Pacific Slope

“ From the Columbia Crossing, or even from the summit of the Rockies down to the Inlet, and the City of Vancouver (in Pete's time mere forest and as thick as a wheatfield) , it's the Main Street.
The fact of the matter is that the whole of the Slope, the Pacific Slope, is only one Main Street. It begins to dawn on a man on the Slope, that in a very few years he might know everyone from the Rocky Mountains down to Victoria and to Seattle and Tacoma and Portland and San Francisco. Men wander to and fro like damned souls or migratory salmon or caribou. ”

“ The Pacific slope, embracing the greater part of California, Oregon, and Idaho, with Washington territory and Arizona, and parts of New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, is generally sterile. That part however between the Coast range and the ocean, and the valleys between the Coast range and the Cascade range and Sierra Nevada are very fertile; and the same may be said of a few other valleys and mountain slopes, though these are commonly better adapted to pasturage than to agriculture. ”

“ The central belt is of elevated grounds and grassy savannahs, but the Pacific slope is of rich, deep soil of decomposing tufas, where tropical fruits are abundant and prolific. It is an interesting fact that the mountains show everywhere traces of former glaciers. ”

“ On the Atlantic slope rain falls in greater or less abundance for the entire year; vegetation is rank, and the climate damp and proportionately insalubrious, while the Pacific slope and the elevated regions of the interior are comparatively dry and healthy. ”

“ Not only was the Pacific Slope found rich in gold, but in forests, and above all in agricultural facilities. With all these inducements on the coast, came the discovery of the wealth in the intervening prairie lands, and the great West began to fill up, until in forty-three years it has become the home of the boldest and most promising population within the United States’ limits. State after State has been admitted, railroads and telegraphs have been built across the continent, and an immense and flourishing domain has been added to the nation. ”

“ I say the man is alive, full grown, and is listening to what I say, (without believing it, perhaps) who will yet see the Asiatic commerce traversing the North Pacific Ocean—entering the Oregon River, climbing the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, issuing from its gorges, and spreading its fertilizing streams over our wide-extended Union! The steamboat and the steam-car have not exhausted all their wonders. ”

“ On the Pacific slope of America, between 45° and 60° north, lies a well-marked culture area. The mountains near by and the ocean have between them innumerable islands, great and small. Passing among these was easy; the climate, by reason of warm currents in the sea, mild; animal and vegetable life useful to human existence, copious. There is no flint, but slate, nephrite and volcanic rocks of good quality. On this domain men traversed long distances in dugout canoes holding fifty persons, and artists expressed their mythic fancies through the obliging cedar wood. ”

“ Immense cones have arisen along the Pacific slope since the general features of the land were made, and not only have spread vast deposits around their base, but have blocked up valleys, forming lakes as Atitlan, built promontories as Coseguina, islands as [5] Ometepec in the Lake of Nicaragua, and have turned rivers, changed prevailing winds, and otherwise altered the physical conditions of the country.
Gold sands from the disintegrated veins sparkle in every mountain-brook, and the deposits of silver are no doubt as rich as those of Mexico, Nevada, and Potosi. ”

“ The primary mistake is in considering the Coast Cordilleras as the principal chain. The great rampart of the Andes in places is hundreds of miles across. Productive plains and fertile valleys lie on the western side of the Continental Divide as well as on the Atlantic slope. Besides, there are many bifurcations of these lofty ranges which must be pierced toward the Pacific. The mineral belt with its incalculable wealth, after centuries only partially exploited, has its basis of profitable production and export by means of the water transport of the Pacific. ”

“ These steep slopes (> 1:40) drop from depths of a few hundred fathoms near a continent to a depth of a few thousand fathoms in a marginal trench. In the North Atlantic the one example is north of Puerto Rico. A large part of the circumference of the Pacific is bounded by such features.
Category III provinces.—At the base of the continental slope a gentle gradient continues to the local level of the abyssal floor. This seaward gradient ranges from 1:100 to 1:700 and extends over a strip from a few miles to a few hundred miles in width. ”

“ In many such regions the density of population exceeds two hundred or more per square mile. The reason is obvious. Life seeks that environment which yields the greatest amount of nutrition with the least expenditure of energy.
The study of a good relief map shows that, as a rule, the Pacific Ocean is bordered by a rugged highland, which has a more or less abrupt slope, and a narrow coast-plain. Indeed, the latter is absent for the greater part. The slopes of the Atlantic, on the other hand, are long and gentle—being a thousand miles or more in width throughout the greater part of their extent. ”

“ Everywhere it is fringed with bush and tall tree-ferns, except to seaward. There it is shut in by flax-swamp and grey sand-dunes, on the other side of which the long rollers thunder night and day. I don’t believe the Pacific knows how to ripple in gently over ribbed sea sand. There is always that dull roar sounding far inland—less at times, but always there. The road led past the wharf with its goods shed, and beyond this is the entrance to the lagoon—a narrow opening through which the tides surge in and out. ”

“ It passes through the mountains in a succession of deep gorges, which are terrible to behold. On both sides dizzy cliffs and snow-capped peaks rise thousands of feet above its rocky bed, and the scenery is cold and desolate. Its head-waters interlock with those of several streams that run into the Pacific; so that, had our voyageurs wished to travel to the shores of that ocean, they might have done so in their birch-bark canoe nearly the whole of the way. But this was not their design at present, so they passed the débouchure of the Peace, and kept on for the Great Slave Lake. ”

“ There was light without heat, leaves and streams sparkled, and there was nothing of the half-smothered sensation which is often produced by the choking greenery of the main island, for frequently, far below, the Pacific flashed in all its sunlit beauty, and occasionally we came down unexpectedly on a little cove with abrupt cedar-crested headlands and stacks, and a heavy surf rolling in with the deep thunder music which alone breaks the stillness of this silent land. ”

“ So extreme are the irregularities of the sea-floor in the area lying between Australia, the Solomon Islands, the New Hebrides, and New Zealand, and so great are the depths attained by many of the depressions, that the margins of the continental plateau are harder to trace here than anywhere else in the world. The bottom of the oceanic trough throughout a large portion of the southern and western Pacific is, in fact, traversed by many great mountain-ridges, the summits of which approach the surface again and again to form the numerous islets of Polynesia. ”

“ A few of the mountain-peaks attain the elevation of 5,000 feet above sea-level, and every form is known—table-topped, dome-shaped, needle, and conical. In fact, no group in the Pacific affords so many varieties of form and aspect, as are to be observed in the Feegee archipelago. In sailing through these islands, the most lovely landscapes open out before the eye, the most picturesque groupings of rocks, ridges, and mountain-peaks, ravines filled with luxuriant vegetation, valleys covered with soft verdure, so divinely fair as to appear the abode of angelic beings. ”

“ The continuity of this sub-ocean plain is broken is some places by ranges of submarine hills, parallel with the Coast range. The summits of these hills are known as banks, and are the feedinggrounds (as well as the fishing-grounds) for vast numbers of fish. The streams or currents of the ocean along the northwest coast are dominated by the effects of the Japanese stream, the great ocean current of the Pacific, which, having its rise in the warm regions of the tropics, flows past the coast of Japan, and, crossing over, loses itself on the American shores. ”

“ Here, to the west, where you see the rugged spurs jutting out from the range, runs the old trail which the engineers have followed, and carried the Union Pacific to its greatest altitude between the oceans. Far out there among the buttes runs that climbing ridge, yet it seems so close, so neighborly with the foreshortening of that strange scenery, that one cannot realize that in its climb it carries the iron rails still two thousand feet farther aloft. ”

“ A tall mountain backs it. The Pacific kisses its feet. A spring bursting from the mountain, about four thousand feet up, has cut a gorge down which it tumbles in cascades to the beach and the salt water. Where the source leaps from the rock the vegetation begins, as you would expect. It widens and grows more luxuriant all the way down. The stream comes to a forty-foot waterfall between sheer rock curtained with creepers; whence it hurries down through plantations of banana, past San Ramon, which perches where it can, house by house, on shelves hidden in greenery. ”

“ The rivers ‘Wanganui’ and ‘Wataroa,’ ‘Bald Head’ and ‘Wanganui Bluff,’ the scene of many of Ocean’s mighty furies and the terror of the traveller at times, when trying to get round its perpendicular and iron bound cliffs, and as far as the eye can reach one beholds headland after headland laved by the mighty Pacific Ocean, the white fringe of its ever restless surf looking in the sunshine like a silver thread upon the storm-beaten shore. ”

“ The forest on these islands consists of a few scattered groves. The grass, shrubs and mosses bathed in a perpetual fog are so brilliantly green as to dazzle the eye.
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The dug-out canoe disappears here and boats of sea lion and walrus skins stretched over frames of drift wood lightly skim the blue waters of the cold sea.
As we steam along through sunshine and fog, past glaciers, mountains and fiords, “so wide the loneliness, so lucid the air,” we are reminded that the Ancient Mariner sailed the blue Pacific. Now the sun drops into the sea, lighting it up with a luminous glow. ”

“ Within the barrier the water is as smooth as a lake, but the trade winds, which blow for nine months in the year upon the shore, send the long rollers of the Pacific against the reef, which varies from 5ft. to 30ft. in width. Dashing upon this impregnable barrier, they rise in columns of rosy foam often to a height of from 20ft. to 50ft., and, glittering in the rays of the tropical sun, fall like obelisks of diamonds. A long line of silent ripples is often at first the only indication of the presence of one of these spines of coral and volcanic rock ”

“ Some climbers have even asserted that late in the afternoon of extremely clear days the glint of the western sun can be seen upon the Pacific, a hundred and fifty miles distant. Toward the east lie the vast plains of the Inland Empire, marked at their farther limit by the soft curves and lazy swells of the range of the Blue Mountains. ”

“ They saw our smoke, but the steamer was hidden from them by mist. Then suddenly we shot into view. All the while we had been in the clearest sunshine, the sea glassy and the flying-fish darting about. It was no place for speed. We moved just fast enough to leave the scene undisturbed. And thus we stole into Torres Straits.
Of all the numerous harbors I have entered in the Pacific, none, with the exception of the Inland Sea in Japan, is more picturesque than that at Thursday Island. Shelter, space, and depth, and stillness! One's eyes sweep round this pearly promise with greed for its beauty. ”

“ We sit on our terrace feeling as if we were in a proscenium box on the edge of the world, and watch the [Pg 7] ever-varying splendor. At night there is the same sense of infinity, with the unclouded stars above, and only the twinkling lights of motors threading their way down the zigzag of the coast road as it descends the cliffs to the plain below us. These lights make up in part for the fewness of the harbor lights in the bay. The Pacific is a lonely ocean. There are so few harbors along the coast where small boats can find shelter that yachts and pleasure craft hardly exist. ”

“ Week after week, month after month, the watcher on its cliffs may gaze out toward the horizon and see never a sail nor a distant trail of smoke to liven the dark-blue desert of the Pacific. The cliffs themselves are strange—the reef of an ancient atoll, upraised in some convulsion of the earth to form a ring of coral limestone—sheer precipices facing the sea, half a mile of level barren summit, and an inner wall of cliffs, overlooking the rich lowlands of the interior. ”

“ By mountains we mean the great chain of the Cascades, which under various names parallels the Pacific Coast all the way from Alaska to Southern California. But not only do mountains and River meet here, but the ocean sends his greetings, for at the lower end of the rapids which here mark the gateway of the mountains, the first pulse-beat of the Pacific, the first throb of the tide, is discernible, though it is a hundred and sixty miles farther to where the River is lost in that greatest of the oceans. ”

“ Although these regions may be now extending seawards in places, it is obvious that they have recently been subject to submergence. When the fiords of Alaska and British Columbia existed as land-valleys it is probable that a broad land-connection obtained between North America and Asia. The whole Pacific coast is margined by mountain-ranges, which in elevation and boldness far exceed those of the Atlantic sea-board. The rocks entering into their formation range in age from Archæan and Palæozoic down to Cainozoic, and they are almost everywhere highly disturbed and flexed. ”