Powder River

“ Powder river is a stream of some eight or ten yards in width, having its source in the high range of mountains on our left, which mountains in many places are covered with snow. [87] An abundance of pine timber is found covering the sides of these mountains, sometimes extending far down into the bottoms, which here are between six and seven miles in width. The soil is fertile and would undoubtedly yield abundantly.
To our right, at the distance of fifteen or twenty miles, is presented a high range of mountains, their base covered with grass, their sides with heavy pine timber. ”

“ The tracks showed that Powder River was moving slowly, grazing as it went.
“I reckon by noon we can say ‘Hello!’ to yore bronc,” Dud prophesied. “No need to trail it. All we got to do is follow the river.”
An hour later he drew up and swung from the saddle. “Now I wonder who we’ve had with us this glad mawnin’.”
Dud stooped and examined carefully tracks in the mud. Bob joined him.
“Powder River ain’t so lonesome now. Met up with friends, looks like. Takin’ a li’l’ journey north.” The cowpuncher’s blue eyes sparkled. The prosaic pursuit of a stray mount had of a sudden become Adventure. ”

“ About a dozen men wintered in the Powder River Valley, not suffering cold or annoyed by Indians. This valley was found to contain a large amount of fertile land capable of sustaining a large population. ”

“ While the commissioners were negotiating their treaty at Fort Sully, the first Powder River expedition, in its attempt to open this new road by the short274 and direct route from Fort Laramie to Bozeman and the Montana mines, was undoing their work. In the summer of 1865 General Patrick E. Connor, with a miscellaneous force of 1600, including a detachment of ex-Confederate troops who had enlisted in the United States army to fight Indians, started from Fort Laramie for the mouth of the Rosebuds on the Yellowstone, by way of the Powder River. ”

“ In Baker County over $30,000 has already been exoended upon surveys and olans for the construction of an irrigation system in Lower Powder Valley, 14 mfles northeast of Baker City. There are over 60,000 acres of land under the canals as planned. Water will be secured from the regular flow of Powder River. aurmented by storage in Thief Valley, where an 80-foot dam will impound 40,000 acre-feet of water. The upper portion of the project will receive water from Eagle Creek. Plans for a 60.000-acre project in Jordan Valley are well under way, and the lands have b€en withdrawn from entry. ”

“ Walls of sharp rock rise up over eight hundred feet high round some of its sunken lakes—one is called the Powder Lake—and the level above this abyss stretches out in moors and desolate downs, peopled with herds of lean sheep, and marked here and there by sepulchral, gibbet-looking signposts, shaped like a rough T and set in a heap of loose stones. ”

“ It is navigable 150 myles, the shouldes and soundings are here needlesse to be expressed. It falleth from Rockes farre west in a Country inhabited by a nation they call Monacans. But where it commeth into our discovery it is Powhatan. In the farthest place that was diligently observed, are falles, rockes, shoules, &c. which makes it past navigation any higher. Thence in the running downeward, the river is enriched with many goodly brookes, which are maintained by an infinit number of small rundles and pleasant springs, that disperse themselves for best service, as do the veines of a mans body. ”

“ Whittier was present at these picnics whenever able, and, as has been said, sometimes wrote a poem to be read there. He never reads in public himself.
Although the Powow river has been made so emphatically a stream of use, there are glimpses of a native beauty in it that its hard fate has never obliterated; these are still there, as one stands upon the little bridge that spans its last few rods of individual life and looks up the stream upon a wintry landscape, or upon summer fields, and longingly toward the bend. ”

“ As they traveled north the steep high banks gradually flattened down, and the current of the river slackened. Finally the high banks disappeared altogether; they could see nothing over the tops of the poplars and pines that lined the water’s edge. The course of the stream became very tortuous, and progress was slow.
“We’re evidently coming to something,” Conacher remarked. “This country is a vast belt of silt deposited by the river as the result of some obstruction ahead.” ”

“ It is with no little misgiving that we see the river enter these black, hard walls. At its very entrance we have to make a portage; then let down with lines past some ugly rocks. We run a mile or two farther, and then the rapids below can be seen.
About eleven o'clock we come to a place in the river which seems much worse than any we have yet met in all its course. A little creek comes down from the left. We land first on the right and clamber up over the granite pinnacles for a mile or two, but can see no way by which to let down, and to run it would be sure destruction. ”

“ The lightening of the boats has this advantage: they will ride the waves better and we shall have but little to carry when we make a portage.
We are three quarters of a mile in the depths of the earth, and the great river shrinks into insignificance as it dashes its angry waves against the walls and cliffs that rise to the world above; the waves are but puny ripples, and we but pigmies, running up and down the sands or lost among the boulders.
We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not ”

“ No explosion ever occurred in their transportation, notwithstanding the occasional Railroad accidents, and the many thousands that were sent from the Powder Works during the war.
The powder boxes being filled, were then transported to the magazine, three quarters of a mile still further up the canal. This wood structure was on a rising ground one hundred yards from the canal, enclosed by a high fence. Its capacity was about one hundred tons of gunpowder. ”

“ At the weirs along the river fishermen are pulling in their nets, which glimmer with their night's catch. The bustling little tugs, with half a dozen "icers" in tow, are struggling nobly against the tide. The merry shouts of bathers on Popham beach mingle with the roar and rush of the incoming tide. The dark pine-clad hills trending northward form a fitting background to the scene. A fine government light on Pond Island guards the entrance to the river. The cliffs on the ocean side are quite precipitous, and rise to a height of sixty feet, over which the spray is dashed in severe storms. ”

“ Perhaps it would have been more deliberately stated in a later volume if Powell's intention of describing more fully the three chief kinds of drainage of the region had been carried out.8 Not having seen the region, my comments may have little value; but the context of Powell's report, the description of the immense series of lacustrine beds, over a mile thick, north of the mountains, and the eastward deflection of the river where it traverses the mountains all seem to me to indicate that the Green was by no means continuously successful in maintaining its antecedent course across the uplift. ”

“ It is a wide, gloomy, mountain-girt valley, with great sand-bars and thickly-wooded morasses. Settlement is slight. Portage, Prairie du Sac, Sauk City, and Muscoda are the principal towns. The few villages are generally from a mile to three miles back, at the foot of the bluffs, out of the way of the flood, and the river appears to be but little used. It is an ideal sketching-ground. The canoeist with a camera will find occupation enough in taking views of his surroundings; perplexity as to what to choose amid such a crowd of charming scenes, will be his only difficulty. ”

“ Three days later the rear crew ran into the head of the pond above Reed's dam. To every one's surprise, Orde called a halt on the work and announced a holiday.
Now, holidays are unknown on drive. Barely is time allowed for eating and sleeping. Nevertheless, all that day the men lay about in complete idleness, smoking, talking, sleeping in the warm sun. The river, silenced by the closed sluice-gates, slept also. The pond filled with logs. From above, the current, aided by a fair wind, was driving down still other logs—the forerunners of the little drive astern. ”

“ The scene becomes peculiarly desolate and mournful, often giving one the impression of being far removed from civilization, threading the course of some hitherto unexplored stream. Penetrate the deep fringe of forest and morass on foot, however, and smiling prairies are found beyond, stretching to the horizon and cut up into prosperous farms. The river is here from a half to three-quarters of a mile broad, but the shallows and snags are as numerous as ever and navigation is continually attended with some danger of being either grounded or capsized. ”

“ With the first light the entire crew were at the banks of the river.
As soon as the wind died the logs had begun to drift slowly out into the open water. The surface of the pond was covered with the scattered timbers floating idly. After a few moments the clank of the bars and ratchet was heard as two of the men raised the heavy sluice-gate on the dam. A roar of water, momently increasing, marked the slow rise of the barrier. A very imaginative man might then have made out a tendency forward on the part of those timbers floating nearest the centre of the pond. ”

“ Thence the vast stream sweeps boldly into the south, and with a rush discharges down the rapids, and straight over the line of precipice, in a vast tumultuous greyish-drab torrent which speedily emerges into comparatively still water below. The rock here is an exceedingly hard, mottled limestone, resembling the stone at St. Andrew's Rapids on Red River. Where exposed it is pitted or bitten into by the endless action of wind and water, and lies in thick layers, forming an irregular dyke all along the shore, over the surface of which passes the portage, some forty yards in length. ”

“ The stream is still wild and rapid and rolls through a narrow channel. We make but slow progress, often landing against a wall and climbing around some point to see the river below. Although very anxious to advance, we are determined to run with great caution, lest by another accident we lose our remaining supplies. How precious that little flour has become! We divide it among the boats and carefully store it away, so that it can be lost only by the loss of the boat itself.
We make ten miles and a half, and camp among the rocks on the right. ”

“ One month in every year the Imp and the Elf and I go to stay in a farmhouse close by the shores of a lake, that is bigger than the biggest pond you have ever seen. Out of the lake flows a river, that is bigger than the biggest stream. But when we go there we always feel very much like we do when we go over the common to the duck pond, or follow the beck from the woodland to the valley. ”

“ It was a first-class river. It flowed in the bottom of a valley at least six hundred feet deep, and no more than half a mile across from rim to rim. From the opposite rim, the prairie rolled on to the horizon. It was not so much a valley as a deep, clean gash in the prairie. The side upon which they stood was mantled with the deep green of spruce, while the other side rolled up in fantastic knobs and terraces of buffalo grass. ”

“ The waters of the Po in floods are dense with rich alluvial matter, of the fertilising properties of which evident proofs may be observed throughout the course of this river. After great floods, as if by magic, bare shoals of gravel become covered with a deep strata of alluvial soil, on which the seeds of trees and shrubs carried down by the waters soon take root, and in a very short time they are covered with a luxuriant vegetation. The waters of the Po on this account are highly valued for irrigation, as also from the fact of its temperature being higher than that of its tributaries. ”

“ These, with other tributary ponds, cover about twelve square miles surface, discharging through a comparatively small stream, yet one carrying a large volume of water. This is the Fall River, dammed at the outlet of the ponds, and barely two miles long, but running so steeply down hill that within about eight hundred yards distance it descends one hundred and thirty-six 129 feet, thus being appropriately named, and in turn giving its name to the town gathered around this admirable water-power. ”

“ This was in August, and yet at one place we traveled over a snow bank which we estimated was 25 feet deep. After arriving there in company with one or two others, I selected a claim on the middle fork of Feather River, a short distance below the mouth of Nelson’s Creek, where the stream could be turned by a dam. We thought there was a possibility that the river bed might be rich, and we concluded to construct a small wing dam sufficient to test it. We put in the dam so as to throw the water from a small portion of the river’s bed. The claim proved as worthless as our first one. ”

“ The Nile never flows over the top of the dam, but always through the gates and the canal at one side. When the gates are closed during the dry season, enough water is held back by this structure of steel and granite to form a [133] lake over one hundred miles long, and this is let out as needed to supplement the ordinary flow of the river and give the crops plenty of water all summer through. There is water enough in the reservoir to give all the families of the United States all they could use for four or five months, and enough to supply Great Britain and Ireland the entire year. ”