Nelson and the magnificent lake district by which it is surrounded. As the joint possession of the United States and British Columbia, and as the grandest scenic river of the continent, the Columbia is worthy of special attention. ”

“ Inch by inch, usually in the teeth of a biting gale, leaning forward, and panting heavily, they force [Pg 373] the upward way. And victory at last! There comes a time when we are on the topmost pinnacle, and there is nothing above us but the storms and sun. And then what elation! Nothing seems quite to equal the pure delight of such a triumph of lungs and legs and heart and will.
Rooster Rock, Columbia River—Looking Up.
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse, Portland. ”

“ Political circumstances have invested the Columbia river with so much importance, that it will be well to devote some time to its bar and channels of approach, as well as to its inner anchorages and shores. ”

“ Who knows but what at some remote period the mighty Columbia river had flowed through this grand coulee, emptying into an inland sea, the bed of which now formed the desert of almost a million acres, destined to be the home of half as many people? Flowing thus for ages, nourishing plants now unknown; its limpid waters, cooling and refreshing the prehistoric [Pg 54] monsters that came daily to drink at its brink ”

“ The smell of the sea is in the atmosphere, even though the sea is yet distant. No longer [Pg 375] do our eyes wander over boundless expanses of rolling prairie, crowned to the highest knolls with wheat-fields, as on the other side of the mountains. The mountains fall away, and low bottoms, sometimes oozy with the inflowing river or the creeks from the forests, stretch away in the lazy, hazy distance. The River no longer flows tumultuously and with that militant energy which is so characteristic of the long stretches from Kettle Falls to The Dalles. ”

“ As we look westward, the headlands seem to part in front of us, and between them sky and water join. The greatest ocean is before us, though still twenty miles away. The River has reached the end of his fourteen-hundred-mile journey. Soon we pass, on the Oregon side, the bold promontory of Tongue Point, and Astoria, the second largest city on the navigable waters of the Columbia, is before us. ”

“ The way of approach for the Eastern tourist to a journey down the Columbia is by the Canadian Pacific Railway, a magnificent road in a gallery of masterpieces. Wonders begin before he reaches the western watershed. He will see Banff, with its hot springs, its immense hotel, its Bow River and Falls and Valley. He will see the gem of the Canadian Rockies, one of the gems of the earth, Lake Louise. ”

“ Hence we may be sure that there will be extensive world commerce across the American continent. If so, where will it cross? Inspection of a globe demonstrates that the Columbia River route is shortest, and, for reasons already given, it is cheapest of all.
[Pg 269] Puget Sound is its only present competitor. But the water-grade through the Cascade Mountains, along the banks of the Columbia, constitutes an advantage beyond the reach of permanent competition. Here, however, the critic comes in and claims that the Bar at the mouth of the River forbids entrance of the largest ships. ”

“ A story narrated to the author by Captain William Gray, now of Pasco, Washington, well illustrates the character of the old Columbia River navigators. W. H. Gray was the first man to run a sailboat of much size with regular freight up Snake River. That was in 1860 before any steamers were running on that stream. Mr. Gray built his boat, a fifty-ton sloop, on Oosyoos Lake on the Okanogan River. In it he descended that river to its entrance into the Columbia. Thence be descended the Columbia, running down the Entiat, Rock Island, Cabinet, and Priest Rapids, no mean undertaking of itself. ”

“ In the present state of the country the Columbia River is the only line of communication leading directly from the coast to the interior. Warre and Vavasour, 1845-6. 71 The Columbia River falls into the Pacific Ocean in Lat. — Long. — , forming a barred harbor for shipping, not drawing over 18 feet water. The sea is constantly breaking over this bar, and perpetually over the sands to the north and south of the entrance to the river, rendering it dangerous for ships at all seasons of the year. ”

“ The Columbia, from Des Chutes to Priest's Rapid, the head of navigation up to the present time, is a broad and deep-flowing river. At intervals it is interrupted by reefs of rocks, which confine the waters to narrow bounds, through which they flow with tremendous force, the damming up also producing considerable fall. These rapids, as they are called, are numerous, but in ordinary stages of water, only two are considered especially difficult the "John Day" and the "Umatilla "Rapids, both named after streams entering into the Columbia in the vicinity of the rapids. ”

“ Columbia River history has had its full share of Indian wars. To narrate these in full would transcend the limits of this chapter. Even during the era of discovery desperate affrays with the natives were a common experience of explorers. Captain Gray of the Columbia lost a boat’s crew of seamen at Tillamook. The ship Boston was seized in 1803 by the wily old chief Maquinna at Nootka. ”

“ CHAPTER VIII.—A WRECK AND A BABY BEAR. Donald, British Columbia, where the Rambler was introduced to the waters of the Columbia river, is pretty well up toward the Arctic circle, about in the same degree of latitude, in fact, as the Great Glacier of the Cascade range, still it is not so cold there in April as one would naturally suppose. There is splendid summer grazing land between the Fraser river, in that latitude, and the Pacific ocean. ”

“ At one point, about half-way between Dalles City and Celilo, the entire volume of the Columbia River (and how vast that is may be better understood by following up on the map the river itself and all its tributaries) is crowded over upon the Oregon shore through a passage not more than fifty yards in width, between perfectly naked and perpendicular precipices of basalt. ”