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TURNING from the woods and
their inhabitants to the rivers, we find that while the former are rarely
seen by travelers beyond the immediate borders of the settlements, the great
river of Oregon draws crowds of visitors, and is never without enthusiastic
admirers to sound its praises. Every summer since the completion of the
first overland railroad, tourists have been coming to it in ever increasing
numbers, showing that in general estimation the Columbia is one of the chief
attractions of the Pacific Coast. And well it deserves the admiration so
heartily bestowed upon it. The beauty and majesty of its waters, and the
variety and grandeur of the scenery through which it flows, lead many to
regard it as the most interesting of all the great rivers of the continent,
notwithstanding the claims of the other members of the family to which it
belongs and which nobody can measure -the Fraser, McKenzie, Saskatchewan,
the Missouri, Yellowstone, Platte, and the Colorado, with their glacier and
geyser fountains, their famous cafions, lakes, forests, and vast flowery
prairies and plains. These great rivers and the Columbia are intimately
related. All draw their upper waters from the same high fountains on the
broad, rugged uplift of the Rocky Mountains, their branches interlacing like
the branches of trees. They sing their first songs together on the heights;
then, collecting their tributaries, they set out on their grand journey to
the Atlantic, Pacific, or Arctic Ocean.
The Columbia, viewed as one
from the sea to the mountains, is like a rugged, broad- topped, picturesque
old oak about six hundred miles long and nearly a thousand miles wide
measured across the spread of its upper branches, the main limbs gnarled and
swollen with lakes and lakelike expansions, while innumerable smaller lakes
shine like fruit among the smaller branches. The main trunk extends back
through the Coast and Cascade Mountains in a general easterly direction for
three hundred miles, when it divides abruptly into two grand branches which
bend off to the northeastward and southeastward.
The south branch, the longer
of the two, called the Snake, or Lewis, River, extends into the Rocky
Mountains as far as the Yellowstone National Park, where its bead
tributaries interlace with those of the Colorado, Missouri, and Yellowstone.
The north branch, still called the Columbia, extends through Washington far
into British territory, its highest tributaries reaching back through long
parallel spurs of the Rockies between and beyond the headwaters of the
Fraser, Athabasca, and Saskatchewan. Each of these main branches, dividing
again and again, spreads a network of channels over the vast complicated
mass of the great range throughout a section nearly a thousand miles in
length, searching every fountain, however small or great, and gathering a
glorious harvest of crystal water to be rolled through forest and plain in
one majestic flood to the sea, reinforced on the way by tributaries that
drain the Blue Mountains and more than two hundred miles of the Cascade and
Coast Ranges. Though less than half as long as the Mississippi, it is said
to carry as much water. The amount of its discharge at different seasons,
however, has never been exactly measured, but in time of flood its current
is sufficiently massive and powerful to penetrate the sea to a distance of
fifty or sixty miles from shore, its waters being easily recognized by the
difference in color and by the drift of leaves, berries, pine cones,
branches, and trunks of trees that they carry.
That so large a river as the
Columbia, making a telling current so far from shore, should remain
undiscovered while one exploring expedition after another sailed past seems
remarkable, even after due allowance is made for the cloudy weather that
prevails hereabouts and the broad fence of breakers drawn across the bar.
During the last few centuries, when the maps of the world were in great part
blank, the search for new worlds was a fashionable business, and when such
large game was no longer to be found, islands lying unclaimed in the great
oceans, inhabited by useful and profitable people to be converted or
enslaved, became attractive objects; also new ways to India, seas, straits,
El Dorados, fountains of youth, and rivers that flowed over golden sands.
Those early explorers and
"adventurers were mostly brave, enterprising, and, after their fashion,
pious men. In their clumsy sailing- vessels they dared to go where no chart
or lighthouse showed the way, where the set of the currents, the location of
sunken outlying rocks and shoals, were all unknown, facing fate and weather,
undaunted however dark the signs, heaving the lead and thrashing the men to
their duty and trusting to Providence. When a new shore was found on which
they could land, they said their prayers with superb audacity, fought the
natives if they cared to fight, erected crosses, and took possession in the
names of their sovereigns, establishing claims, such as they were, to
everything in sight and beyond, to be quarreled for and battled for, and
passed from hand to hand in treaties and settlements made during the
intermissions of war.
The branch of the river that
bears the name of Columbia all the way to its head takes its rise in two
lakes about ten miles in length that lie between the Selkirk and main ranges
of the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia, about eighty miles beyond the
boundary-line. They are called the Upper and Lower Columbia Lakes. Issuing
from these, the young river holds a nearly straight course for a hundred and
seventy miles in a northwesterly direction to a plain called "Boat
Encampment," receiving many beautiful affluents by the way from the Selkirk
and main ranges, among which are the Beaver-Foot, Blackberry, Spill-e-MeeChene'and
Gold Rivers. At Boat Encampment it receives two large tributaries, the Canoe
River from the northwest, a stream about a hundred and twenty miles long;
and the Whirlpool River from the north, about a hundred and forty miles in
length.
The Whirlpool River takes its
rise near the summit of the main axis of the range on the fifty-fourth
parallel, and is the northmost of all the Columbia waters. About thirty
miles above its confluence with the Columbia it flows through a lake called
the Punch-Bowl, and thence it passes between Mounts Hooker and Brown, said
to be fifteen thousand and sixteen thousand feet high, making magnificent
scenery; though the height of the mountains thereabouts has been
considerably overestimated. From Boat Encampment the river, now a large,
clear stream, said to be nearly a third of a mile in width, doubles back on
its original course and flows southward as far as its confluence with the
Spokane in Washington, a distance of nearly three hundred miles in a direct
line, most of the way through a wild, rocky, picturesque mass of mountains,
charmingly forested with pine and spruce - though the trees seem strangely
small, like second growth saplings, to one familiar with the western forests
of Washington, Oregon, and California.
About forty-five miles below
Boat Encampment are the Upper Dalles, or Dalles de Mort, and thirty miles
farther the Lower Dalles, where the river makes a magnificent uproar and
interrupts navigation. About thirty miles below the Lower Dalles the river
expands into Upper Arrow Lake, a beautiful sheet of water forty miles long
and five miles wide, straight as an arrow and with the beautiful forests of
the Selkirk range rising from its east shore, and those of the Gold range
from the west. At the foot of the lake are the Narrows, a few miles in
length, and after these rapids are passed, the river enters Lower Arrow
Lake, which is like the Upper Arrow, but is even longer and not so straight.
A short distance below the
Lower Arrow the Columbia receives the Kootenay River, the largest affluent
thus far on its, course and said to be navigable for small steamers for a
hundred and fifty miles. It is an exceedingly crooked stream, heading beyond
the upper Columbia lakes, and, in its mazy course, flowing to all points of
the compass, it seems lost and baffled in the tangle of mountain spurs and
ridges it drains. Measured around its loops and bends, it is probably more
than five hundred miles in length. It is also rich in lakes, the largest,
Kootenay Lake, being upwards of seventy miles in length with an average
width of five miles. A short distance below the confluence of the Kootenay,
near the boundary-line between Washington and British Columbia, another
large stream comes in from the east, Clarke's Fork, or the Flathead River.
Its upper sources are near those of the Missouri and South Saskatchewan, and
in its course it flows through two large and beautiful lakes, the Flathead
and the Pend d'Oreille. All the lakes we have noticed thus far would make
charming places of summer resort; but Pend d'Oreille, besides being
surpassingly beautiful, has the advantage of being easily accessible, since
it is on the main line of the Northern Pacific Railroad in the Territory of
Idaho. In the purity of its waters it reminds one of Tahoe, while its many
picturesque islands crowned with evergreens, and its winding shores forming
an endless variety of bays and promontories lavishly crowded with spirey
spruce and cedar, recall some of the best of the island scenery of Alaska.
About thirty-five miles below
the mouth of Clark's Fork the Columbia is joined by the Ne-whoi-al-pit-ku
River from the northwest. Here too are the great Chaudière, or Kettle, Falls
on the main river, with a total descent of about fifty feet. Fifty miles
farther down, the Spokane River, a clear, dashing stream, comes in from the
east. It is about one hundred and twenty miles long, and takes its rise in
the beautiful Lake Cceur d'Alène, in Idaho, which receives the drainage of
nearly a hundred miles of the western slopes of the Bitter Root Mountains,
through the St. Joseph and Coeur d'Alène Rivers. The lake is about twenty
miles long, set in the midst of charming scenery, and, like Pend d'Oreille,
is easy of access and is already attracting attention as a summer place for
enjoyment, rest, and health.
The famous Spokane Falls are
in Washington, about thirty miles below the lake, where the river is
outspread and divided and makes a grand descent from a level basaltic
plateau, giving rise to one of the most beautiful as well as one of the
greatest and most available of water-powers in the State. The city of the
same name is built on the plateau along both sides of the series of cascades
and falls, which, rushing and sounding through the midst, give singular
beauty and animation. The young city is also rushing and booming. It is
founded on a rock, leveled and prepared for it, and its streets require no
grading or paving. As a power to whirl the machinery of a great city and at
the same time to train the people to a love of the sublime and beautiful as
displayed in living water, the Spokane Falls are unrivalled, at least as far
as my observation has reached. Nowhere else have I seen such lessons given
by a river in the streets of a city, such a glad, exulting, abounding
outgush, crisp and clear from the mountains, dividing, falling, displaying
its wealth, calling aloud in the midst of the busy throng, and making
glorious offerings for every use of utility or adornment.
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. From its confluence with the
Okinagan the river pursues a southerly course for a hundred and fifty miles,
most of the way through a dreary, treeless, parched plain to meet the great
south fork. The Lewis, or Snake, River is nearly a thousand miles long and
drains nearly the whole of Idaho, a territory rich in scenery, gold mines,
flowery, grassy valleys, and deserts, while some of the highest tributaries
reach into Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada. Throughout a great part of its course
it is countersunk in a black lava plain and shut in by mural precipices a
thousand feet high, gloomy, forbidding, and unapproachable, although the
gloominess of its cañon is relieved in some manner by its many falls and
springs, some of the springs being large enough to appear as the outlets of
subterranean rivers. They gush out from the faces of the sheer black walls
and descend foaming with brave roar and beauty to swell the flood below.
From where the river skirts
the base of the Blue Mountains its surroundings are less forbidding. Much of
the country is fertile, but its cañon is everywhere deep and almost
inaccessible. Steamers make their way up as far as Lewiston, a hundred and
fifty miles, and receive cargoes of wheat at different points through chutes
that extend down from the tops of the bluffs. But though the Hudson's Bay
Company navigated the north fork to its sources, they depended altogether on
pack- animals for the transportation of supplies and furs between the
Columbia and Fort Hall on the head of the south fork, which shows how
desperately unmanageable a river it must be.
A few miles above the mouth
of the Snake the Yakima, which drains a considerable portion of the Cascade
Range, enters from the northwest. It is about a hundred and fifty miles
long, but carries comparatively little water, a great part of what it sets
out with from the base of the mountains being consumed in irrigated fields
and meadows in passing through the settlements along its course, and by
evaporation on the parched desert plains. The grand flood of the Columbia,
now from half a mile to a mile wide, sweeps on to the westward, holding a
nearly direct course until it reaches the mouth of the Willamette, where it
turns to the northward and flows fifty miles along the main valley between
the Coast and Cascade Ranges ere it again resumes its westward course to the
sea. In all its course from the mouth of the Yakima to the sea, a distance
of three hundred miles, the only considerable affluent from the northward is
the Cowlitz, which heads in the glaciers of Mount Rainier.
From the south and east it
receives the Walla-Walla and Umatilla, rather short and dreary-looking
streams, though the plains they pass through have proved fertile, and their
upper tributaries in the Blue Mountains, shaded with tall pines, firs,
spruces, and the beautiful Oregon larch (Larix brevifolia), lead into a
delightful region. The John Day River also heads in the Blue Mountains, and
flows into the Columbia sixty miles below the mouth of the Umatilla. Its
valley is in great part fertile, and is noted for the interesting fossils
discovered in it by Professor Condon in sections cut by the river through
the overlying lava-beds.
The Deschutes River comes in
from the south about twenty miles below the John Day. It is a large,
boisterous stream, draining the eastern slope of the Cascade Range for
nearly two hundred miles, and from the great number of falls on the main
trunk, as well as on its many mountain tributaries, well deserves its name.
It enters the Columbia with a grand roar of falls and rapids, and at times
seems almost to rival the main stream in the volume of water it carries.
Near the mouth of the Deschutes are the Falls of the Columbia, where the
river passes a rough bar of lava. The descent is not great, but the immense
volume of water makes a grand display. During the flood-season the falls are
obliterated and skillful boatmen pass over them in safety; while the Dalles,
some six or eight miles below, may be passed during low water but are
utterly impassable in flood-time. At the Dalles the vast river is jammed
together into a long, narrow slot of unknown depth cut sheer down in the
basalt.
This slot, or trough, is
about a mile and a half long and about sixty yards wide at the narrowest
place. At ordinary times the river seems to be set on edge and runs swiftly
but without much noisy surging with a descent of about twenty feet to the
mile. But when the snow is melting on the mountains the river rises here
sixty feet, or even more during extraordinary freshets, and spreads out over
a great breadth of massive rocks through which have been cut several other
gorges run- fling parallel with the one usually occupied. All these inferior
gorges now come into use, and the huge, roaring torrent, still rising and
spreading, at length overwhelms the high jagged rock walls between them,
making a tremendous display of chafing, surging, shattered currents,
counter-currents, and hollow whirls that no words can be made to describe. A
few miles below the Dalles the storm-tossed river gets itself together
again, looks like water, becomes silent, and with stately, tranquil
deliberation goes on its way, out of the gray region of sage and sand into
the Oregon woods. Thirty-five or forty miles below the Dalles are the
Cascades of the Columbia, where the river in passing through the mountains
makes another magnificent display of foaming, surging rapids, which form the
first obstruction to navigation from the ocean, a hundred and twenty miles
distant. This obstruction is to be overcome by locks, which are now being
made.
Between the Dalles and the
Cascades the river is like a lake a mile or two wide, lying in a valley, or
cañon, about three thousand feet deep. The walls of the cañon lean well back
in most places, and leave here and there small strips, or bays, of level
ground along the water's edge. But towards the Cascades, and for some
distance below them, the immediate banks are guarded by walls of columnar
basalt, which are worn in many places into a great variety of bold and
picturesque forms, such as the Castle Rock, the Rooster Rock, the Pillars of
Hercules, Cape Horn, etc., while back of these rise the sublime
mountain-walls, forest-crowned and fringed more or less from top to base
with pine, spruce, and shaggy underbrush, especially in the narrow gorges
and ravines, where innumerable small streams come dancing and drifting down,
misty and white, to join the mighty river. Many of these falls on both sides
of the cañon of the Columbia are far larger and more interesting in every
way than would be guessed from the slight glimpses one gets of them while
sailing past on the river, or from the car windows. The 1\iu1tnomah Falls
are particularly interesting, and occupy fern-lined gorges of marvelous
beauty in the basalt. They are said to be about eight hundred feet in height
and, at times of high water when the mountain snows are melting, are well
worthy of a place beside the famous falls of the Yosemite Valley.
According to an Indian
tradition, the river of the Cascades once flowed through the basalt beneath
a natural bridge that was broken down during a mountain war, when the old
volcanoes, Hood and St. Helen's, on opposite sides of the river, hurled
rocks at each other, thus forming a dam. That the river has been dammed here
to some extent, and within a comparatively short period, seems probable, to
say the least, since great numbers of submerged trees standing erect may be
found along both shores, while, as we have seen, the whole river for thirty
miles above the Cascades looks like a lake or mill-pond. On the other hand,
it is held by some that the submerged groves were carried into their places
by immense landslides.
Much of interest in this
connection must necessarily be omitted for want of space. About forty miles
below the Cascades the river receives the Willamette, the last of its great
tributaries. It is navigable for ocean vessels as far as Portland, ten miles
above its mouth, and for river steamers a hundred miles farther. The Falls
of the Willamette are fifteen miles above Portland, where the river, coming
out of dense woods, breaks its way across a bar of black basalt and falls
forty feet in a passion of snowy foam, showing to fine advantage against its
background of evergreens.
Of the fertility and beauty
of the Willamette all the world has heard. It lies between the Cascade and
Coast Ranges, and is bounded on the south by the Calapooya Mountains, a
cross-spur that separates it from the valley of the Umpqua.
It was here the first
settlements for agriculture were made and a provisional government
organized, while the settlers, isolated in the far wilderness, numbered only
a few thousand and were laboring under the opposition of the British
Government and the Hudson's Bay Company. Eager desire in the acquisition of
territory on the part of these pioneer state-builders was more truly
boundless than the wilderness they were in, and their unconscionable
patriotism was equaled only by their belligerence. For here, while
negotiations were pending for the location of the northern boundary,
originated the celebrated "Fifty-four forty or fight," about as reasonable a
war-cry as the "North Pole or fight." Yet sad was the day that brought the
news of the signing of the treaty fixing their boundary along the
forty-ninth parallel, thus leaving the little land-hungry settlement only a
mere quarter-million of miles!
As the Willamette is one of
the most foodful of valleys, so is the Columbia one of the most foodful of
rivers. During the fisher's harvest-time salmon from the sea come in
countless millions, urging their way against falls, rapids, and shallows, up
into the very heart of the Rocky Mountains, supplying everybody by the way
with most bountiful masses of delicious food, weighing from twenty to eighty
pounds each, plump and smooth like loaves of bread ready for the oven. The
supply seemed inexhaustible, as well it might. Large quantities were used by
the Indians as fuel, and by the Hudson's Bay people as manure for their
gardens at the forts. Used, wasted, canned and sent in shiploads to all the
world, a grand harvest was reaped every year while nobody sowed. Of late,
however, the salmon crop has begun to fail, and millions of young fry are
now sown like wheat in the river every year, from hatching-establishments
belonging to the Government.
All of the Oregon waters that
win their way to the sea are tributary to the Columbia, save the short
streams of the immediate coast, and the Umpqua and Rogue Rivers in southern
Oregon. These both head in the Cascade Mountains and find their way to the
sea through gaps in the Coast Range, and both drain large and fertile and
beautiful valleys. Rogue River Valley is peculiarly attractive. With a fine
climate, and kindly, productive soil, the scenery is delightful. About the
main, central open portion of the basin, dotted with picturesque groves of
oak, there are many smaller valleys charmingly environed, the whole
surrounded in the distance by the Siskiyou, Coast, Umpqua, and Cascade
Mountains. Besides the cereals nearly every sort of fruit flourishes here,
and large areas are being devoted to peach, apricot, nectarine, and vine
culture. To me it seems above all others the garden valley of Oregon and the
most delightful place for a home. On the eastern rim of the valley, in the
Cascade Mountains, about sixty miles from Medford in a direct line, is the
remarkable Crater Lake, usually regarded as the one grand wonder of the
region. It lies in a deep, sheer-walled basin about seven thousand feet
above the level of the sea, supposed to be the crater of an extinct volcano.
Oregon as it is to-day is a
very young country, though most of it seems old. Contemplating the Columbia
sweeping from forest to forest, across plain and desert, one is led to say
of it, as did Byron of the ocean, -
"Such as Creation's dawn
beheld, thou rollest now."
How ancient appear the
crumbling basaltic monuments along its banks, and the gray plains to the
east of the Cascades! Nevertheless, the river as well as its basin in
anything like their present condition are comparatively but of yesterday.
Looming no further back in the geological records than the Tertiary Period,
the Oregon of that time looks altogether strange in the few suggestive
glimpses we may get of it - forests in which palm trees wave their royal
crowns, and strange animals roaming beneath them or about the reedy margins
of lakes, the oreodon, the lophiodon, and several extinct species of the
horse, the camel, and other animals.
Then came the fire period
with its darkening showers of ashes and cinders and its vast floods of
molten lava, making quite another Oregon from the fair and fertile land of
the preceding era. And again, while yet the volcanic fires show signs of
action in the smoke and flame of the higher mountains, the whole region
passes under the dominion of ice, and from the frost and darkness and death
of the Glacial Period, Oregon has but recently emerged to the kindly warmth
and life of to-day. |
