CHELAN TO PASCO
For two reasons I am writing but briefly of our visit to Lake Chelan:
first, because it was entirely incidental to the Columbia voyage, and,
second, because one who has only made the run up and down this loveliest
of mountain lakes has no call to write of it. Chelan is well named
"Beautiful Water." Sixty miles long and from one to four miles wide,
cliff-walled and backed by snowy mountains and glaciers, it has much in
common with the Arrow Lakes of the upper Columbia, and, by the same
tokens, Kootenay Lake. Among the large mountain lakes of the world it
has few peers.
The Chelan River falls three hundred and eighty-five feet in the four
miles from the outlet of the lake to where it tumbles into the Columbia.
It is a foam-white torrent all the way, with a wonderful "Horse-shoe"
gorge near the lower end which has few rivals for savage grandeur. One
may reach the lake from the Columbia by roads starting either north or
south of the draining river. We went by the latter, as it was the more
conveniently reached from the ferry-man's house where we had left our
outfit after landing. The town of Chelan, at the lower end of the lake,
is a lovely little village, with clean streets, bright shops, and a very
comfortable hotel. I have forgotten the name of the hotel, but not the
fact that it serves a big pitcher of thick, yellow cream with every
breakfast. So far as my own experience goes, it is the only hotel in
America or Europe which has perpetuated that now all but extinct
ante-bellum custom. In case there may be any interested to know--even
actually to enjoy--what our forefathers had with their coffee and mush,
I will state that three transcontinental railways pass within a hundred
miles to the southward of Chelan. It will prove well worth the
stop-over; and there is the lake besides.
The lower end of Lake Chelan is surrounded by rolling hills, whose
fertile soil is admirably adapted to apples, now an important industry
in that region; the upper end is closely walled with mountains and high
cliffs--really an extremely deep gorge half filled with water. Indeed,
the distinction of being the "deepest furrow Time has wrought on the
face of the Western Hemisphere" is claimed for upper Chelan Lake--this
because there are cliffs which rise almost vertically for six thousand
feet from the water's edge, and at a point where the sounding lead has
needed nearly a third of that length of line to bring it back from a
rocky bottom which is indented far below the level of the sea.
The head of Chelan is far back in the heart of the Cascades, in the
glaciers of which its feeding streams take their rise. The main
tributaries are Railroad Creek, which flows in from the south about
two-thirds of the way up, and Stehekin River, which comes in at the
head. These two streams are credited with some of the finest waterfalls,
gorges and cliff and glacier-begirt mountain valleys to be found in
North America, and it is possible to see the best of both in the course
of a single "circular" trip by packtrain. To my great regret, it was not
practicable to get an outfit together in the limited time at our
disposal. The best we could do so late in the season was a hurried run
up to Rainbow Falls, a most striking cataract, three hundred and fifty
feet in height, descending over the cliffs of the Stehekin River four
miles above the head of the lake. Roos made a number of scenic shots
here, but on a roll which--whether in the camera or the laboratory it
was impossible to determine--was badly light-struck. Similar misfortune
attended a number of other shots he made (through the courtesy of the
Captain of the mail launch in running near the cliffs) of waterfalls
tumbling directly into the lake. There are many slips between the cup
and the lip--the camera and the screen, I should say--in scenic movie
work.
[Illustration: A ROCKY CLIFF NEAR HEAD OF LAKE CHELAN]
[Illustration: RAINBOW FALLS, 350 FEET HIGH, ABOVE HEAD OF LAKE CHELAN]
[Illustration: WENATCHEE UNDER THE DUST CLOUD OF ITS SPEEDING AUTOS
(_above_)]
[Illustration: HEAD OF ROCK ISLAND RAPIDS (_below_)]
We arrived back at the town of Chelan in time for lunch on the sixth of
November, and a couple of hours later were down at the Columbia ready to
push off again. I had been unable to get in touch with Captain McDermid
by phone, but was confident that he would turn up in good time at
Wenatchee. As there was nothing between that point and the mouth of the
Chelan in the way of really bad water, I had no hesitation in making the
run without a "pilot." Launching _Imshallah_ below the old ferry-tower
at two o'clock, we reached the little town of Entiat, just above the
river and rapids of that name, at five. The skiff rode higher with
Captain Armstrong and his luggage out, her increased buoyancy
compensating in a measure for the less intelligent handling she had.
Roos took the steering paddle in the stern, and I continued rowing from
the forward thwart. All of the luggage was shifted well aft. The current
was fairly swift all the way, but the two or three rapids encountered
were not difficult to pass. Ribbon Cliff, two thousand feet high and
streaked with strata of yellow, grey and black clays, was the most
striking physical feature seen in the course of this easy afternoon's
run.
Entiat is a prosperous little apple-growing centre, and, with the
packing season at its height, was jammed to the roof with workers. Rooms
at the hotel were out of the question. Roos slept on a couch in the
parlour, which room was also occupied by three drummers and two truck
drivers. I had a shakedown on a canvased-in porch, on which were six
beds and four cots. My room-mates kept me awake a good part of the night
growling because their wages had just been cut to seven dollars a day,
now that the rush was over. I would have been the more surprised that
any one should complain about a wage like that had not a trio of
farmettes--or rather packettes--at the big family dinner table been
comparing notes of their takings. One twinkling-fingered blonde
confessed to having averaged thirteen dollars a day for the last week
packing apples, while a brown-bloomered brunette had done a bit better
than twelve. The third one--attenuated, stoop-shouldered and
spectacled--was in the dumps because sore fingers had scaled her average
down to ten-fifty--"hardly worth coming out from Spokane for," she
sniffed. Roos tried to engage them in conversation, and started out
auspiciously with a description of running Box Canyon. But the
gimlet-eyed thin one asked him what he got for doing a thing like that,
and promptly their interest faded. And why _should_ they have cared to
waste time over a mere seventy-five-dollar-a-week cameraman? But it was
something even to have eaten pumpkin pie with the plutocracy.
The swift-flowing Entiat River has dumped a good many thousand tons of
boulders into the Columbia, and most of these have lodged to form a
broad, shallow bar a short distance below the mouth of the former. The
Columbia hasn't been able quite to make up its mind the best way to go
here, and so has hit on a sort of a compromise by using three or four
channels. Roos found himself in a good deal the same sort of dilemma
when we came rolling along there on the morning of the seventh, but as a
boat--if it is going to preserve its entity as such--cannot run down
more than one channel at a time, _Imshallah_ found the attempt at a
compromise to which she was committed only ended in butting her head
against a low gravel island. It was impossible to make the main middle
channel from there, but we poled off without much difficulty and went
bumping off down a shallow channel to the extreme right. She kissed off
a boulder once or twice before winning through to deeper water, but not
hard enough to do her much harm. It was a distinctly messy piece of
work, though, and I was glad that Ike or Captain Armstrong was not there
to see their teachings put into practice.
The river cliffs became lower as we ran south, and after passing a
commanding point on the right bank we came suddenly upon the open
valley of the Wenatchee, the nearest thing to a plain we had seen in all
the hundreds of miles from the source of the Columbia. There are not
over twenty to thirty square miles of land that is even comparatively
level here, but to eyes which had been wont for two months to seek
sky-line with a forty-five degree upward slant of gaze it was like
coming out of an Andean pass upon the boundless Pampas of Argentina.
Wenatchee was in sight for several miles before we reached it, an
impressive water-front of mills, warehouses and tall buildings. Over all
floated a dark pall, such as one sees above Pittsburgh, Birmingham,
Essen or any other great factory city, but we looked in vain for the
forest of chimneys it would have taken to produce that bituminous
blanket. As we drew nearer we discovered that what we had taken to be
smoke was a mighty dust-cloud. It was a Sunday at the height of the
apple-packing season, and all the plutocratic packettes were joy-riding.
There were, it is true, more Fords than Rolls-Royces in the solid double
procession of cars that jammed the main street for a mile, but that was
doubtless because the supply of the former had held out better. I can't
believe that the consideration of price had anything to do with it.
The hotel, of course, was full, even with the dining-room set thick with
cots, but by admiring a haberdashery drummer's line of neck-ties for an
hour, I managed to get him to "will" me his room and bath when he
departed that afternoon. Roos employed similar strategy with a jazz
movie orchestra fiddler, but his train didn't pull out until four-thirty
in the morning. A young reporter from the local paper called for an
interview in the afternoon, and told us the story of the _Douglas_, the
steamer which Captain McDermid had mentioned as having been lost in
trying to take her to Portland. Selig had gone along to write the story
of the run through Rock Island Rapids, the first to be reached and the
place which was reckoned as the most dangerous she would have to pass.
When she had come out of that sinister gorge without mishap, he had them
land him at the first convenient place in the quiet water below, from
where he made his way to the railway and hurried back to Wenatchee with
his story. That he had seen all the best of the excitement, he had no
doubt. A quarter of an hour after Selig left her, the _Douglas_ was a
total wreck on the rocks below Cabinet Rapids. He didn't know just how
it had happened, but said we would find what was left of her still where
she had struck.
Wenatchee is the liveliest kind of a town, and claims to be the largest
apple-shipping point in the United States. It also has a daily paper
which claims to be the largest in the world in a city of under ten
thousand population. I can easily believe this is true. I have seen many
papers in cities of fifty or a hundred thousand that were not to be
compared with it for both telegraphic and local news. Banks are on
almost every corner for a half dozen blocks of the main street of
Wenatchee, and every one seems to have a bank account. I saw stacks of
check-books by the cashiers' desks in restaurants and shops, and in one
of the ice cream parlours I saw a young packette paying for her nut
sundae with a check.
No word came from Captain McDermid during the day, and after
endeavouring to reach him by phone all of the following forenoon, I
reluctantly decided to push on without him. This was a good deal of a
disappointment, not only because I felt that I was going to need his
help mighty badly, but also because I was anxious to see more of him
personally. A man who will take a steamer containing his wife and
children down Rickey's Rapids of the Columbia isn't to be met with every
day. Roos was anxious to get a picture of the "Farmer Who Would See the
Sea" working his way down Rock Island Rapids, and as his machine was
about the most valuable thing there was to lose in getting down there,
it seemed up to me to do what I could. But for the first time since we
pushed off to run the Big Bend, I unpacked and kept out my inflatable
"Gieve" life-preserver waistcoat, which I had worn in the North Sea
during the war, and which I had brought along on the "off chance." Selig
came down with his Graflex to get a photo of our departure for the
_World_, but declined an invitation for another run through Rock Island
Rapids.
There is a long and lofty highway bridge spanning the Columbia half a
mile below Wenatchee, which fine structure also appears to be used on
occasion as a city dump. That it was functioning in this capacity at the
very moment we were about to pass under it between the two mid-stream
piers did not become apparent until the swift current had carried us so
close that it was not safe to try to alter course either to left or
right. There was nothing to do but run the gauntlet of the swervily
swooping dust-tailed comets whose heads appeared to run the whole gamut
of discard of a rather extravagant town of eight thousand people, all
disdainful of "used" things. It would have been a rare chance to renew
our outfit, only most of the contributions were speeding too rapidly at
the end of their hundred-foot drop to make them entirely acceptable.
"Low bridge!" I shouted to Roos, and swung hard onto my oars, yelling a
lung-full at every stroke in the hope that the busy dumpers might stay
their murderous hands at the last moment. Vain hope! My final frightened
upward glance told me that the nauseous cataclysm was augmenting rather
than lessening.
I put _Imshallah_ into some mighty nasty looking rapids with a lot less
apprehension than I drove her into that reeking second-hand barrage, that
Niagara of things that people didn't want. Doubtless it was the fact
that _I_ wanted the stuff still less than they did that lent power to my
arms and gave me a strength far transcending that of ordinary endeavour.
Roos swore afterward that I lifted her right out of the water, just as a
speeding hydroplane lifts at the top of its jump. This may have been so;
but if it was, Roos sensed it rather than saw it, for his humped
shoulders were folded tightly over his ducked head, like the wings of a
newly hatched chicken. Anyhow, the little lady drove through safely,
just as she always had. But where she had always emerged dewy-fresh and
dancing jauntily on the tips of her toes from the roughest of rapids,
here she oozed out upon an oil-slicked stream with the "Mark of the
Beast" on her fore and aft. I mean that literally. That accursed little
"White Wings" that sat up aloft to take toll of the life of poor Jack,
must have had some kind of a slaughter-house dumping contract--and
_Imshallah_ got a smothering smear of the proceeds. Also a trailing
length of burlap and a bag of cinders. As the latter burst when it
kissed off my shoulder, Roos' joke about my wearing sack-cloth-and-ashes
was not entirely without point. The only article of value accruing was
the shaving-brush which fell in Roos' lap. He felt sure it must have
been thrown away by mistake, for it had real camel's-hair bristles, and
he liked it better than his own--after the ashes had worked out of it.
And yet it might have been a lot worse. I only _heard_ the splash of the
wash-boiler that must have hit just ahead of her, but the sewing machine
that grazed her stern jazzed right across my line of vision.
Up to that time Surprise Rapids of the Big Bend of Canada had stood as
the superlative in the way of a really nasty hole to go through; from
then on "Surprise Rapids of Wenatchee Bridge" claimed pride of place in
this respect.
Swabbing down decks as best we could without landing, we pushed ahead. I
was anxious to get down to Rock Island Rapids in time to look over the
channels, if not to start through, before dark. We should have known
better than to treat a dainty lady like _Imshallah_ in that way. It was
bad enough to have subjected her to the indignity of running the garbage
barrage; not to give her a proper bath after it was unpardonable. At
least that was the way she seemed to look at it, and so I never felt
inclined to blame her for taking matters into her own hands. Wallowing
through a sharp bit of rapid a mile below the bridge washed the outside
of her bright and clean as ever, but it was the stain of that
slaughter-house stuff on the inside that rankled. She was restive and
cranky in the swirls and eddies all down a long stretch of slack water
running between black basalt islands, and as the river narrowed and
began to tumble over a boisterous rapid above the Great Northern Railway
bridge, she began jumping about nervously, like a spirited horse
watching his chance for a bolt.
It was Roos' business, of course, to watch where she was going, but he
made no claim of being a qualified steersman; so that there was really
no excuse for my failing to watch our capricious lady's symptoms and
keep a steadying hand on her. Probably I _should_ have done so had not a
freight train run out on the bridge just as we neared the head of the
rapid, throwing out so striking a smoke-smudge against a background of
sun-silvered clouds that I needs must try for a hurried snapshot. That
done, we were close to the "V" of the drop-off, and I had just time to
see that there were three or four rather terrifying rollers tumbling
right in the heart of the riffle, evidently thrown up by a jagged
outcrop of bedrock very close to the surface. I would never have
chanced putting even a big _batteau_ directly into so wild a welter,
but, with fairly good water to the left, there was no need of our
passing within ten feet of the centre of disturbance. The course was so
plain that I do not recall even calling any warning to Roos as I sat
down and resumed my oars. Each of us claimed the other was responsible
for what followed, but I think the real truth of it was that _Imshallah_
had made up her mind to have a bath without further delay, and couldn't
have been stopped anyhow.
I never did see just what hit us, nor how we were hit; for it all came
with the suddenness of a sand-bagging. Roos was stroking away
confidently, and appeared to be singing, from the movement of his lips.
The words, if any, were drowned in the roar. All at once his eyes became
wild and he lashed out with a frenzied paddle-pull that was evidently
intended to throw her head to the left. The next instant the crash
came--sudden, shattering, savage. I remember distinctly wondering why
Roos' eyes were shifted apprehensively upward, like those of a man who
fancies he is backing away from a bombing airplane. And I think I recall
spray dashing two or three lengths astern of us, before the solid
battering ram of the water hit me on the back, and Roos in the face. And
all _Imshallah_ did was to stand straight up on her hind legs and let
little demi-semi-quivers run up and down her back like a real lady
exulting in the tickle of a shower-bath. Then she lay down and let the
river run over her; then reared up on her hind legs again. Twice or
thrice she repeated that routine, when, apparently satisfied that her
ablutions were complete, she settled down and ran the rest of the rapid
sedately and soberly, and, I am afraid, without much help from either
oars or paddle. I have always thought Roos was particularly happy in
his description of how it looked for'ard just after that first big wave
hit us. "The top of that comber was ten feet above your head," he said,
"and it came curving over you just like the 'canopy' of a
'Jack-in-the-Pulpit.'"
With _Imshallah_ rather more than half full of water, and consequently
not a lot more freeboard for the moment than a good thick plank, it was
just as well that no more rapids appeared before we found a patch of
bank flat enough to allow us to land and dump her. Fresh as a daisy
inside and out, she was as sweet and reasonable when we launched her
again as any other lady of quality after she has had her own way. Not
far below the bridge we tied up near the supply-pipe of a railway
pumping station on the left bank. With the black gorge of Rock Island
Rapids three-quarters of a mile below sending up an ominous growl, this
appeared to be the proper place to stop and ask the way.
The engineer of the pumping-station said that he knew very little about
the big rapid, as he had only been on his present job for a week. He had
only seen the left-hand channel, and, as an old sailor, he was dead
certain no open boat ever launched could live to run the lower end of
it. He said he thought the safest way would be to put the skiff on his
push-car, run it down the tracks a couple of miles, and launch it below
the worst of the rapids. I told him we might be very glad to do this as
a last resort, but, as it would involve a lot of time and labour, I
would like to look at the rapid first. He told us to make free of his
bunk-house in case we spent the night there, and suggested we call in
at a farm house a couple of hundred yards down the track and talk with
an old man there, who would probably know all about the rapid.
That proved to be a good tip. The farmer turned out to be an old-time
stern-wheeler captain, who had navigated the upper Columbia for many
years in the early days. He was greatly interested in our trip, and said
that we ought to have no great trouble with the rapids ahead, that is,
as long as we didn't try to take undue liberties with them. The safest
way to get through would be to land at the head of the big island that
divided the channels and line right down the left side of it. It would
be pretty hard work, but we ought not to get in wrong if we took our
time. He was sorry he couldn't go down and look the place over with us,
but it happened that his youngest daughter was being married that
evening, and things were sort of crowding for the rest of the day.
_That_ explained why the yard was full of flivvers, and the numerous
dressed-up men lounging around the porches. We decided that the groom
was the lad, with an aggressively fresh-shaven gill, who was being made
the butt of a joke every time he sauntered up to a new group, and that
the bride was the buxom miss having her chestnut hair combed at a
window, with at least half a dozen other girls looking on.
Roos was very keen to have the wedding postponed to the following morning,
and changed to an _al fresco_ affair which he could shoot with good light.
With a little study, he said, he was sure he could work it into his
"continuity." Perhaps, for instance, the "Farmer-Who-Would-See-the-Sea"
might start them off on their honeymoon by taking them a few miles down
river in his boat. That would lend "heart interest and...." I throttled
that scheme in the bud before my impetuous companion could broach it to
the principals. I wasn't going to tempt the providence that had saved me
whole from the wrath of Jock o' Windermere by taking a chance with any
more "bride stuff."
The black-walled gorge of Rock Island is one of the grimmest-looking
holes on the Columbia, and of all hours of the day sunset, when the deep
shadows are banking thick above the roaring waters, is the least cheery
time to pay it a visit. Somewhat as at Hell Gate, the river splits upon
a long, rocky island, the broader, shallower channel being to the right,
and the narrower, deeper one to the left. The upper end of the
right-hand channel was quiet and straight; indeed, it was the one I
would have been prompted to take had not the old river captain at the
farm-house inclined to the opinion that the lining on the other would be
easier. The former had been the course Symons had taken, and he
mentioned that the lower end was very crooked and rocky. I decided,
therefore, to brave the difficulties that I could see something of in
advance rather than to blunder into those I knew not of. Although the
left channel began to speed up right from the head, I saw enough of it
to be sure that we could run at least the upper two-thirds of it without
much risk, and that there was then a good eddy from which to land on the
side next to the railroad. This was the head of the main fall--an
extremely rough cascade having a drop of ten feet in four hundred yards.
Down that we would have to line. I was quite in agreement with the
pump-station man that no open boat would live in those wildly rolling
waters. Fearful of complications, I restrained Roos from accepting an
invitation to the wedding, and we turned in early for a good night's
sleep at the pump-station bunk-house.
The game old octogenarian had asked me especially to hail him from the
river in the morning, so that he could go down and help us through the
rapids. I should have been glad indeed of his advice in what I knew
would be a mighty awkward operation, but had not the heart to disturb
him when I saw there was no curl of smoke from the kitchen chimney when
we drifted by at eight o'clock. The roar of fast and furious revelry had
vied with the roar of the rapids pretty well all night, culminating with
a crescendo leading up to the old shoe barrage at about daybreak. It
didn't seem quite human to keep the old boy lining down river all
morning after lining up against that big barrel of "sweet cider" all
night.... (No, I hadn't missed that little detail; that was one of the
reasons I had kept Roos away). So we drifted on down toward the big
noise alone. The pump-man promised he would come down to help as soon as
his tank was filled, but that wouldn't be for an hour or more.
Rock Island Rapids are in a gorge within a gorge. The black
water-scoured canyon with the foam-white river at the bottom of it is
not over fifty feet deep in the sheer. Back of high-water mark there is
a narrow strip of bench on either side, above which rises a thousand
feet or more of brown bluff. The eastern wall still cast its shadow on
the river, but the reflection of the straw-yellow band of broadening
light creeping down the western bluff filled the gorge with a diffused
golden glow that threw every rock and riffle into sharp relief. It was a
dozen times better to see by than the blinding brilliance of direct
light, and, knowing just what to expect for the next quarter-mile, I ran
confidently into the head of the rapid. Early morning is the hour of
confidence and optimism on the flowing road; evening the hour of doubt,
indecision and apprehension.
A submerged rock at the entrance to the left channel, which I had marked
mentally from the high bank the night before as an obstacle to be
avoided, proved rather harder to locate from water level; but Roos
spotted it in time to give it a comfortable berth in shooting by. Then
the abrupt black walls closed in, and we ran for three hundred yards in
fast but not dangerous water. The current took us straight into the eddy
I had picked for a landing place, and the skiff slid quietly into a
gentle swirling loop of back-water, with nothing but a huge jutting rock
intervening between that secure haven and the brink of the fall. So far
all had gone exactly as planned. Now we were to see how it looked for
lining.
Roos set up on a shelf and cranked while I lined round the projecting
rock, an operation which proved unexpectedly simple once it was started
right. At my first attempt I failed to swing the boat out of the eddy,
and as a consequence she was brought back against the rock and given
rather a stiff bump. The next time I launched her higher up, and paying
out plenty of scope, let her go right out into the main current and
over the "intake" of the fall. It took brisk following up to keep the
line from fouling, and after that was cleared I didn't have quite as
much time as I needed to take in slack and brace myself for the coming
jerk. The result was _Imshallah_ got such a way on in her hundred feet
of run that, like a _locoed_ broncho pulling up and galloping off with
its picket-pin, she took me right along over and off the big rock and
into the water below. To my great surprise, where I was expecting to go
straight into the whirlpool one usually finds behind a projecting rock,
I landed in water that was both slack and comparatively shallow.
Recovering quickly from my stumble, I braced against the easy current
and checked the runaway with little trouble. Roos, who had missed the
last part of the action, wanted me to do that jump and stumble over
again, but the ten foot flop down onto the not very deeply submerged
boulders was a bit too much a shake-up to sustain for art's sake.
Now that it was too late to line back, I saw why it was the old captain
had advised working down the side of the island. The left bank of the
cascade (which latter was tumbling close beside me now), was all but
sheer. Only here and there were there footings close to the water, so
that the man with the line would have to make his way for the most part
along the top of the rocky wall. _He_ could get along all right, but
there was no place where a man could follow the boat and keep it off
with a pole. It might have been managed with a man poling-off from the
boat itself, but I hardly felt like urging Roos to take the chance. It
was out of the question trying to line back up the "intake" of the
fall, but there _was_ one loop-hole which looked worth exploring before
risking an almost certain mess-up in trying to work down the side of the
cascade.
I have mentioned that I had expected to find a whirlpool under the big
jutting rock. The only reason there wasn't one was because what at high
water must have been a very considerable back channel took out at this
point and acted as a sort of safety-valve. There was still a stream a
few inches deep flowing out here, running off to the left into a dark
cavernous-looking crack in the bedrock. That water had to come back to
the river somewhere below, and there was just a chance that the boat
could be squeezed through the same way. At any rate, there was not
enough of a weight of water to do any harm, and it ought not to be hard
to "back up" in the event it proved impossible to push on through.
Leaving Roos to set up and shoot a particularly villainous whirlpool he
had discovered, I dragged the skiff through the shallow opening and
launched it into a deep black pool beyond.
Poling from pool to pool, I entered a miniature gorge where I was
presently so walled in by the rock that the raw roar of the cascade was
muffled to a heavy, earth-shaking rumble. This tiny canyonette opened up
at the end of a hundred yards to a sheer-walled rock-bound pool,
evidently scoured out by the action of a high-water whirlpool. This
turned out to be an enormous "pot-hole," for I had to avoid the
water-spun boulder, which had been the tool of the sculpturing River
God, in pushing into the outlet crack. The latter was so narrow and
overhanging that I had to lie down and work the skiff along with my
up-raised hands. Twenty yards of that brought me out to a winding little
lake, less steeply walled than the gorge above, but apparently closed
all the way round, even at the lower end. I was in a complete _cul de
sac_. A gurgling whirlpool showed where the water escaped by a
subterranean passage, but that was plainly no place to take a lady,
especially a lady of quality like _Imshallah_.
Tying _Imshallah_ up to a boulder to prevent her amiable weakness for
rushing to the embraces of whirlpools getting the better of her, I
climbed up a steeply-sloping pitch of bedrock and looked down to the
head of a long narrow arm of quiet water. The gay little waterfall
breaking forth from the rock beneath my feet was leaping directly into
the main stream of the Columbia--and below the cascade. A stiff thirty
or forty-foot portage, and we were through. We might have to wait for
the pump-man to help us lift the boat up that first pitch, but he ought
to be along almost any time now.
Taking a short-cut back across the water-washed rock, I found Roos just
completing his shots of the cascade. The sun was on the latter now, and
its dazzling whiteness threw it into striking relief against the
sinister walls between which it tumbled. Save the first two falls of
Surprise Rapids, there is not a savager rush of water on the upper
Columbia than this final three hundred yards of the left-hand channel of
Rock Island. Roos was delighted with the way it showed up in his finder,
and even more pleased when he learned that we were not going to have to
line the boat down it. Then he had one of his confounded inspirations.
That portage over the reef of bedrock, with the little waterfall in the
background, would photograph like a million dollars, he declared; but to
get the full effect of it, and to preserve "continuity," the "farmer"
ought to do it alone. It wouldn't do to include the pump-man in the
picture, now that the "farmer" was supposed to be travelling alone. If I
_had_ to have his help, all right; only it wouldn't do to shoot while
the other man was in the picture. But it _would_ really be the "Cat's
ears" if the "farmer" could make it on his own. He wouldn't have to make
that big pull-up without stopping; he could jerk the boat along a foot
or two at a time, and then get his breath like the pursued villain did
in the processional finales of knockabout comedies. Then he showed me
how, by resuming the same grip on the boat and the same facial
expression at each renewed attack, the action could be made to appear
practically continuous.
Well, I fell for it. Tom Sawyer was not more adroit in getting out of
white-washing his fence than was Roos in getting out of that portage
job. He wanted to preserve "continuity" by starting back at the head of
the cascade, but we compromised by making it the "pot-hole." Emerging to
the lakelet, I registered "extreme dejection" at finding my progress
blocked, and "dull gloom" as I landed and climbed up for a look-see. But
when I reached the top of the reef and discovered the quiet water below,
like sunlight breaking through a cloud, I assumed as nearly as I knew
how an exact imitation of an expression I had seen on the face of Balboa
in a picture called "First Sight of the Pacific." "That's the 'Cat's
ears,'" encouraged Roos; "now snake the boat over--and make it snappy!"
I made it snappy, all right; but it was my spine that did most of the
snapping. And it wasn't a foot at a time that I snaked the boat over.
(Roos had been too optimistic on that score); it was by inches. Roos
took infinite pains in coaching me as to "resuming grip and expression;"
but even so, I am afraid the finished film will display considerable
jerkiness in its "continuous action." I gained some solace by calling
Roos names all the time, and so must again beg "lip-readers" who see the
picture to consider the provocation and not judge too harshly. Once
tilted over the crest of the reef, the boat took more holding than
hauling. Being pretty well gone in the back and knees, she got away from
me and slid the last ten feet, giving her bottom a bumping that it never
did entirely recover from. I was caulking incipient leaks all the way to
Portland as a consequence of that confounded "one man" portage.
Just as we had loaded up and were ready to push off, the pump-man
breezed along and asked us to give him a passage as far as Columbia
River station, two or three miles below. He wanted to take an oar, but
as the distance was short and the current swift, I told him it was not
worth bothering with. So he laid the oar he had taken out along the
starboard gunwale, and knelt just aft the after thwart, facing forward.
Roos always claimed that it was the loom of the pump-man's back cutting
off his view ahead that was responsible for the little diversion that
followed. A good part of the blame was doubtless my own for not keeping
a sharper watch over my shoulder, as I certainly should have done had I
been alone. In any event, _Imshallah's alibi_ was complete. She behaved
through it all like a real thoroughbred.
There was a sinuous tangle of swirls where the right-hand and left-hand
cascades flew at each other's throats at the lower end of the rock
island, and then a gay stretch of sun-dazzled froth where the teeth of a
long reef menaced all the way across the channel; then a stretch of
lazily-coiling green-black water, flowing between lofty brown cliffs and
broken here and there with the loom of house-like rocks of shattered
basalt. The roar of Rock Island died down in muffled _diminuendo_, and
it seemed mighty good to have that diapason muttering in bafflement
astern rather than growling in anticipation ahead. There was only one
little rapid between here and the siding, the pump-man said, and it
wouldn't bother us much as there was plenty of room to get by. He was
right--for the most part.
I took a good look at the riffle as we headed down to it. It was a short
stretch of rough, noisy water, but nothing that would have had to be
avoided except for a single big roller in the middle of it. As this was
throwing a great dash of spray high in the air every now and then, I
felt sure the rock responsible for it was very slightly
submerged--perhaps not more than a few inches. As this was so obviously
an obstacle to steer well clear of, it never occurred to me to give
Roos any especial warning about it, especially as he continued standing
and sizing up the situation for half a minute after I had resumed my
oars. The main current ran straight across the riffle, but with fifty
feet of clear water to the left there was no need of getting into any of
the worst of it, let alone trying to hurdle that foam-throwing rock.
Leaning hard on my oars, I had good steerage-way on the skiff by the
time she dipped over into the fast-running water. Roos was cuffing
jauntily at the wave crests, and singing. Because of the sequel, I
remember particularly it was "Dardanella" that was claiming his
attention. Two or three times he had maintained that he was a "lucky
fella" before I saw what seemed to me to be mingled dissent and
perturbation gathering in the pump-man's steel-grey eyes. Then, all of a
sudden, he gave vocal expression to his doubts. "You won't think you're
a 'lucky fella' if you put her onta that rock," he yelled over his
shoulder. Turning at the finish of my stroke, I saw that big
spray-flipping comber about two lengths away, and _dead ahead_, looking
savager than ever. Trailing my right oar, I pulled every ounce I could
bring to bear upon my left, trying to throw her head toward the better
water. The next instant I was all but falling over backwards as the oar
snapped cleanly off in the oar-lock. I recall perfectly the gleam of the
long copper nails which had weakened it, and the fresh fracture of the
broken spruce.
The weight I put onto my right oar in saving myself from tumbling
backward had the effect of throwing her head in just the opposite
direction I had intended. Since she could hardly have avoided hitting
the big roller anyhow, once she was so near, it is probably better that
she hit it squarely than sidling. The crash was solid, almost shattering
in its intensity, and yet I am not sure that she hit the rock at all. If
she did, it was a glancing blow, for she could not possibly have
survived anything heavier.
The pump-man, true to his sailor instincts, kept his head perfectly in
the face of the deluge that had engulfed him. The spare oar was lying
ready to hand, and he had it waiting for me in the oar-lock by the time
I was on an even keel again. The second wave, which she rode on her own,
threw _Imshallah's_ head off a bit, but by the time she was rising to
the third I was helping her again with the oars. Seeing how well she was
taking it, I did not try to pull out of the riffle now, but let her run
right down through it to the end. Only the first wave put much green
water into her, but even that had not filled her anywhere nearly so deep
as she had been the evening before. When we beached her below Columbia
River station we found her starboard bow heavily dented, but even that
did not convince me that we had hit the big rock. I am rather inclined
to think that denting was done when I did my lone-hand portage at Rock
Island. I was dead sorry I couldn't persuade that pump-man to throw up
his job and come along with us. He had the real stuff in him.
[Illustration: THE PICTURE THAT COST ME A WETTING (_above_)]
[Illustration: THE WRECK OF THE "DOUGLAS" (_below_)]
[Illustration: WE COOKED OUR BREAKFAST IN THE GALLEY OF THE WRECK OF THE
"DOUGLAS"]
[Illustration: A ROCKY CLIFF ABOVE BEVERLY]
After having lunch in the railway men's eating house at Columbia River,
we went down to push off again. Finding the local ferry-man examining
the skiff, I asked him if he thought she would do to run Cabinet
Rapids, which we could hear rumbling a mile below. "Not if you try to
push them out of the river the way you did that riffle above here a
while ago," he replied with a grin. He said he had been watching us
through his glass, and that the boat had disappeared from sight for
three or four seconds when she hit the big roller. He offered to bet his
ferry-boat against the skiff that we couldn't do it again and come
through right-side-up. No takers. Speaking seriously, he said that, by
keeping well to the left, we could run Cabinet all right--if nothing
went wrong. "But better not make a practice of breaking an oar just
where you're going to need it most," he added with another grin;
"there's nothing on the river that would live through the big riffle
over against the right bank. You'll see what she did to the _Douglas_."
Landing from the slack water above a rocky point which juts out into the
river at the head of Cabinet Rapids, we climbed a couple of hundred
yards over water-scoured boulders to the brink of the gorge. It was a
decidedly rough-looking rapid, but by no means so hopeless for running
with a small boat as Rock Island. In that the main riffle was thrown
against a sheer bank of the river, it reminded me a good deal of Death
Rapids on the Big Bend. But this riffle, while appearing fully as rough
as that of the dreaded _Dalles des Morts_, was not, like the latter,
unavoidable. The chance of passing it in only fairly broken water to the
left looked quite good enough to try. The wreck of the _Douglas_,
standing out white and stark against the black boulders a mile below,
was a good warning against taking any unnecessary chances. I looked
well to the oars and the trim of the boat before shoving off.
Once out into the river, I could see that the rapid was white from bank
to bank, but still nothing that ought to trouble us seriously. I stood
for a minute or two looking ahead from the vantage of one of the
thwarts, and it was just as I was taking up my oars again in the
quickening current that the corner of my eye glimpsed the narrow opening
of a deep back-channel winding off between splintered walls of columnar
basalt to the left. I wasn't looking for any more one-man portages, but
this opening looked good enough to explore. It might lead through by an
easy way, and there was hardly enough water to do much harm if it
didn't. It took hard pulling to sheer off from the "intake" now we had
drifted so close, but we finally made it and entered the dark
back-channel. Narrowing and broadening, just as the other had done, it
led on for a couple of hundred yards, finally to discharge over a
six-foot fall into a deeply indented pool that opened out to the river
about half way down the rapid. The wedge-shaped crack at the head of the
little fall was narrower than the skiff at water-line, but by dint of a
little lifting and tugging we worked her through and lowered her into
the pool below. Pulling out through the opening, we headed her
confidently into the current. There was a quarter-mile of white water
yet, but we were far enough down now so that the loss of an oar or any
other mishap wouldn't leave the skiff to run into those wallowing
rollers over against the further cliff. A sharp, slashing run carried us
through to the foot of Cabinet Rapids, and a few minutes later we had
hauled up into an eddy under the left bank opposite the wreck of the
_Douglas_.
The little stern-wheeler had come to grief at high-water, so that we had
to clamber all of three hundred yards over big, smooth, round boulders
to reach the point where the wreck was lying. The latter was by no means
in so bad a shape as I had expected to find it. The principal damage
appeared to have been done to the wheel, which was clamped down tight
over a huge boulder, and to the starboard bow, which was stove in. The
rest of her hull and her upper works were intact; also the engines,
though terribly rusty. There was not much from which one could
reconstruct the story of the disaster; in fact, I have not learned to
this day any authentic details. The chances are, however, that the wheel
struck a rock somewhere in Cabinet Rapids, and, after that, drifting out
of control, she had come in for the rest of the mauling. If her captain
is like the rest of the Columbia River skippers I met, I have no doubt
that she will be patched up again before next high-water and started off
for Portland.
With towering cliffs on both sides and the great black boulders
scattered all around, Roos felt that both subject and setting were
highly favourable for an effective movie, and started to think out a way
to work the wreck of the _Douglas_ into his "continuity." After some
minutes of brown study, he declared that the best way to work it would
be for the "farmer" to land, come clambering across the boulders
registering "puzzled wonderment," and then to stand in silent
contemplation of the wreck, registering "thankfulness." "Thankfulness
for what?" I demanded; "it doesn't strike me as Christian to gloat over
the wreck of a ship." "You don't get me at all," he expostulated. "I
don't mean for him to show thankfulness because of the wreck of the
steamer, but because his own boat has so far escaped a similar fate. He
just stands here with his arms folded, casts his eyes upward, moves his
lips as if...."
"Nothing doing," I cut in decisively. "If you'd been raising beans and
hay and apricots as long as I have, you'd know that a farmer never
registers thankfulness about anything but a rise in the market, and
there ain't no such thing any more." While we were arguing that moot
point, the sun dipped behind the loftily looming wall of brown-black
cliff across the river and the trouble settled itself automatically.
Because there was no longer light, Roos thought it would be a good stunt
to camp where we were until morning, and as a camp was always
"continuity"--there we were!
There was plenty of cordwood left, and the galley stove was in good
condition. As we had no candles, dinner was cooked by the mingled red
and green gleams of the port and starboard lights, transferred to the
galley for that purpose. I slept in the cook's cabin and Roos--with his
bed made up on the wire springs from the Captain's cabin--on the deck of
the galley. With water freezing half an inch thick in the coffee-pot on
the galley stove, we had an insufferably cold night of it--one of the
worst we spent on the river. In the morning Roos made his "camp shots,"
which consisted principally of the farmer chopping cordwood on the main
deck, building a fire in the galley stove and cooking breakfast. Out of
deference to my esoteric knowledge of the way farmers feel about things,
he consented to omit the "thankfulness stuff."
Shoving off into a steady six-mile current at nine-thirty, a few minutes
brought us in sight of a striking basaltic island, which Symons had
characterized as "one of the most perfect profile rocks in existence."
"Approaching it from the north," he wrote, "it presents a striking
likeness to the profile of Queen Victoria.... Coming nearer to it and
passing it on the west, the profile changes and merges into a more
Grecian and Sphinx-like face, whose placid immobility takes one's mind
involuntarily to far-off Egypt. It rises from the surface of the water
about a hundred feet, and a pair of eagles have selected it as their
home, and upon its extreme top have built a nest, giving, as it were, a
crown to this goddess of the Columbia."
Roos declared himself strong for that "Sphinx stuff," and had his camera
set up in the bow ready for a close-up of every change of expression. He
was doomed to disappointment. The first thing we discovered missing was
the crowning eagles' nest, and then Victoria's nose, mouth and chin. Her
brow and hair were there, but both considerably eroded and inroad-ed by
the weather. The "Grecian-and-Sphinx-like face" we never did locate,
although I pulled around the island twice in search of them. Roos
declared her an "oil can," and packed up his camera in supreme disgust.
That was, I believe, the last time he had it set up on the Columbia.
As Lieutenant Symons had proved so invariably accurate in all of his
topographical descriptions, I am strongly inclined to the belief that
floods and the elements had conspired to wreak much havoc with
"Victoria's" features in the forty years that had elapsed since he
limned them so strikingly with pen and pencil. I have known fairly
stonily-featured ladies to change almost as much in a good deal less
than forty years.
Cabinet Rapids is the beginning of a somewhat irregular series of
columnar basaltic cliffs which wall in the Columbia closely for the next
thirty miles. They range in height from fifteen hundred to three
thousand feet, and in colour from a rich blend of saffron-cinnamon,
through all the shades of brown, to a dull black. The prevailing
formation is that of upended cordwood, but there are endless weird
stratifications and lamiations, with here and there queer nuclei that
suggest sulphur crystallizations. Imbedded in the face of one of these
cliffs not far from the tumultuous run of Gualquil Rapids, is a landmark
that has been famous among Columbia _voyageurs_ for over a hundred
years. This is huge log, barkless and weather-whitened, standing on end
in the native basalt. Over a thousand feet above the river and almost an
equal distance from the brink of the sheer wall of rock, there is no
possible question of its having been set there by man. The descriptions
written of it a hundred years ago might have been written to-day.
Whether it is petrified or not, there is no way of knowing. The only
possible explanation of its presence is that it was lodged where it is
at a time when the Columbia flowed a thousand feet higher than it does
to-day, probably before it tore its great gorge through the Cascades and
much of what is now eastern Washington was a vast lake.
On the suggestion of the ferry-man at Trinidad, we avoided the upper
half of Gualquil Rapids by taking a straight, narrow channel to the
right, which would probably have been dry in another week. There is a
half mile of fast, white water here, ending with some heavy swirls
against a sheer cliff, but nothing seriously to menace any well-handled
open boat. The water was slack for a number of miles from the foot of
Gualquil, but began quickening where the river spread out between long
gravel bars below Vantage Ferry. They were shunting sheep across at the
latter point, and the Portuguese herders crowded eagerly round our boat,
making strange "high signs" and voicing cryptic utterances, evidently
having something to do with a local bootleggers' code. At our failure to
respond in kind, they became suspicious (doubtless the fact that Roos
was wearing a second-hand Canadian officer's uniform he had bought in
Revelstoke had something to do with it) that we were prohibition
enforcement officials, and they were muttering darkly to each other and
shaking their heads as we pushed off again.
The cliffs ran out not long after we left Vantage Ferry, and as we
neared the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Bridge at Beverly rough
patches of sandy desert began opening up on either side. Deprived of the
shelter of the high river walls, we were at once exposed to a heavy
easterly wind that had evidently been blowing all day on the desert. The
sun dulled to a luminous blur behind the pall of the sand-filled air,
and the wind, which headed us every now and then, about neutralized the
impulse of the accelerating current. There was a forty-miles-an-hour
sand-storm blowing when we beached the boat under the railway bridge at
four-thirty. The brilliantly golden-yellow cars of the C. M. & St. P.
Limited rumbling across above behind their electric locomotive seemed
strangely out-of-place in the desolate landscape.
The one sidewalk of the town's fragment of street was ankle-deep in sand
as we buffetted our way to the hotel. "Have you ever been in Beverly
before?" asked the sandy-haired (literally) girl who responded to the
jangle of the cowbell on the counter. "But I should know better than
that," she apologized with a blush as she blew off the grit on the
register; "'cause if you had been here once, you'd sure never be here
again. What's the game, anyhow? You haven't...?" A knowing twitch of a
dusty eyelash finished the question.
"No, we haven't," growled Roos irritably. Somehow he was never able to
extract half the amusement that I did over being taken for a
boot-legger.
It was the sand-storm that broke Roos' heart, I think. He was
non-committal at supper that night when I started to talk about Priest
Rapids, and the next morning, after describing his shave as like rubbing
his face with a brick, he announced that he was through with the
Columbia for good. As there was a good deal to be said for his
contention that, between the shortening days and the high cliffs walling
in the river, there were only two or three hours of good shooting light
even when the sun was out, I did not feel justified in urging him to go
on unless he wanted to. In any event, light for filming the running and
lining of Priest Rapids, now that the sand-storm was at its height, was
out of the question for a day or two at least. And below Priest Rapids
there would be nothing worth filming until the mouth of the Snake was
passed. I suggested, therefore, that he should go on to Pasco by train
and await me there, finding out in the meantime by wire whether Chester
cared to have him continue the "farmer" picture in the face of the
adverse light conditions.
By this time I had fairly complete data on Priest Rapids. These,
beginning at the end of a stretch of slack water several miles below
Beverly, continue for eleven miles. In this distance there are seven
major riffles, with considerable intervals of fairly quiet water
between. It seemed probable that all of these, with the exception of the
second and seventh, and possibly the sixth, could be run. The lining of
the others, while not difficult, would require the help of another man.
All that morning I inhaled sand as I went over Beverly with a
fine-toothed comb in a very earnest effort to find some one willing to
give me a hand through Priest Rapids. The nearest I came to success was
an ex-brakeman, who said he would go with me after the storm was over,
provided a job hadn't turned up in the meantime. The only real river-man
I found was an old chap who opined that the middle of November was too
late in the year to be getting his feet--if nothing else--wet in the
"Columby." He offered to haul the boat to the foot of the rapids by the
road for twenty dollars, but as the down-river branch of the Milwaukee
presented an opportunity to accomplish the same end in less time and
discomfort, I decided to portage by the latter. As there was an
auto-stage service from Hanford to Pasco, Roos accompanied me to the
former point by train, and helped get the boat down to the river and
into the water in the morning. Hanford was not the point on the line
closest to the foot of Priest Rapids, but I took the boat through to
there because the station was nearer the river than at White Bluffs, and
launching, therefore, a simpler matter.
The stretch of seventy miles between the foot of Priest Rapids and the
mouth of the Snake has the slowest current of any part of the Columbia
above the Dalles. Mindful of the time we had been losing by stops for
lunch, I now began putting into practice a plan which I followed right
on to the end of my voyage. Taking a package of biscuit and a couple of
bars of milk chocolate in my pocket, I kept the river right straight on
through to my destination. Munching and resting for an hour at noon, I
at least had the benefit of the current for this period. Eating a much
lighter lunch, I also gained the advantage of no longer being troubled
with that comfortable _siesta_-time drowsiness that inevitably follows a
hearty meal and disinclines one strongly to heavy exertion for an hour
or more.
For a dozen miles or more below Hanford the river, flanked on either
side by rolling desert sand-dunes, winds in broad shallow reaches
through a region desolate in the extreme. The only signs of life I saw
for many miles were coyotes slinking through the hungry sage-brush and
occasional flocks of geese, the latter forerunners of the countless
myriads that were to keep me company below the Snake. At Richfield the
results of irrigation became evident in young apple orchards and green
fields of alfalfa, and these multiplied all the way down to Pasco. The
country seemed very flat and monotonous after so many weeks among cliffs
and mountains, but there was no question of its richness and
productivity once water was brought to it. The low overflow flats about
the mouth of the Yakima, which flows into the Columbia from the west a
few miles above Pasco, gave little indication of the beauty of the
famous apple country which owes so much to the waters diverted from that
little river.
After pulling for an hour with the long Northern Pacific bridge in view,
I landed just below the Pasco-Kennewick ferry at three o'clock. As I was
beaching the boat and getting out the luggage to leave in the
ferry-man's house-boat, a hail from the river attracted my attention. It
was from Roos, in the front seat of an auto, on the approaching
ferry-boat. His stage had been behind time in leaving Hanford, and as a
consequence I had beaten him to the Pasco landing by ten minutes. After
the speed with which we had moved on the upper river, however, mine had
been rather a slow run. In spite of my steady pulling, it had taken me
just under six hours to do the thirty-five miles.
After the exchange of a wire or two, Roos obtained permission from
Chester to suspend the "farmer" picture, and was ordered on to New York
to report. We were both a good deal disappointed not to have a pictorial
record of the "farmer" actually seeing the sea; in fact, we did some
hours of "location" scouting in the hope of finding a substitute Pacific
in the vicinity of Pasco. If that Beverly sand-storm had only made
itself felt seventy-five miles farther down river I honestly believe we
would have accomplished our worthy end. There was a pretty bit of white
beach below the N. P. bridge. _If_ the sand had been blowing thick
enough to obscure the farther shore, and _if_ the wind had blown in the
right direction to throw up a line or two of surf, I could have stood
with one foot on that beach, the other on _Imshallah's_ bow, elbow on
knee, chin in hand, and registered "fulfilment," and none could have
told it from the real Pacific. Indeed, that bit of backwash from Pasco's
outfall sewer, with the sand-barrage and surf I have postulated, would
have "shot" _more_ like the Pacific than many spots I can think of
looking off to the Columbia bar.