Oka River

“ When we entered the Okuru there was but a foot of water, and at the point we had reached in the morning we found a sunny stream, rippling over shingly shallows, where then it had flowed a deep, blue river.
I did so want to go farther—not to have to turn homewards; but it was not to be—and perhaps after all it left a glamour over this last day—the glamour of the unattained; always the thing longed for is greater than the thing achieved, as the seeking is an intenser pleasure than the finding. ”

“ The heavy earth clung to his boots. At last he flung himself on to the ground, burying his face in his hands, and lay motionless, abandoning himself to an anxious, sorrowful reverie.
Snow still lay on the lowlands, but the sky was warm, pellucid, expansive. The Oka broadened out rushing in a mighty, irresistible torrent towards its outlet, and inundating its banks. Purling brooks danced and sang their way through the valleys. The wind breathed a feeling of expectancy—sweet, tender, evanescent, like the day-dream of a Russian maiden who has not yet known the secrets of love. ”

“ To the south of this it trends to the westward, receiving the Spokan river from the east, which is not navigable, and takes its rise in the Lake of Cœur d’Alène. Thence it pursues a westerly course for about sixty miles, receiving several smaller streams, and at its bend to the south it is joined by the Okanagan, a river that has its source in a line of lakes, affording canoe and boat navigation for a considerable extent to the northward. ”

“ The bay of Atuona, narrow between high cliffs covered with cocoanut-trees, was the scene of my lessons. The tide came booming into this cove from the Bay of Traitors, often with bewildering force, and a day or two a month as gently as the waves at Waikiki. The river spread a broad mouth to drink the brine, and the white sand was over-run by the flowered vines that crept seaward to taste the salt. No house was in sight, no man-made structure to mar the primitive, as our merry crew of boys and girls sported naked in the surf, fished from the rocks, or lay upon the shining beach. ”

“ Yet the Ochakee country conveys no message of brightness and cheer. Some way, there are too many shadows. The river itself is a moving sea of shadows; and if the sun ever gets to them, it is just an unhappy glimpse through the trees in the long, still afternoons. The trees are mostly draped with Spanish moss that sways like dark tresses in the little winds that creep in from the gulf, and the trees creak and complain and murmur one to another throughout the night. The air is dank, lifeless, heavy with the odors of vegetation decaying underfoot. ”

“ Okanogan Valley to Oroville by auto stage or train, boat part way if preferred. A week or more could be spent to advantage. Historical sights are numerous. Near Omak is St. Mary's Indian Mission. Near Brewster is site of oldest settlement in state. Big irrigation projects are seen. Near Oroville are Osoyoos, Wanacut and Epsom Salts Lakes, and the Similkameen river. Okanogan, county seat, Riverside and Tonasket, are passed.
Methow Valley, via Pateros, to Twisp and Winthrop; irrigation, captivating scenery, splendid roads.
Colville Indian Reservation in Okanogan and Ferry counties. ”

“ Another large stream, the Hawash, rising in the Abyssinian mountains, is lost in a saline depression near the Gulf of Aden. Lastly, between the basins of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans there is an area of inland drainage along the centre of the East African plateau, directed chiefly into the lakes in the great rift-valley. The largest river is the Omo, which, fed by the rains of the Abyssinian highlands, carries down a large body of water into Lake Rudolf. The rivers of Africa are generally obstructed either by bars at their mouths or by cataracts at no great distance up-stream. ”

“ There are the quarrelers, who are forever shouldering their nearest neighbor off the trail, and the mischief makers, who try to rub packs off against every passing tree, and the clumsy footers, who lose a leg and go down head over heels where the sand slithers or the trail narrows, and the good old steady goers who could find their way unled from Okanogan, eight hundred miles north, to New Caledonia—sleek, well-fed, fat fellows all of them, when they leave Okanogan, however tagged and lamed they may be when they wind up Fraser River. ”

“ In the illustration on page 209 the constant barricades of tangled driftwood encountered everywhere on the up-stream ends and promontories of the many islands of these rivers are shown, although the quantity shown in the view falls greatly below the average, the heads of the islands being often piled up with stacks ten or twenty feet high, which are useful in one way, as forming a dam that serves during freshets and high water, to protect them more or less from the eroding power of the rapid river. ”

“ These wooden columns were hewn out of the forest on the banks of the Ohau, which in those days ran into the Waikawa, forming one large stream. The trees were felled in the bush, floated down the river {326} to the sea, and thence dragged along the coast, one native standing on the tree with pole in hand to guide it through the surf, while a string of stalwart men tugged at the heavy tow-ropes, as they marched along the sandy beach. ”

“ Orchards blossomed near streams on the near-by flats. When irrigation from a reservoir at Conconully was obtained in 1906, it became a thriving town. The name Okanogan was adopted in November 1906. The Great Northern ran a branch line from Wenatchee in 1915, and the county seat was acquired, stimulating future growth. From the river bank at Tyee Street, a curiously elevated "high bridge" once arched across the Okanogan River to its east bank. Lack of a bridge had troubled Okanogan citizens: Oroville and Riverside had spanned the Okanogan prior to 1907, but Okanogan still depended on a ferry. ”

“ From the mouth of the Spokane the Columbia, now out of the woods, flows to the westward with a broad, stately current for a hundred and twenty miles to receive the Okinagan, a large, generous tributary a hundred and sixty miles long, coming from the north and drawing some of its waters from the Cascade Range. More than half its course is through a chain of lakes, the largest of which at the head of the river is over sixty miles in length. ”

“ At Okoroba, the local water system has been severely damaged by the dredging of the Okoroba River and the construction of a wellhead slot just beside the village. This has created three problems: spoil has been dumped on levee farm-lands disrupting the surface drainage system; the slot has created a large volume of stagnant water beside the village so that locally, the river no longer flushes out or has enough oxygen to support fish; and, the upper reaches of the Okoroba River which used to supply clean washing and drinking water, has been drained. ”

“ The scenery on either side of the river is picturesque, and rarely romantic throughout; and yet in no single feature does it bear any resemblance to{208} the weird wildness of the Ocklawaha. In many places it is six miles wide, and is seldom less than one; the current is slow, and it moves with feeble pulsations on its course; it is never flustered or stirred to headlong rashness, it creeps quietly, with a grand placidity, round anything that lies in its way, never dashes or tumbles over it; no wind can lash it into fury, no storms disturb its sweet tranquillity ”

“ This erection, with its battlements and embrasures, outlying scarps and counterscarps, remarkably suggests the deliberate and calculated creation of man. It stands upon a little solitary hill at the head of Taw Marsh, and wins its name from the East Okement River which runs through the valley on its western flank. Above wide fen and marsh it rises, yet seen from Steeperton’s vaster altitude, Oke Tor looks no greater than some fantastic child-castle built by a Brobding-nagian baby with granite bricks. ”

“ The damming of the lake, and the accumulation, by this means, of a vast reservoir of water, by rendering more certain and expeditious the navigation of the river, was an exceedingly happy thought And when at length orders were received for his embarkation on the 9th of August, his flotilla was not only borne triumphantly along upon the pile of the impatient waters accumulated for the occasion, but the swelling of the torrent beyond its banks caused wide and unexpected destruction to the growing crops of the Indians on their plantations at Oghkwaga and its vicinity. ”

“ The Clutha River in Otago—the largest river of the South Island— discharges as much water per annum as the Nile! It seems a strange statement to make; but such is the fact, the calculations having been made by competent men.
The day following our return from Aorangi we left the Hermitage at 9 a.m., and by 1 p.m. had begun our exciting journey of 140 miles to the sea.
The Tasman River takes its rise from the Tasman and Murchison Glaciers, and is soon joined by the Hooker, which drains the Hooker and Mueller Glaciers. ”

“ I wonder if I can convey to any one an idea of the Ocklawaha river! It can be compared with no other river that I have ever seen, heard, or read of, and its fairest wonders are at our starting point, Silver Springs. Looking forward I see nothing but a wide expanse of pale green water. Our steamer gives a series of short asthmatic puffs, and we are moving slowly over the{191} surface of the Silver Springs—so slowly we are scarcely conscious of any movement at all. We lean over the side of the vessel, and look down upon a world of wonders ”

“ We reckoned it to be about 600 or 700 miles from Okkak, and Killinek or Cape Chudleigh half way.
Having proceeded five or six miles up the river, we came to a small island, which we left on our right.
We saw several sacks of blubber, a sledge, and some other, articles lying on the beach, and Jonathan and Brother Kmoch went in the small boat to discover the proprietors, but found nobody there, to guard the goods.
A little farther on is a point of land running out into nearly the middle of the stream. The current sets very rapidly round it, so as to form a dangerous eddy. ”

“ Nelson, visited Okatika and satisfied himself that he could take his steamer into the river. The owners (N. Edwards and Company, of Nelson) chartered her on her first trip to Messrs. Ferguson and Buchanan.
Up to this time these gentlemen had been engaged as packers, but they now started business as storekeepers in Okatika, The river was full of snags, many of which could not be seen at high water, and were therefore dangerous for vessels entering without a pilot. A boatman named James Teer acted on this occasion. The sea was as smooth as glass ”

“ Thus it happens that whilst big affluents from the north bring rushing streams of much silt-stained water to the great river, no such affluents exist on the south. The waters of the Elburz streams are all lost in the Oxus plain ere they reach the river. Nevertheless there are abundant evidences of the former existence of a vast irrigation system drawn from the Oxus. The same lines of level mounds which break the horizon of the plains of Babylon are to be seen here, and they denote the same thing. ”

“ The Ounas River runs in a tolerably straight course north and south from Kittila to the sea; but being a river it has some curves, and the road to cut these off has to make crossings at intervals. We came upon our first ferry, a flat and shallow boat, just outside this post-house at Rantatalo, and the wreck from America, and an ugly young woman with [263] a pipe rowed us and our new horse and karre across.
We were out of the sphere of cultivation again in half a kilometre, and then the road led through a big burn-out of forest, which made a huge, unsightly scar across the country. ”

“ It is impossible to describe the misery of the land; in the midst of the vast expanse of marsh is a little plot of dry ground about thirty-five yards square, and within thirty yards of the river, but to be reached only by wading through the swamp. The establishment consisted of about a dozen straw huts, occupied by a wretched fever-stricken set of people; the vakeel, and others employed, came to the boats to beg for corn. I stopped for ten minutes at the charming watering-place Aboukooka to obtain the news of the country. ”

“ The ridge is clay covered to the flat summit, where knolls of gneiss project. Beyond the valley of the Odei, to the north, is a rolling forested country with hills clay-covered to the tops, rising by gradual slopes to about a hundred feet above the intervening valleys, that are themselves from twenty to fifty feet above the river level. For the next twenty-eight miles the river, flowing in a rock-bound basin, has the character of a long, narrow lake from half a mile to over a mile in width. ”

“ The Oxus river, as seen in flood at this part of its course, is an imposing stream. It is rarely less than 1000 yards wide, and in Channel of the Oxus. some places it is fully a mile across. Its winter channel may be estimated at from two-thirds to three-fourths of its flood channel, except where it is confined within narrow limits by a rocky bed, as at Kilif, where its unvarying width is only 540 yards. The average strength of the current in flood is about 4 m. per hour, varying from 21⁄2 to 5 m. ”