REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE
The voyage round the Big Bend, in spite of the atrocious weather, had
gone so well that I had just about made up my mind to continue on down
river by the time we reached Revelstoke. A letter which awaited me at
the hotel there from Captain Armstrong, stating that he would be free to
join me for my first week or ten days south from the foot of the lakes,
was all that was needed to bring me to a decision. I wired him that I
would pick him up in Nelson as soon as I had cleaned up a pile of
correspondence which had pursued me in spite of all directions to the
contrary, and in the meantime for him to endeavour to find a suitable
boat. Nelson, as the metropolis of western British Columbia, appeared to
be the only place where we would have a chance of finding what was
needed in the boat line on short notice. While I wrote letters, Roos got
his exposed film off to Los Angeles, laid in a new stock, and received
additional instructions from Chester in connection with the new
picture--the one for which the opening shots had already been made at
Windermere, and which we called "The Farmer Who Would See the Sea."
As there was no swift water whatever between Revelstoke and Kootenay
Rapids, I had no hesitation in deciding to make the voyage down the
Arrow Lakes by steamer. Both on the score of water-stage and weather, it
was now a good month to six weeks later than the most favourable time
for a through down-river voyage. Any time saved now, therefore, might be
the means of avoiding so many days of winter further along. I was hoping
that, with decreasing altitude and a less humid region ahead, I would at
least be keeping ahead of the snows nearly if not quite all the way to
Portland. I may mention here that, all in all, I played in very good
luck on the score of weather. There were to be, however, a few _geesly_
cold days on the river along about Wenatchee, and two or three mighty
blustery blows in the Cascades.
The Arrow Lakes are merely enlargements of the Columbia, keeping
throughout their lengths the same general north-to-south direction of
this part of the river. The upper lake is thirty-three miles in length,
and has an average width of about three miles. Sixteen miles of
comparatively swift river runs from the upper to the lower lake. The
latter, which is forty-two miles long and two and a half wide, is
somewhat less precipitously walled than the upper lake, and there are
considerable patches of cultivation here and there along its
banks--mostly apple orchards. There is a steamer channel all the way up
the Columbia to Revelstoke, but the present service, maintained by the
Canadian Pacific at its usual high standard, starts at the head of the
upper lake and finishes at West Robson, some miles down the Columbia
from the foot of the lower lake. This is one of the very finest lake
trips anywhere in the world; I found it an unending source of delight,
even after a fortnight of the superlative scenery of the Big Bend.
There is a stock story they tell of the Arrow Lakes, and which appears
intended to convey to the simple tourist a graphic idea of the
precipitousness of their rocky walls. The skipper of my steamer told it
while we were ploughing down the upper lake. Seeing a man struggling in
the water near the bank one day, he ran some distance off his course to
throw the chap a line. Disdaining all aid, the fellow kept right on
swimming toward the shore. "Don't worry about me," he shouted back;
"this is only the third time I've fallen off my ranch to-day."
I told the Captain that the story sounded all right to me except in one
particular--that even my glass failed to reveal any ranches for a man to
fall off of. "Oh, that's all right," was the unperturbed reply; "there
_was_ one when that yarn was started, but I guess it fell into the lake
too. But mebbe I _had_ ought to keep it for the lower lake, though," he
added; "there is still some un-slid ranches down there."
Nelson is a fine little city that hangs to a rocky mountainside right at
the point where Kootenay Lake spills over and discharges its surplus
water into a wild, white torrent that seems to be trying to atone at the
last for its long delay in making up its mind to join the Columbia.
Nelson was made by the rich silver-lead mines of the Kootenay district,
but it was so well made that, even now with the first fine frenzy of the
mining excitement over, it is still able to carry on strongly as a
commercial distributing and fruit shipping centre. It is peopled by the
same fine, out-door loving folk that one finds through all of western
Canada, and is especially noted for its aquatic sports. I am only sorry
that I was not able to see more of both Nelson and its people.
As soon as I saw Captain Armstrong I made a clean breast to him about my
failure to unearth the treasure at the Bend. He was a good sport and
bore up better than one would expect a man to under the circumstances.
"I wish that matter of K---- and his D. T.'s had come up before you
left," was his only comment.
"Why?" I asked. "I can't see what difference that would have made. We
didn't waste a lot of time digging."
"That's just it," said the Captain with a wry grin. "Wouldn't you have
gone right on digging if you had known that the spell of jim-jams that
finished K---- came from some stuff he got from a section-hand at
Beavermouth? Now I suppose I'll have to watch my chance and run down and
salvage that keg of old Scotch myself." It shows the stuff that
Armstrong was made of when I say that, even after the way I had betrayed
the trust he had reposed in me, he was still game to go on with the
Columbia trip. That's the sort of man he was.
Boats of anywhere near the design we would need for the river were
scarce, the Captain reported, but there was one which he thought might
do. This proved to be a sixteen-foot, clinker-built skiff that had been
constructed especially to carry an out-board motor. She had ample beam,
a fair freeboard and a considerable sheer. The principal thing against
her was the square stern, and that was of less moment running down
river than if we had been working up. It _did_ seem just a bit like
asking for trouble, tackling the Columbia in a boat built entirely for
lake use; but Captain Armstrong's approval of her was quite good enough
for me. Save for her amiable weakness of yielding somewhat overreadily
to the seductive embraces of whirlpools--a trait common to all
square-sterned craft of inconsiderable length--she proved more than
equal to the task set for her. We paid fifty-five dollars for her--about
half what she had cost--and there was a charge of ten dollars for
expressing her to West Robson, on the Columbia.
We left Nelson by train for Castlegar, on the Columbia just below West
Robson, the afternoon of October nineteenth. The track runs in sight of
the Kootenay practically all of the way. There is a drop of three
hundred and fifty feet in the twenty-eight miles of river between the
outlet of the lake and the Columbia, with no considerable stretch that
it would be safe to run with a boat. A large part of the drop occurs in
two fine cataracts called Bonnington Falls, where there is an important
hydro-electric plant, serving Nelson and Trail with power; but most of
the rest of the way the river is one continuous series of foam-white
cascades with short quiet stretches between. The last two or three miles
to the river the railway runs through the remarkable colony of Russian
Doukobours, with a station at Brilliant, where their big co-operative
jam factory and administrative offices are located. We had a more
intimate glimpse of this interesting colony from the river the
following day.
We found the express car with the boat on the siding at West Robson, and
the three of us--Armstrong, Roos and myself--had little difficulty in
sliding her down the quay and launching her in the Columbia. Pulling a
mile down the quiet current, we tied her up for the night at the
Castlegar Ferry. Then we cut across the bend through the woods for a
look at Kootenay Rapids, the first stretch of fast water we were to
encounter. After the rough-and-rowdy rapids of the Big Bend, this
quarter-mile of white riffle looked like comparatively easy running. It
was a very different sort of a craft we had now, however, and Armstrong
took the occasion to give the channel a careful study. There were a lot
of big black rocks cropping up all the way across, but he thought that,
by keeping well in toward the right bank, we could make it without much
trouble.
On the way back to the hotel at Castlegar, the Captain was hailed from
the doorway of a cabin set in the midst of a fresh bit of clearing. It
turned out to be a boatman who had accompanied him and Mr. Forde, of the
Canadian Department of Public Works, on a part of their voyage down the
Columbia in 1915. They reminisced for half an hour in the gathering
twilight, talking mostly of the occasion when a whirlpool had stood
their Peterboro on end in the Little Dalles. I found this just a bit
disturbing, for Armstrong had already confided to me that he intended
running the Little Dalles.
The boat trimmed well when we came to stow the load the next morning,
but when the three of us took our places she was rather lower in the
water than we had expected she was going to be. She seemed very small
after Blackmore's big thirty-footer, and the water uncomfortably close
at hand. She was buoyant enough out in the current, however, and
responded very smartly to paddle and oars when Armstrong and I tried a
few practice manoeuvres. The Captain sat on his bedding roll in the
stern, plying his long paddle, and I pulled a pair of oars from the
forward thwart. Roos sat on the after thwart, facing Armstrong, with his
tripod, camera and most of the luggage stowed between them. She was
loaded to ride high by the head, as it was white water rather than
whirlpools that was in immediate prospect. With a small boat and a
consequent comparatively small margin of safety, one has to make his
trim a sort of a compromise. For rough, sloppy rapids it is well to have
the bows just about as high in the air as you can get them. On the other
hand, it is likely to be fatal to get into a bad whirlpool with her too
much down by the stern. As the one succeeds the other as a general rule,
about the best you can do is to strike a comfortable mean based on what
you know of the water ahead.
[Illustration: BONNINGTON FALLS OF THE KOOTENAY (_above_)]
[Illustration: PLASTERED LOG CABIN IN THE DOUKHOBOR VILLAGE (_below_)]
[Illustration: TRUCKING THE SKIFF THROUGH KETTLE FALLS]
[Illustration: TWILIGHT IN THE GORGE AT KETTLE FALLS]
I found it very awkward for a while pulling with two oars after having
worked for so long with one, and this difficulty--especially in bad
water--I never quite overcame. In a really rough rapid one oar is all a
man can handle properly, and he does well if he manages that. Your
stroke is largely determined by the sort of stuff the blade is going
into, and--as on the verge of an eddy--with the water to port running in
one direction, and that to starboard running another, it is obviously
impossible for a man handling two oars to do full justice to the
situation. He simply has to do the best he can and leave the rest to the
man with the paddle in the stern. When the latter is an expert with the
experience of Captain Armstrong there is little likelihood of serious
trouble.
The matter of keeping a lookout is also much more difficult in a small
boat. In a craft with only a few inches of freeboard it is obviously out
of the question for a steersman to keep his feet through a rapid, as he
may do without risk in a _batteau_ or canoe large enough to give him a
chance to brace his knees against the sides. Armstrong effected the best
compromise possible by standing and getting a good "look-see" while he
could, and then settling back into a securer position when the boat
struck the rough water. The three or four feet less of vantage from
which to con the channel imposes a good deal of a handicap, but there is
no help for it.
We ran both pitches of Kootenay Rapids easily and smartly. Her bows
slapped down pretty hard when she tumbled off the tops of some of the
bigger rollers, but into not the softest of the souse-holes would she
put her high-held head. We took in plenty of spray, but nothing
green--nothing that couldn't be bailed without stopping. It was a lot
better performance than one was entitled to expect of a lake boat
running her maiden rapid.
"She'll do!" chuckled the Captain with a satisfied grin, resting on his
paddle as we slid easily out of the final run of swirls; "you ought to
take her right through without a lot of trouble." "_Imshallah!_" I
interjected piously, anxious not to offend the River God with a display
of overmuch confidence. I began to call her "_Imshallah_" in my mind
from that time on, and "_Imshallah_"--"God willing"--she remained until
I tied her up for her well-earned rest in a Portland boat-house. It was
in the course of the next day or two that I made a propitiatory offering
to the River God in the form of the remnants of the _jodpurs_ he had
tried so hard to snatch from me at Rock Slide Rapids. I've always had a
sneaking feeling offerings of that kind are "good medicine;" that the
old Greeks knew what they were doing when they squared things with the
Gods in advance on venturing forth into unknown waters.
Big and Little Tin Cup Rapids, which are due to the obstruction caused
by boulders washed down by the torrential Kootenay River, gave us little
trouble. There is a channel of good depth right down the middle of both,
and we splashed through this without getting into much besides flying
foam. Just below we pulled up to the left bank and landed for a look at
one of the Doukobour villages.
The Doukobours are a strange Russian religious sect, with beliefs and
observances quite at variance with those of the Greek Church. Indeed, it
was the persecutions of the Orthodox Russians that were responsible for
driving considerable numbers of them to Canada. They are best known in
America, not for their indefatigable industry and many other good
traits, but for their highly original form of protesting when they have
fancied that certain of their rights were being restricted by Canadian
law. On repeated occasions of this kind whole colonies of them--men,
women and children--have thrown aside their every rag of clothing and
started off marching about the country. Perhaps it is not strange that
more has been written about these strange pilgrimages than of the fact
that the Doukobours have cleared and brought to a high state of
productivity many square miles of land that, but for their unflagging
energy, would still be worthless. In spite of their somewhat
unconventional habits, these simple people have been an incalculably
valuable economic asset to western Canada.
On the off chance that there might be an incipient "protest" brewing,
Roos took his movie outfit ashore with him. He met with no luck. Indeed,
we found the women of the astonishingly clean little village of
plastered and whitewashed cabins extremely shy of even our hand cameras.
The Captain thought that this was probably due to the fact that they had
been a good deal pestered by kodak fiends while Godivaing round the
country on some of their protest marches. "The people were very
indignant about it," he said; "but I never heard of any one pulling down
their blinds." Coventry was really very "Victorian" in its attitude
toward Lady Godiva's "protest."
There was good swift water all the way from Castlegar to Trail, and we
averaged close to nine miles an hour during the time we were on the
river. At China Bar the river was a good deal spread out, running in
channels between low gravel islands. Any one of these was runnable for a
small boat, and we did not need to keep to the main channel that had
once been maintained for steamers. Sixteen miles below Castlegar, and
about half a mile below the mouth of Sullivan Creek, there was a long
black reef of basaltic rock stretching a third of the way across the
river. We shot past it without difficulty by keeping near the left bank.
The sulphurous fumes of the big smelter blotching the southern sky with
saffron and coppery red clouds indicated that we were nearing Trail. The
stacks, with the town below and beyond, came into view just as we hit
the head of a fast-running riffle. We ran the last half mile at a swift
clip, pulling up into about the only place that looked like an eddy on
the Trail side of the river. That this proved to be the slack water
behind the crumbling city dump could not be helped. He who rides the
running road cannot be too particular about his landing places.
We reached Trail before noon, and, so far as time was concerned, could
just as well have run right on across the American line to Northport
that afternoon. However, October twenty-first turned out to be a date of
considerable importance to British Columbians, for it was the day of the
election to determine whether that province should continue dry or, as
the proponents of wetness euphemized it, return to "moderation." As
there was a special provision by which voters absent from their place of
registration could cast their ballots wherever they chanced to be,
Captain Armstrong was anxious to stop over and do his bit for
"moderation." Indeed, I was a bit worried at first for fear, by way of
compensating in a measure for the injury we had done him in failing to
come through with the treasure from the Big Bend, he would expect Roos
and me to put in a few absentee ballots for "moderation." There was a
rumour about that a vote for "moderation" would be later redeemable--in
case "moderation" carried, of course--in the voter's weight of the old
familiar juice. I never got further than a pencilled computation on the
"temperance" bar of the Crown Point Hotel that two hundred and
thirty-five pounds (I was down to that by now) would work out to
something like one hundred seventeen and a half quarts. This on the rule
that "A pint's a pound, the world round." That was as far as I got, I
say, for there seemed rather too much of a chance of international
complications sooner or later. But I am still wondering just what _is_
the law covering the case of a man who sells his vote in a foreign
country--and for his weight in whisky that he would probably never have
delivered to him. I doubt very much if there is any precedent to go by.
Between votes--or rather before Captain Armstrong voted--we took the
occasion to go over the smelter of the Consolidated Mining and Smelting
Company. It is one of the most modern plants of its kind in the world,
and treats ore from all over western Canada. We were greatly interested
in the recently installed zinc-leaching plant for the handling of an
especially refractory ore from the company's own mine in the Kootenays.
This ore had resisted for years every attempt to extract its zinc at a
profit, and the perfection of the intricate process through which it is
now put at Trail has made a mine, which would otherwise have remained
practically valueless, worth untold millions. The two thousand and more
employes of the smelter are the main factor in the prosperity of this
live and by no means unattractive little town.
We had two very emphatic warnings before leaving Trail the next
morning--one was on no account to attempt to take any drinkables across
the line by the river, and the other was to keep a weather eye lifting
in running the rapids at the Rock Islands, two miles below town. As we
reached the latter before we did the International Boundary Line, we
started 'wareing the rapids first. This was by no means as empty a
warning as many I was to have later. The islands proved to be two
enormous granite rocks, between which the river rushed with great
velocity. The Captain headed the boat into the deep, swift channel to
the right, avoiding by a couple of yards a walloping whale of a
whirlpool that came spinning right past the bow. I didn't see it, of
course, until it passed astern; but it looked to me then as though its
whirling centre was depressed a good three feet below the surface of the
river, and with a black, bottomless funnel opening out of that. I was
just about to register "nonchalance" by getting off my "all-day-sucker"
joke, when I suddenly felt the thwart beneath me begin to push upwards
like the floor of a jerkily-started elevator, only with a rotary action.
Fanning empty air with both oars, I was saved from falling backwards by
the forty-five degree up-tilt of the boat. Way beneath me--down below
the surface of the river--Armstrong, pop-eyed, was leaning sharply
forward to keep from being dumped out over the stern. Roos, with a
death-grip on either gunwale, was trying to keep from falling into the
Captain's lap. Round we went like a prancing horse, and just as the boat
had completed the hundred and eighty degrees that headed her momentarily
up-river, something seemed to drop away beneath her bottom, and as she
sunk into the hole there came a great snorting "ku-whouf!" and about a
barrel of water came pouring its solid green flood over the stern and,
incidentally, the Captain. A couple of seconds later the boat had
completed her round and settled back on a comparatively even keel as
hard-plied oars and paddle wrenched her out of the grip of the Thing
that had held her in its clutch. I saw it plainly as it did its dervish
dance of disappointment as we drew away. It looked to me not over half
as large as that first one which the Captain had so cleverly avoided.
"That was about the way we got caught in the Little Dalles," observed
Armstrong when we were in quieter water again. "Only it was a worse
whirlpool than that one that did it. This square stern gives the water
more of a grip than it can get on a canoe. We'll have to watch out for
it."
Save over a broad, shallow bar across the current at the mouth of the
Salmon, there was deep, swift water all the way to Waneta, the Canadian
Customs station. Here we landed Roos to await the morning train from
Nelson to Spokane and go through to Northport to arrange the American
Customs formalities. At a final conference we decided to heed the
warning about not attempting to carry any drinkables openly into the
United States. Stowing what little there was left where not the most
lynx-eyed or ferret-nosed Customs Officer could ever get at it, we
pushed off.
There is a fairly fast current all the way to Northport, but from the
fact that we made the eleven miles in about three-quarters of an hour,
it seems likely that, between paddle and oars, the boat was driven
somewhat faster than the Columbia. Just below Waneta and immediately
above the International Boundary Line, the Pend d'Oreille or Clark's
Fork flows, or rather falls into the Columbia. This really magnificent
stream comes tumbling down a sheer-walled gorge in fall after fall,
several of which can be seen in narrowing perspective from the Columbia
itself. Its final leap is over a ten-feet-high ledge which extends all
the way across its two-hundred-feet-wide mouth. Above this fine cataract
it is the Pend d'Oreille, below it, the Columbia. I know of no place
where two such rivers come together with such fine spectacular effect,
in a way so fitting to the character of each.
The Pend d'Oreille is generally rated as the principal tributary of the
upper Columbia. Although the Kootenay--because it flows through a region
of considerably greater annual rainfall--carries rather the more water
of the two, the Pend d'Oreille is longer and drains a far more extensive
watershed--that lying between the main chain of the Rockies and the
Bitter Root and Coeur d'Alene ranges. Great as is the combined
discharge of these two fine rivers, their effect on the Columbia is not
apparent to the eye. If anything, the latter looks a bigger stream where
it flows out of the lower Arrow Lake, above the Kootenay, than it does
where it crosses the American Line below the Pend d'Oreille. As a matter
of fact, its flow must be nearly doubled at the latter point, but the
swifter current reduces its apparent volume. Nothing but the most
careful computations, based on speed of current and area of
cross-section, will give anything approximating the real discharge of a
river.
I was a good deal interested in the Pend d'Oreille, because it was on
one of its upper tributaries, the Flathead in Montana, that I had made
my first timid effort at rapid-running a good many years previously. It
hadn't been a brilliant success--for two logs tied together with ropes
hardly make the ideal of a raft; but the glamour of the hare-brained
stunt had survived the wetting. I should dearly have loved to explore
that wonderful black-walled canyon, with its unending succession of
cataracts and cascades, but lack of time forbade. The drizzling rain
made it impossible even to get a good photograph of the fine frenzy of
that final mad leap into the Columbia.
It was funny the way that rain acted. For something like a month now
there had been only two or three days of reasonably fair weather, and
for the last fortnight the sun had hardly been glimpsed at all. Pulling
up to Waneta in a clammy drizzle, Captain Armstrong remarked, as he drew
the collar of his waterproof closer to decrease the drainage down the
back of his neck, that he reckoned they wouldn't stand for weather of
that kind over in "God's Country." As there was nothing but sodden
clouds to the southward, I didn't feel like giving him any definite
assurance on the point at the moment. However, when we crossed the Line
an hour later the rain had ceased. A couple of miles farther down the
clouds were breaking up, and at Northport the sun was shining. I did not
have another rainy day, nor even one more than slightly overcast, until
I was almost at the Cascades. I trust my good Canadian friend was as
deeply impressed as he claimed to be.
Beyond a sharp riffle between jagged rock islands above Deadman's Eddy,
and one or two shallow boulder bars where the channels were a bit
obscure, it was good open-and-above-board water all the way to
Northport. The "Eddy" is a whirling back-sweep of water at a bend of the
river, and is supposed to hold up for inspection everything floatable
that the Columbia brings down from Canada. "Funny they never thought of
calling it 'Customs Eddy,'" Armstrong said. From the condition of its
littered banks, it looked to be almost as prolific of "pickings" as the
great drift pile of Kinbasket Lake. Being near a town, however, it is
doubtless much more thoroughly gone over.
We tied up below the Ferry at Northport, which was the rendezvous to
which Roos was to bring the Customs Inspector. The ferry-man, who had
once seen Captain Armstrong run the rapids of the upper Kootenay with
one of his steamers, was greatly elated over having such a notable
walking the quarterdeck of his own humble craft. Armstrong, in turn,
was scarcely less excited over an automatic pumping contrivance which
the ferry-man had rigged up to keep his pontoons dry. After waiting for
an hour, we took our bags and walked up to the hotel on the main street
at the top of the bluff. We found Roos in the office reading a last
year's haberdashery catalogue. He said he had not expected us for a
couple of hours yet, and that he had arranged for inspection at three
o'clock. That gave us time for a bath and lunch ourselves. As our bags
were now well beyond the tentacles of the Customs, we did a little
figuring on the table-cloth between courses. By this we proved that, had
we had the nerve to disregard the warnings of well-meaning friends in
Trail and filled our hand-bags with Scotch instead of personal effects,
Armstrong would now have had fourteen quarts up in his room, and I
eighteen quarts. Then the waitress gave us current local quotations, and
we started to figure values. I shall never know whether or not there
would have been room on the corner of that gravy and egg broidered
napery for my stupendous total. Just as I was beginning to run over the
edge, the Inspector came in and asked if we would mind letting him see
those two suit-cases we had brought to the hotel with us! Many and
various are the joys of virtue, but none of the others comparable to
that one which sets you aglow as you say "Search me!" when, by the
special intervention of the providence which watches over fools and
drunks, you haven't got goods.
The inspection, both at the hotel and at the ferry, was _fairly_
perfunctory, though I did notice that the Customs man assumed a rather
springy step when he trod the light inner bottom of the skiff. Roos
filmed the operation as a part of the picture, I acting as much as I
could like I thought a farmer would act at his first Customs inspection.
Roos, complaining that I didn't "do it natural," wanted to shoot over
again. The Customs man was willing, but Armstrong and I, trudging
purposefully off up the road, refused to return. Roos followed us to the
hotel in considerable dudgeon. "Why wouldn't you let me make that shot
over?" he asked. "It was an 'oil-can'--rotten!" "Because," I replied
evenly, looking him straight in the eye, "I was afraid the Inspector
might try that jig-a-jig step of his on the false bottom in the bow if
we put him through the show a second time. I don't believe in tempting
providence. We can get a street-car conductor and make that Inspection
shot again in Portland. This isn't...." "You're right," cut in Roos,
with a dawning grin of comprehension. "I beg your pardon. You're a
deeper bird than I gave you credit for. Or perhaps it was the
Captain...."
[Illustration: WAITING FOR THE FOG TO LIFT ABOVE BISHOP'S RAPIDS]
[Illustration: ROSS AND ARMSTRONG REGISTERING "GLOOM"]
[Illustration: THE "INTAKE" AT THE LITTLE DALLES (_above_)]
[Illustration: WHERE WE STARTED TO LINE THE LITTLE DALLES (_below_)]
A heavy fog filled the river gorge from bank to bank when we pushed off
the following morning, and we had to nose down carefully to avoid the
piers of the bridge of the Great Northern branch line to Rossland. A
quarter of a mile farther down the river began shoaling over gravel
bars, and out of the mist ahead came the rumble of water tumbling over
boulders. This was an inconsiderable riffle called Bishop's Rapid, but
the Captain was too old a river man to care to go into it without light
to choose his channel. A half hour's wait on a gravel bar in mid-stream
brought a lifting of the fog, and we ran through by the right hand of
the two shallow channels without difficulty. In brilliant sunshine we
pulled down a broad stretch of deep and rapidly slackening water to the
gleaming white lime-stone barrier at the head of the Little Dalles.
All of Northport had been a unit in warning us not to attempt to run the
Little Dalles. Nearly every one, as far as I could judge, had lost some
relative there, and one man gave a very circumstantial description of
how he had seen a big _batteau_, with six Swede lumbermen, sucked out of
sight there, never to reappear. On cross-questioning, he admitted that
this was at high water, and that there was nothing like so much "suck"
in the whirlpools at the present stage. The Captain, however, having
just received telephonic word from Nelson that "moderation" had carried
in B. C. by a decisive majority, felt that nothing short of running the
Little Dalles would be adequate celebration. He had managed to come
through right-side-up in a Peterboro once, and he thought our skiff
ought to be equal to the stunt. He held that opinion just long enough
for him to climb to the top of the cliff that forms the left wall of
river at the gorge and take one good, long, comprehensive look into the
depths.
"Nothing doing," he said, with a decisive shake of his broad-brimmed
Stetson. "The river's four or five feet higher than when we ran through
here in 'fifteen, and that makes all the difference. It was touch-and-go
for a minute then, and now it's out of the question for a small boat. If
we can't line, we'll have to find some way to portage."
The Little Dalles are formed by a great reef of lime-stone which, at one
time, probably made a dam all the way across the river. The narrow
channel which the Columbia has worn through the stone is less than two
hundred feet in width for a considerable distance, and has lofty
perpendicular walls. The river is divided by a small rock island into
two channels at the head, the main one, to the right, being about two
hundred feet in width, and the narrow left-hand one not over forty feet.
The depth of the main channel is very great--probably much greater than
its narrowest width; so that here, as also at Tumwater and "Five-Mile"
in the Great Dalles, it may be truly said that the Columbia "has to turn
on its side to wriggle through."
It is that little rock island at the head of the gorge, extending, as it
does, almost longitudinally _across_ the current that makes all the
trouble. It starts one set of whirlpools running down the right-hand
channel and another set down the left-hand. Every one of the vortices in
this dual series of spinning "suckers" is more than one would care to
take any liberties with if it could be avoided; and either line of
whirlpools, taken alone, probably _could_ be avoided. The impassable
barrage comes a hundred feet below the point where the left-hand torrent
precipitates itself at right-angles into the current of the right-hand
one, and the two lines of whirlpools converge in a "V" and form one big
walloping sockdolager. Him there would still be room to run by if he
were "whouf-ing" there alone; but his satellites won't have it. Their
accursed team-work is such that the spreading "V" above catches
everything that comes down stream and feeds it into the maw of the big
whirlpool as into a hopper. Logs, ties, shingle-bolts, fence-posts--all
the refuse of sawmills and the flotsam and jetsam of farms and
towns--are gulped with a "whouf!" and when they reappear again, a mile
or two down river, they are all scoured smooth and round-cornered by
their passage through the monster's alimentary canal.
"I'm sorry not to celebrate the victory of 'moderation,'" said the
Captain finally, with another regretful shake of his head; "but
'moderation' begins at home. It would be immoderately foolish to put the
skiff into that line of whirlpools, the way they're running now." Roos
was the only one who was inclined to dispute that decision, and as his
part would have been to stand out on the brink of the cliff and turn the
crank, it was only natural that he should take the "artistic" rather
than the "humanitarian" view.
As a last resort before portaging, we tried lining down, starting at the
head of the narrow left-hand channel. We gave it up at the end of a
hundred feet. A monkey at one end of the line and a log of wood at the
other would have made the only combination calculated to get by that
way. It was no job for a shaky-kneed man and a sinkable boat. There was
nothing to do but look up a team or truck. What appeared to be the
remains of the ancient portage road ran down from an abandoned farm to
the river, and it seemed likely some kind of vehicle could be brought
over it.
As the highway ran along the bench, four or five hundred feet above the
river, I set off by the railroad track, which was comparatively close
at hand. At the end of a couple of miles I reached a small station
called Marble, the shipping point for a large apple orchard project
financed by the J. G. White Company of New York. Mr. Reed, the resident
manager, immediately ordered a powerful team and wagon placed at my
disposal, and with that I returned northward over the highway. We had a
rough time getting down through brush and dead-falls to the river, but
finally made it without an upset. Roos having finished what pictures he
wanted--including one of the Captain standing on the brink of the cliff
and registering "surprise-cum-disappointment-cum-disgust,"--we loaded
the skiff and our outfit onto the wagon and started the long climb up to
the top of the bench. The discovery of an overgrown but still passable
road offered a better route than that followed in coming down, and we
made the highway, and on to the village, in good time. Mr. Reed dangled
the bait of a French _chef_ and rooms in the company's hotel as an
inducement to spend the night with him, but we had not the time to
accept the kind invitation. His ready courtesy was of the kind which I
learned later I could expect as a matter of course all along the river.
Never did I have trouble in getting help when I needed it, and when it
was charged for, it was almost invariably an under rather than an
over-charge. The running road is the one place left where the people
have not been spoiled as have those on the highways frequented by motor
tourists.
Launching the boat from the Marble Ferry at four o'clock, we pulled off
in a good current in the hope of reaching Bossburg before dark. Between
the windings of the river and several considerable stretches of slack
water, however, our progress was less than anticipated. Shut in by high
hills on both sides, night descended early upon the river, and at
five-thirty I found myself pulling in Stygian blackness. Knowing there
was no really bad water ahead, the Captain let her slide through a
couple of easy riffles, the white-topped waves barely guessed as they
flagged us with ghostly signals. But a deepening growl, borne on the
wings of the slight up-river night-breeze, demanded more consideration.
No one but a lunatic goes into a strange rapid in a poor light, to say
nothing of complete darkness. Pulling into an eddy by the left bank, we
stopped and listened. The roar, though distant, was unmistakable. Water
was tumbling among rocks at a fairly good rate, certainly too fast to
warrant going into it in the dark.
While we were debating what to do, a black figure silhouetted itself
against the star-gleams at the top of the low bank. "Hello, there!"
hailed the Captain. "Can you tell us how far it is to Bossburg?" "_This_
is Bossburg," was the surprising but gratifying response. "You're
there--that is, you're here." It proved to be the local ferry-man, and
Columbia ferry-men are always obliging and always intelligent, at least
in matters relating to the river. Tying up the boat, we left our stuff
in his nearby house and sought the hotel with our hand-bags. It was not
a promising looking hotel when we found it, for Bossburg was that
saddest of living things, an all-but-extinguished boom-town; but the
very kindly old couple who lived there and catered to the occasional
wayfarer bustled about and got us a corking good meal--fried chicken and
biscuits as light as the whipped cream we had on the candied
peaches--and our beds were clean and comfortable.
As we were now but a few miles above Kettle Falls, the most complete
obstruction in the whole length of the Columbia, I took the occasion to
telephone ahead for a truck with which to make the very considerable
portage. There would be two or three miles at the falls in any case,
Captain Armstrong said, and he was also inclined to think it would be
advisable to extend the portage to the foot of Grand Rapids, and thus
save a day's hard lining. It was arranged that the truck should meet us
at the ruins of the old Hudson Bay post, on the east bank some distance
above the upper fall.
We pushed off from Bossburg at eight o'clock on the morning of October
twenty-third. The water was slack for several hundred yards, which was
found to be due to a reef extending all of the way across the river and
forming the rapid which we had heard growling in the dark. This was
called "Six Mile," and while it would have been an uncomfortable place
to tangle up with in the night, it was simple running with the light of
day. "Five Mile," a bit farther down, was studded with big black rocks,
but none of them hard to avoid. As we were running rather ahead of the
time of our rendezvous with the truck, we stretched our legs the length
and back of the main street of Marcus, a growing little town which is
the junction point for the Boundary Branch of the Great Northern. We
passed the mouth of the Kettle River shortly after running under the
railway bridge, and a pull across a big eddy carried us to the lake-like
stretch of water backed up by the rocky obstructions responsible for
Kettle Falls. The roar of the latter filled the air as we headed into a
shallow, mud-bottomed lagoon widening riverward from the mouth of a
small creek and beached the skiff under a yellowing fringe of willows.
The site of the historic post was in an extremely aged apple orchard
immediately above. It was one of those "inevitable" spots, where the
_voyageurs_ of all time passing up or down the river must have begun or
ended their portages. I was trying to conjure up pictures of a few of
these in my mind, when the chug-chugging of an engine somewhere among
the pines of the distant hillside recalled me to a realization of the
fact that it was time to get ready for my own portage. Before we had our
stuff out of the boat the truck had come to a throbbing standstill
beyond the fringe of the willows. It promised to be an easier portage
than some of our predecessors had had, in any event.
To maintain his "continuity," Roos filmed the skiff being taken out of
the water and loaded upon the truck, the truck passing down the main
street of the town of Kettle Falls, and a final launching in the river
seven miles below. Half way into town we passed an old Indian mission
that must have been about contemporaneous with Hudson Bay operations.
Although no nails had been used in its construction, the ancient
building, with its high-pitched roof, still survived in a comparatively
good state of preservation. The town is some little distance below the
Falls, and quite out of sight of the river, which flows here between
very high banks. We stopped at the hotel for lunch before completing the
portage.
After talking the situation over with Captain Armstrong, I decided to
fall in with his suggestion to pass Grand Rapids as well as Kettle Falls
in the portage. There were only about five miles of boatable water
between the foot of the latter and the head of the former, and then an
arduous three-quarters of a mile of lining that would have entailed the
loss of another day. There is a drop of twelve feet in about twelve
hundred yards in Grand Rapids, with nothing approaching a clear channel
among the huge black basaltic rocks that have been scattered about
through them as from a big pepper shaker. As far as I could learn, there
is no record of any kind of a man-propelled craft of whatever size ever
having run through and survived, but a small stern-wheeler, the
_Shoshone_, was run down several years ago at high water. She reached
the foot a good deal of a hulk, but still right side up. This is rated
as one of the maddest things ever done with a steamer on the Columbia,
and the fact that it did not end in complete disaster is reckoned by old
river men as having been due in about equal parts to the inflexible
nerve of her skipper and the intervention of the special providence that
makes a point of watching over mortals who do things like that. I met
Captain McDermid a fortnight later in Potaris. He told me then, what I
hadn't heard before, that he took his wife and children with him.
"Nellie thought a lot of both me and the little old _Shoshone_," he
said with a wistful smile, "and she reckoned that, if we went, she
wouldn't exactly like to be left here alone. And so--I never could
refuse Nellie anything--I took her along. And now she and the _Shoshone_
are both gone." He was a wonderful chap--McDermid. All old Columbia
River skippers are. They wouldn't have survived if they hadn't been.
There was a low bench on the left bank, about a mile below the foot of
Grand Rapids, which could be reached by a rough road, and from which the
boat could be slid down over the rocks to the river. Running to this
point with the truck, we left our heavier outfit at a road camp and
dropped the boat at the water's edge, ready for launching the following
morning. Returning to the town, we were driven up to the Falls by Dr.
Baldwin, a prominent member of this live and attractive little
community, where Roos made a number of shots. The upper or main fall has
a vertical drop of fifteen feet at low water, while the lower fall is
really a rough tumbling cascade with a drop of ten feet in a quarter of
a mile. The river is divided at the head of the Falls by an arrow-shaped
rock island, the main channel being the one to the right. The left-hand
channel loops in a broad "V" around the island and, running between
precipitous walls, accomplishes in a beautiful rapid the same drop that
the main channel does by the upper fall. A rocky peninsula, extending
squarely across the course of the left-hand channel, forces the rolling
current of the latter practically to turn a somersault before accepting
the dictum that it must double back northward for five or six hundred
feet before uniting with the main river. It was the savage swirling of
water in that rock-walled elbow where the "somersault" takes place that
prompted the imaginative French-Canadian _voyageurs_ to apply the
appropriately descriptive name of _Chaudiere_ to the boiling maelstrom.
Up to the present the development of the enormous power running to waste
over Kettle Falls has gone little further than the dreams of the brave
community of optimists who have been attracted there in the belief that
a material asset of such incalculable value cannot always be ignored in
a growing country like our own. And they are right, of course, but a few
years ahead of time. It is only the children and grandchildren of the
living pioneers of the Columbia who will see more than the beginning of
its untold millions of horse-power broken to harness. And in the
meantime the optimists of Kettle Falls are turning their attention to
agriculture and horticulture. Never have I seen finer apple orchards
than those through which we drove on the way to resume our down-river
voyage.
The point from which we pushed off at ten o'clock on the morning of
October twenty-fourth must have been only a little below that at which
Lieutenant Symons launched the _batteau_ for his historic voyage to the
mouth of the Snake in 1881. Forty years have gone by since that
memorable undertaking, yet Symons' report is to-day not only the most
accurate description of an upper Columbia voyage that has ever been
written, but also the most readable. During the time I was running the
three hundred and fifty miles of river surveyed by Lieutenant Symons, I
found his admirable report only less fascinating on the human side than
it was of material assistance on the practical.
Of his preparations for the voyage Lieutenant Symons writes:
"I was fortunate enough to procure from John Rickey, a settler
and trader, who lives at the Grand Rapids, a strongly built
_batteau_, and had his assistance in selecting a crew of Indians
for the journey. The _batteau_ was about thirty feet long, four
feet wide at the gunwales, and two feet deep, and is as small a
boat as the voyage should ever be attempted in, if it is
contemplated to go through all the rapids. My first lookout had
been to secure the services of 'Old Pierre Agare' as steersman,
and I had to carry on negotiations with him for several days
before he finally consented to go. Old Pierre is the only one of
the old Hudson Bay _voyageurs_ now left who knows the river
thoroughly at all stages of water, from Colville to its mouth....
The old man is seventy years of age, and hale and hearty,
although his eyesight is somewhat defective.... The other Indians
engaged were Pen-waw, Big Pierre, Little Pierre, and Joseph. They
had never made the trip all the way down the river, and their
minds were full of the dangers and terrors of the great rapids
below, and it was a long time before we could prevail upon them
to go, by promising them a high price and stipulating for their
return by rail and stage. Old Pierre and John Rickey laboured and
talked with them long and faithfully, to gain their consent, and
I am sure that they started off with as many misgivings about
getting safely through as we did who had to trust our lives to
their skill, confidence and obedience."
Lieutenant Symons does not state whether any confusion ever arose as a
consequence of the fact that three of his five Indians bore the
inevitable French-Canadian name of "Pierre." Of the method of work
followed by himself and his topographical assistant, Downing, throughout
the voyage, he writes:
"Mr. Downing and myself worked independently in getting as
thorough knowledge of the river as possible, he taking the
courses with a prismatic compass, and estimating distances by the
eye, and sketching in the topographical features of the
surrounding country, while I estimated also the distances to
marked points, and paid particular attention to the bed of the
river, sounding wherever there were any indications of
shallowness. Each evening we compared notes as to distances, and
we found them to come out very well together, the greatest
difference being six and three-fourths miles in a day's run of
sixty-four miles. Some days they were identical. The total
distance from our starting point ... to the mouth of the Snake
River was estimated by Mr. Downing to be three hundred and
sixty-three miles, and by myself to be three hundred and fifty.
His distances were obtained by estimating how far it was to some
marked point ahead, and correcting it when the point was reached;
mine by the time required to pass over the distances, in which
the elements considered were the swiftness of the current and the
labour of the oarsmen."
I may state that it was only rarely that we found the distances arrived
at by Lieutenant Symons and Mr. Downing to be greatly at variance with
those established by later surveys. In the matter of bars, rapids,
currents, channels and similar things, there appeared to have been
astonishingly little change in the four decades that had elapsed since
he had made his observations. Where he advised, for instance, taking the
right-hand in preference to the middle or left-hand channels, it was not
often that we went far wrong in heeding the direction. Bars of gravel,
of course, shift from season to season, but reefs and projections of the
native rock are rarely altered by more than a negligible erosion. The
prominent topographical features--cliffs, headlands, _coulees_,
mountains--are immutable, and for mile after mile, bend after bend, we
picked them up just as Symons reported them.
The river is broad and slow for a few miles below Grand Rapids (they are
called Rickey's Rapids locally), with steep-sided benches rising on
either hand, and the green of apple orchards showing in bright fringes
along their brinks. There had been the usual warnings in Kettle Falls of
a bad rapid to be encountered "somewhere below," but the data available
on this part of the river made us practically certain that nothing worse
than minor riffles existed until the swift run of Spokane Rapids was
reached. Seven miles below Grand Rapids several islands of black basalt
contracted the river considerably, but any one of two or three channels
offered an easy way through them. The highest of them had a driftwood
crown that was not less than fifty feet above the present stage of the
river, showing graphically the great rise and fall at this point.
At the shallow San Poil bar we saw some Indians from the Colville
Reservation fishing for salmon--the crooked-nosed "dogs" of the final
run. If they were of the tribe from which the bar must have been named,
civilization had brought them its blessing in the form of hair-restorer.
They were as hirsute a lot of ruffians as one could expect to find out
of Bolshevia--and as dirty.
Turtle Rapid was the worst looking place we found during the day, but
the menace was more apparent than real. The riffle took its name from a
number of turtle-backed outcroppings of bedrock pushing up all the way
across the river. The current was swift and deep, making it just the
sort of place one would have expected to encounter bad swirls. These
were, indeed, making a good deal of a stir at the foot of several of the
narrow side runs, but by the broader middle channel which we followed
the going was comparatively smooth. We finished an easy day by tying up
at four o'clock where the road to the Colville Reservation comes down to
the boulder-bordered bank at Hunter's Ferry.
Columbia River ferry-men are always kindly and hospitable, and this one
invited us to sleep on his hay and cook our meals in his kitchen. He was
an amiable "cracker" from Kentucky, with a delectable drawl, a
tired-looking wife and a houseful of children. Ferry-men's wives always
have many children. This one was still pretty, though, and her
droop--for a few years yet--would be rather appealing than otherwise. I
couldn't be quite sure--from a remark she made--whether she had a sense
of humor, or whether she had not. Seeing her sitting by the kitchen
stove with a baby crooked into her left arm, a two-year-old on her lap,
and a three-year-old riding her foot, the while she was trying to fry
eggs, bake biscuit and boil potatoes, I observed, by way of bringing a
brighter atmosphere with my presence, that it was a pity that the human
race hadn't been crossed with octopi, so that young mothers would have
enough arms to do their work with. She nodded approvingly at first,
brightening visibly at the emancipative vision conjured up in her tired
brain, but after five minutes of serious cogitation relapsed into gloom.
"I reckon it wouldn't be any use, mistah," she said finally; "them
octupusses would only give the young 'uns mo' ahms to find troubl'
with." Now _did_ she have a sense of humour, or did she not?
We had a distinctly bad night of it hitting the hay. The mow was built
with a horseshoe-shaped manger running round three sides of it, into
which the hay was supposed to descend by gravity as the cows devoured
what was below. As a labour-saving device it had a good deal to
recommend it, but as a place to sleep--well, it might not have been so
bad if each of the dozen cows had not been belled, and if the weight of
our tired bodies on the hay had not kept pressing it into the manger all
night, and so made a continuous performance of feeding and that bovine
bell-chorus. I dozed off for a spell along toward morning, awakening
from a Chinese-gong nightmare to find my bed tilted down at an angle of
forty-five degrees and a rough tongue lapping my face. With most of my
mattress eaten up, I was all but in the manger myself. Turning out at
daybreak, we pushed off at an early hour.
A run of nine miles, made in about an hour, took us to Gerome, where
another ferry crossed to the west or Colville Reservation bank. A couple
of swift, shallow rapids above and below Roger's Bar was the only rough
water encountered. We were looking for a point from which Spokane could
be reached by car, as Captain Armstrong, who had originally planned to
go with us only to Kettle Falls, was now quite at the end of the time he
was free to remain away from Nelson and business. There were two reasons
for our making a temporary halt at Gerome Ferry. One was the fact that
Spokane could be reached as readily from there as from any point lower
down, and the other was Ike Emerson. I shall have so much to say of Ike
a bit further along that I shall no more than introduce him for the
moment.
As much of the worst water on the American course of the Columbia occurs
in the two hundred and thirty miles between the head of Spokane Rapids
and the foot of Priest Rapids,[2] I was considerably concerned about
finding a good river man to take Captain Armstrong's place and help me
with the boat. Roos made no pretensions to river usefulness, and I was
reluctant to go into some of the rapids that I knew were ahead of us
without a dependable man to handle the steering paddle and to help with
lining. Men of this kind were scarce, it appeared--even more so than on
the Big Bend, in Canada, where there was a certain amount of logging and
trapping going on. Two or three ferry-men had shaken their heads when I
brought the matter up. There was nothing they would like better if they
were free, they said, but, as ferries couldn't be expected to run by
themselves, that was out of the question on such short notice.
[2] Not be confused with the rapids of the same name we had
run on the Big Bend in Canada. L. R. F.
It was that genial "cracker" at Hunter's Ferry who was the first to
mention Ike Emerson. Ike would be just my man, he said, with that
unmistakable grin that a man grins when the person he speaks of is some
kind of a "character." Or, leastways, Ike would be just my man--_if I
could find him_. "And where shall I be likely to find him?" I asked. He
wasn't quite sure about that, but probably "daun rivah sumwhah." There
was no telling about Ike, it appeared. Once he had been seen to sink
when his raft had gone to pieces in Hell Gate, and he had been mourned
as dead for a fortnight. At the end of that time he had turned up in
Kettle Falls, but quite unable--or else unwilling--to tell why the river
had carried him eighty-five miles _up_ stream instead of down to the
Pacific. A keg of moonshine which had been Ike's fellow passenger on the
ill-fated raft _may_ have had something to do both with the wreck and
that long up-stream swim after the wreck. At any rate, it had never been
explained. However, Gerome was Ike's headquarters--if any place might be
called that for a man who lived on or in the river most of the time--and
that would be the place to inquire for him.
When I asked the ferry-man at Gerome if Ike Emerson had been seen
thereabouts recently, he grinned the same sort of grin his colleague at
Hunter's had grinned when the same subject was under discussion. Yes, he
had seen Ike only the night before. He was a real old river rat; just
the man I wanted--_if I could find him_. He was as hard as a flea to put
your hand on when you _did_ want him, though. Well, it took us four
hours to run our man down, but luck was with us in the end. Every
lumber-jack, farmer and Indian that we asked about Ike, grinned that same
grin, dropped whatever he was doing and joined in the search. There were
a score of us when the "View Halloo" was finally sounded, and we looked
more like a lynching party on vengeance bent than anything else I can
think of. Ike, who was digging potatoes (of all the things in the world
for a river rat to be doing), glowered suspiciously as we debouched from
a _coulee_ and streamed down toward him, but his brow cleared instantly
when I hastily told him what we had come for.
You bet, he would go with us. But, wait a moment! Why should we not go
with him? He was overdue with a raft of logs and cordwood he had
contracted to take down below Hell Gate, and was just about to get to
work building it. We could just throw our boat aboard, and off we would
go together. If he could get enough help, he could have the raft ready
in two or three days, and, once started, it would not be a lot slower
than the skiff, especially if we took a fast motor-boat he knew of for
towing purposes and to "put her into the rapids right." It would make a
lot more of a show for the movies, and he had always dreamed of having
himself filmed on a big raft running Hell Gate and Box Canyon. Just let
us leave it to him, and he would turn out something that would be the
real thing.
All of this sounded distinctly good to me, but I turned to Roos and
Captain Armstrong for confirmation before venturing a decision. Roos
said it would be "the cat's ears" (late slang meaning _au fait_, or
something like that, in English); that a raft would photograph like a
million dollars. Armstrong's face was beaming. "It will be the chance of
a lifetime," he said warmly. "Go by all means. I'm only sorry I can't be
with you." So we gave Ike _carte blanche_ and told him to go ahead; we
would arrange the financial end when he knew more about what he would be
spending. I was glad of the wait for one reason; it would give us a
chance to speed the Captain on his way as far as Spokane.
Running over a Spokane paper in the post office and general store at
Gerome, the program of the Chamber of Commerce luncheon for the morrow,
October the twenty-sixth, recalled to me that I had a conditional
engagement to perform at that function. Major Laird, the Publicity
Secretary of the Chamber, had phoned me before we left Nelson, asking if
I would run up to Spokane from some convenient point on the river and
give them a bit of a yarn about our voyage at the next Tuesday luncheon.
I had replied that, as it was quite out of the question keeping to any
definite schedule in river travel, I could give him no positive
assurance of turning up in time, but suggested that if he would sign up
some one else for _piece de resistance_, he could be free to use me for
soup or nuts in the event I put in an appearance. As it now appeared
that we had arrived within a few hours of Spokane, I phoned Major Laird,
and he said he would start a car off at once to take us there.
We spent the afternoon helping Roos patch up the continuity of his
"farmer" picture. Although Captain Armstrong had appeared in all the
scenes shot since we started with the skiff, he had never made his
official entry into the picture. Properly, this should have been done in
one of the introductory scenes shot at the source of the river, near
Lake Windermere. It will be remembered that, when I leaned on my
hay-fork and gazed pensively off toward the river, I was supposed to see
a prospector tinkering with his boat. I had walked out of two scenes on
my way to join that prospector: the first time to ask if he would take
me with him, and the second time, with a blanket-roll on my shoulder
(the improvised one with the two "nicht-goons" and other foreign
knick-knacks in it), to jump into the boat and push off. Obviously, as
we had neither prospector nor boat at the time, these shots could not be
made until later. Now, with the "prospector" about to leave us, it was
imperative to continuity that we should get him into the picture before
we could go ahead getting him out of it.
"Location" was our first care, and in this fortune favoured us. The
mouth of a small creek flowing in just below Gerome furnished a "source
of the Columbia" background that would have defied an expert to tell
from an original. In fact, it looked more like the popular idea of a
"source" than did the real one; and that is an important point with the
movies. Here we made the "tinkering" and the "first push-off" shots. Of
course, I had a different blanket-roll on my shoulder this time, but I
took great care to make it as close an imitation as possible of the one
I had so hastily flung together out of "Jock's" bedding. A close
imitation externally, I mean--there were no "frou-frous" in it.
Now that we had the "prospector" properly into the picture, we were
ready for the "farewell" shot--the getting him out of it. For this the
Captain and I were "picked up" on a picturesque rocky point, regarding
with interest something far off down-river. Presently he registers
"dawning comprehension," and tells me in fluent French-Canadian
pantomime that it is a raft--a whale of a big one. That will offer a way
for me to continue my voyage now that he has to leave me. Then we go
down to the boat, which he presents to me with a comprehensive
"it-is-all-yours" gesture, before shouldering his sack of ore (one of
our bags of canned stuff answered very well for this) and climbing off
up the bank toward the "smelter." (We had intended to make a real
smelter scene at Trail or Northport, but the light was poor at both
places.) Finally I pushed off alone, pulling down and across the current
to throw in my fortunes with the "raft." That left the thread of
"continuity" dangling free, to be spliced up as soon as Ike had the raft
completed. That worthy was losing no time. All afternoon we heard the
rumble of logs rolling over boulders, and every now and then a
fan-shaped splash of spray would flash up with a spangle of iridescence
in the light of the declining sun.
The car arrived for us at seven-thirty that evening. It was driven by
Commissioner Howard, of the Spokane County Board, who had courteously
volunteered to come for us when it appeared there would be some delay in
getting a hired car off for the hundred and sixty-mile round trip. He
was accompanied by his son, a high-school youngster. As they had eaten
lunch on the way, they announced themselves ready to start on the return
trip at once. The road turned out to be a rough mountain track, and
rather muddy. Ten miles out from Gerome a suspicious clicking set in
somewhere under the rear seat, and at twenty miles the differential had
gone. Mr. Howard finally induced an empty truck to take us in tow, and
behind that lumbering vehicle we did the last sixty miles. The tow-chain
parted on an average of once a mile while we were still in the
mountains, but did better as the roads improved. The temperature fell as
the altitude increased, and it must have been well under twenty before
daylight--and a mean, marrow-searching cold at that. Mr. Howard,
refusing every offer of relief, stuck it out at the wheel all the way
in--a remarkable example of nerve and endurance, considering that he had
only recently come out of a hospital. Armstrong, as always, was
indomitable, singing French-Canadian boating songs of blood-stirring
_tempo_ most of the way. I shall ever associate his
"_Rouli, roulant, ma boule roulant,
En roulant, ma boule roulant!_"
rather with the chug-chugging of a motor truck than with the creak of
oars from which it derived its inspiration.
We struck the paved state highway at Davenport about four o'clock, and
in the very grey dawn of the morning after came rumbling into Spokane.
Somewhere in the dim shadowy outskirts we stopped rumbling. The truck
driver reported he had run out of gas. Assiduous milking of the Cole's
tank yielded just enough to carry us on to the hotel. The Davenport of
Spokane is one of the very finest hotels in all the world, but if it had
been just a cabin with a stove, it would still have seemed a rose-sweet
paradise after those last two nights we had put in--one on the hay with
belled cows eating up the beds beneath our backs, and the other jerked
over a frosty road in the wake of a skidding truck. Soaking for an hour
in a steaming bath, I rolled in between soft sheets, leaving orders not
to be called until noon.
Spokane is one of the finest, cleanest and most beautiful cities of the
West, and I have never left it after a visit without regret. This time,
brief as our stay had to be, was no exception. It was an unusually keen
looking lot of business and professional men that turned out for the
Chamber luncheon, among whom I found not a few old college friends and
others I had not seen for a number of years. Notable of these were
Herbert Moore and Samuel Stern, with whom I had spent six weeks on a
commercial mission in China in 1910. I was also greatly interested to
meet Mr. Turner, the field engineer of the great project for reclaiming
a million and three-quarters acres of land in the Columbia Basin of
eastern Washington by diverting to it water from the Pend d'Oreille. The
incalculable possibilities, as well as the great need of this daring
project I was to see much of at firsthand during that part of my voyage
on which I was about to embark.
Captain Armstrong left by train for Nelson the evening of the 27th, and
the following morning Major Laird drove Roos and me back to Gerome. For
a considerable part of the distance we followed the highly picturesque
route along the Spokane River, stopping for lunch at the hydro-electric
plant of the Washington Power Company at Long Lake. This enterprising
corporation has power installations already in operation on the Spokane
which must make that stream pretty nearly the most completely harnessed
river of its size in America. The lofty concrete barrier which backs up
Long Lake has the distinction of being the highest spillway dam in the
world. The "Spokane interval" proved a highly enjoyable spell of
relaxation before tackling the rough stretch of river ahead. I knew I
was going to miss greatly the guiding hand and mind of Captain
Armstrong, but had high hopes of Ike Emerson. I was not to be
disappointed.