PASCO TO THE DALLES
The only lone-hand river voyage I had ever taken previous to the one on
which I was about to embark was down the lower Colorado River, from
Needles to the head of the Gulf of California. This had been in
comparatively quiet water all the way, with nothing much to look out for
save the tidal bore at the lower end. As I had never been above the
Dalles on the lower Columbia, I had very little idea of what I would
encounter in the way of rapids. I knew that there were locks by which
the Dalles and Cascades could be passed, but as the combined fall at
these points accounted for only about a quarter of that between the
Snake and tide-water, it was certain there must still be some very swift
rapids to run. That there had at times been a steamer service maintained
from the Snake down meant that there must be some sort of a rock-free
channel through all of the riffles; but it did not necessarily mean that
these were runnable in a small boat. A properly handled stern-wheeler
can be drifted down and (by means of line and capstan) hauled up rapids
where not even a high-powered launch can live. I had a list of about a
score of the principal rapids between the Snake and Celilo Falls, with
their distances from the Canadian Boundary by river. This would enable
me to know approximately _where_ I was going to find them. That was
all. Information on fall, channel and the best means of running them I
would have to pick up as I went along.
I shoved off from Pasco Ferry at nine o'clock in the morning of Sunday,
November fourteenth. With Roos and his blanket-roll, camera and tripod
out of the stern, I found that the skiff trimmed better when I rowed
from the after thwart. She pulled easier and handled a lot more smartly
now. It was evident, however, that her increased freeboard was going to
make her harder to hold to her course with head winds, but these I hoped
to have little trouble with until I reached the gorge of the Cascades.
The ferry-man assured me that I would encounter no really bad water
until I came to the last pitch of Umatilla Rapids, about thirty-five
miles below. He advised me to take a good look at that before putting
into it, as an unbroken reef ran almost directly across the current and
the channel was not easy to locate. It was the most troublesome bar to
navigation on the lower Columbia, and steamers were repeatedly getting
in trouble there. I would see the latest wreck a couple of miles below
the foot of the rapids.
I passed the mouth of the Snake about three miles below the ferry. Here
was no such spectacular meeting of waters as occurs when the Pend
d'Oreille and Columbia spring together, for the country is low and
level, and the mouth of the Snake broad and shallow. The discharge was
through two channels, and the water greenish-grey in colour; but where
that blend in the swift tributaries of the upper river suggests the
intense coldness of glacial origin, here the picture conjured up was of
desert and alkali plains. Its mouth is the least interesting part of
the Snake. It has some magnificent canyons in its upper and middle
waters--as have also its two fine tributaries, the Salmon and
Clearwater,--and its Shoshone Falls are second only to Niagara on the
North American continent.
Lieutenant Symons, who concluded his exploration of the upper Columbia
at the Snake, characterizes the region as a "bleak, dreary waste, in
which for many miles around sage-brush and sand predominate ... one of
the most abominable places in the country to live in." Alexander Ross,
on the other hand, writing seventy years earlier, describes it as one of
the loveliest lands imaginable. The fact that the one reached the Snake
in the fall and the other in the spring may have had something to do
with these diametrically opposed impressions. Irrigation and cultivation
have gone far to redeem this land from the desert Symons found it, but
it is still far from being quite the Paradise Ross seemed to think it
was. As the only considerable plain touching the Columbia at any point
in its course, this region of the Snake can never make the scenic appeal
of the hundreds of miles of cliff-walled gorges above and below; but it
is a land of great potential richness. With water and power available
from the two greatest rivers of the West, there can be no question of
its future, both agriculturally and industrially. Pasco will yet more
than fulfil the promises made for that mushroom town in its early boom
days. "KEEP YOUR EYE ON PASCO!" was a byword from one end of the country
to the other in the nineties, and this hustling rail and agricultural
centre at the junction of the Columbia and the Snake should not be lost
sight of even to-day.
The lighter-hued water of the Snake was pretty well churned into the
flood of the Columbia at the end of a mile, leaving a faint suggestion
of cloudiness in the transparent green that the latter had preserved all
the way from the Arrow Lakes. The long bridge of the Spokane, Portland
and Seattle Railway spanned the Columbia just below the Snake, and from
there on paralleled the river closely right down to the Willamette.
After the Oregon-Washington Railway and Navigation Company tracks
appeared on the south bank below the Walla Walla, it was only at rare
intervals that I was out of sight of a grade, or out of sound of a
train, for the remainder of my voyage. In a day or two the trainmen,
running back and forth between divisional points, came to recognize the
bright green skiff plugging on down the dark green river (mighty small
she must have looked to them from the banks) and never failed to give
her a hail or a wave in passing. On a certain memorable occasion one of
them (doubtless in direct defiance of rules) ventured even further in
the way of a warning ... but I will tell of that in its place.
Homley Rapids, seven miles below Pasco ferry, are formed by a rough reef
of bedrock running half way across the river from the right bank.
Approached from the right side of the long gravel island that divides
the river just above them, one might get badly tangled up before he got
through; by the left-hand channel the going is easy if one keeps an eye
on the shallowing water at the bars. A sky-line of brown mountains,
with a double-turreted butte as their most conspicuous feature, marks
the point where the Columbia finally turns west for its assault on the
Cascades and its plunge to the Pacific. That bend is the boundary of the
fertile plains extending from the Yakima to the Walla Walla, and the
beginning of a new series of gorges, in some respects the grandest of
all. The matchless panorama of the Cascade gorges is a fitting finale to
the stupendous scenic pageant that has been staged all the way from the
glacial sources of the Columbia.
A low sandy beach just above the mouth of the rather insignificant Walla
Walla comes pretty near to being the most historically important point
on the Columbia. Here Lewis and Clark first came to the waters of the
long-struggled-toward Oregon; here came Fremont, the "Pathfinder;" here
Thompson planted his pious proclamation claiming all of the valley of
the Columbia for the Northwest Company; and by here, sooner or later,
passed and repassed practically every one of the trappers, missionaries,
settlers and other pioneers who were finally to bring Oregon permanently
under the Stars and Stripes.
The double-topped butte, an outstanding landmark for _voyageurs_ for a
hundred years, has long been called "The Two Virgins." The story is told
locally of a Catholic priest who saved his life by taking refuge in a
cave between the castellated turrets during an Indian massacre, but who
got in rather serious trouble with the Church afterwards as a
consequence of sending words of his deliverance by a French-Canadian
half-breed _voyageur_. The latter got the salient details of the story
straight, but neglected to explain that the two virgins were mountains.
The result was that the unlucky priest narrowly missed excommunication
for saving his life at the expense of breaking his vows. I got no
affidavit with the story; but local "stock" yarns are always worth
preserving on account of their colour.
There were a number of big black rocks where the river began its bend to
the west, but the channel to the right was not hard to follow. Neither
did Bull Run Rapids, a few miles farther down, offer any difficulties. I
followed the steamer channel as having the swiftest current, but could
have passed without trouble on either side of it in much quieter water.
Brown and terra-cotta-tinged cliffs reared higher and higher to left and
right, encroaching closely on the river. There was little room for
cultivation at any point, and often the railways had had to resort to
heavy cutting and tunnelling to find a way through some jutting rock
buttress. There were no trees, and the general aspect of the country was
desolate in the extreme.
It was toward the end of a grey afternoon that I headed _Imshallah_ into
the first pitch of Umatilla Rapids. The sun had dissolved into a slowly
thickening mist about three o'clock, and from then on the whole
landscape had been gradually neutralizing itself by taking on shade
after shade of dull, inconspicuous grey. From the grey-white mistiness
of the sky to the grey-green murkiness of the river there was nothing
that contrasted with anything else; every object was blended, dissolved,
all but quenched. The foam-ruffles above even the sharpest of the
riffles blurred like the streaking of clouded marble at a hundred feet,
and it took the livest kind of a lookout to avoid the ones with teeth in
them. Neither the first nor the second riffle had any very bad water,
but my neck was stiff from watching over my shoulder even as they were.
I had rather intended avoiding this trouble by drifting down anything
that looked very threatening stern first, but that would have involved
retrimming the boat and greatly reducing her speed. If I was going to
make Umatilla by dark, there was no time to lose.
From the head of the first riffle of Umatilla Rapids to the head of the
third or main one is a mile and a half. There was a slight up-river
breeze blowing in the mist, and the heavy rumble of the big fall came to
my ears some distance above the opening riffle. The distant roar
augmented steadily after that, and the sharper grind of the more
imminent riffles was never loud enough to drown it out entirely. The
fact that it had a certain "all pervasive" quality, seeming to fill the
whole of the gorge with its heavy beat, told me that it was an unusually
long rapid, as well as an unusually rough one. That, it seemed, was
about all I was going to be able to find out. No one was in sight on the
left bank, which I was skirting, and the right bank was masked with
mist. With none to seek information from, and with not enough light to
see for myself, the alternatives were very simple: I could either land,
line as far as I could while light lasted and then seek Umatilla on foot
for the night, or I could take my chance at running through. It was the
delay and uncertainty sure to be attendant upon lining that was the
principal factor in deciding me to try the latter course. Also, I knew
that there was an open channel all the way through, and that the rapid
was a comparatively broad and shallow one, rather than constricted and
deep. This meant that it would be straight white water--a succession of
broken waves--I was going into, rather than heavy swirls and whirlpools;
just the water in which the skiff had already proved she was at her
best. These points seemed to minimize the risk of going wrong to a point
where the chance of running was worth taking for the time and trouble it
would save. If I had not known these things in advance, I should never,
of course, have risked going into so strong a rapid under such
conditions of light.
I shall always have a very grateful feeling toward that Pasco ferry-man
for those few words he dropped about the run of the reef and the set of
the current at Umatilla Rapid. This is one of the few great rapids I
have ever known on any river where the main drift of the current will
not carry a boat to the deepest channel. This is due to the fact that
the great reef of native rock which causes the rapid is sufficiently
submerged even at middle water to permit a considerable flow directly
across it. The consequence of this is that a boat, large or small, which
follows the current and does not start soon enough working over toward
the point where a channel has been blasted through the reef, is almost
certain to be carried directly upon the latter. This has happened to a
good many steamers, the latest having been wrecked not long before my
voyage.
With a rough idea of the lay of things in my mind, I had edged a good
deal farther out across the current than would have been the case had I
been trusting to my own judgment of the way the rapid _ought_ to develop
in the light of my past experience. The smooth but swiftly-flowing water
to the left looked almost empty of threat, and it was not until I was
within a hundred feet of the barrier that I saw it was flowing directly
over the latter and went tumbling down the farther side in an almost
straight fall. At the same instant I saw that I was still heading forty
or fifty feet to the left of where the "intake" dipped through the break
in the reef. Realizing that I could never make it by heading straight, I
swung the skiff round and pulled quartering to the current with her head
up-stream. Even then it was a nearer squeak than I like to think of. I
missed the middle of the "V" by ten feet as I swung her head down-stream
again, and as the racing current carried her up against the back-wave
thrown off the end of the break in the reef she heeled heavily to
starboard, like an auto turning on a steeply-banked track. Then she shot
out into the big white combers in mid-channel and started slap-banging
down through them. It looked beastly rough ahead, but in any event it
was better than hanging up on the reef at the outset. We were going to
have a run for our money whatever happened.
The only precautions there had been time to take were slipping into my
"Gieve" and throwing all my luggage aft. Half-inflated, the
rubber-lined jacket was no handicap in rowing, and the tube hung ready
to receive more air if necessity arose. As for the trim, it had been my
snap judgment at the last moment that it would be better to give the
skiff her head in the rollers that I _knew_ were coming, and let her
take her chance in being down by the stern in whirlpools that might
never materialize. I still think that was the best thing to have done
under the circumstances.
Not until I was right down into that wild wallow of rock-churned foam
was there a chance to get an idea of the rather remarkable bedrock
formation which is responsible for making Umatilla Rapids the worrisome
problem they have always been for river skippers. After piercing the
black basaltic barrier of the reef, the channel shoots to the left and
runs for a quarter of a mile or more (I was too busy to judge distances
accurately) right along the foot of it. With a considerable stream of
water cascading over the reef at almost right angles to the channel, a
queer sort of side-kick is thrown into the waves of the latter which
make it one of the most "unrhythmic" rapids I ever ran. _Imshallah_
pounded horribly, but gave not the savagest of the twisting combers a
chance to put anything solid over her high held head. My erratic pecking
strokes did not find green water often enough to give her much way over
the current, but she responded instantly every time I dug deep to throw
her head back after she had been buffeted sideways by an arrogant
ruffian of a roller.
As soon as I saw the way she was riding the roughest of the water, I
realized that the only chance of a bad mess-up would come through my
failure to keep her head to the enemy. Knowing this wasn't likely to
happen unless I broke an oar, I eased a bit on my pulling and gave just
a quick short-arm jerk now and then to hold her steady. She was never
near to broaching-to, and I'm mighty glad she wasn't. Umatilla is the
sort of a rapid that hasn't quite the teeth to get the best of a
carefully handled boat that is running in good luck, but which has the
power, with a mile to spare, to grind to match-wood any craft that gets
into trouble on its own account. It was an eerie run that--with the
snarling cascade of the reef on one side, the ghostly dance of the
rollers on the other, and the impenetrable grey curtain of the mist
blanking everything beyond a radius of a hundred feet; but _Imshallah_
went through it with her head in the air and came waltzing out into the
swirls below as cocky as a partridge. Indeed, that was just the trouble.
The pair of us were just a bit _too_ cocky over the way we had gone it
blind and come through so smartly. It remained for a couple of lesser
rapids to reduce both of us to a proper humility of spirit.
I had been prepared to make a quick shift to the forward thwart in case
there was a bad run of whirlpools following the rapid, and so bring her
up by the stern. This did not prove necessary, however, as the rapidly
broadening river was too shallow for dangerous under-currents. A short
run in slackening water brought me to the town of Umatilla just as the
lights were beginning to twinkle in the windows. Landing in the quiet
water below a short stone jetty, I left my stuff in a nearby shack and
sought the hotel. The pool-room "stove-decorators" refused to believe I
had come through the rapid until I described it to them. Then they said
it was better to be a lucky darnfool on the Columbia than an unlucky
school-teacher. "School-teacher," it appeared, was the local apotheosis
of Wisdom, and stood at the opposite pole from "darnfool." It seems that
there had been two male school-teachers drowned in Umatilla that summer
and only one darnfool, and they were rather put out at me for having
failed to even up the score. Then they tried to spoil my evening by
telling me all the things that had happened to people in Devil's Run
Rapids, which I would go into just below the mouth of the river the
first thing in the morning. They had me rather fussed for a while,
too--until they told one about a farmer who, after having had his launch
upset on his way home from his wedding, swam out with his bride in his
arms. I told them I'd try to get that lusty swimmer to tow me through
Devil's Run in the morning, and turned in for a good sleep.
Umatilla is a decrepit little old town that knew its best days away back
in the last century, when it was the head of steamer navigation on the
Columbia and the terminus of the freighting route to Idaho and eastern
Washington. There are rich irrigated lands farther up the Umatilla
River, but the development of these seems to have done little for the
stagnating old settlement by the Columbia, which has little left but its
historic memories. It was by the Umatilla that the rugged Hunt and the
remnants of the Astor overland party came to the Columbia, after what
was perhaps the most terrible journey ever made across the continent.
And all through the time of the _voyageurs_, the trappers and the
pioneers, Umatilla was only less important as a halting and portage
point than the Cascades and the Dalles.
I pulled away from the jetty of Umatilla at eight o'clock in the morning
of November fifteenth. The sky was clear and there was no trace of the
mist of the previous evening. There was brilliant, diamond-bright
visibility on the river, with the usual early morning mirage effects,
due to the chill stratum of air lying close to the water. This
exaggerated considerably the height of distant riffles, lifting them up
into eye-scope much sooner than they would have been picked up
ordinarily. I put on my "Gieve" and blew it up in anticipation of a
stiff fight at Devil's Run, only to find just enough rocks and riffles
there to make me certain of locating them. I could see, however, that
the formation was such that there might have been very troublesome water
there at higher, and possibly lower, stages. Out of charity for the
tellers of a good many awesome tales I had to listen to in respect of
rapids I subsequently found to be comparatively innocuous, I am inclined
to believe that a number of them were substantially straight accounts of
disasters which had actually occurred in flood season, or at times when
other water levels than those I encountered made the riffles in question
much more troublesome.
I had an easy day of it for rapids, but, as a consequence of the
comparatively slow water, rather a hard one for pulling. Canoe
Encampment Rapids, twenty miles below Devil's Run, gave me a good lift
for a mile or more, but not enough to make much of a respite from the
oars if I was going to make the fifty miles I had set for my day's run.
I was still ten miles short of that at four o'clock when a drizzling
rain setting in from the south-west decided me to land for shelter at
Hepburn Junction, on the left bank. That was the first rain I had
encountered since passing the Canadian Boundary, after a month of
practically continuous storms. There was nothing but a railway station
at the Junction, but a nearby road-camp offered the chance of food and
shelter. The young contractor--he was doing the concrete work on a State
Highway bridge at that point--eyed my bedraggled figure somewhat
disapprovingly at first, at a loss, apparently, as to whether I was a
straight hobo or merely a disguised boot-legger. An instant later we had
recognized each other as football opponents of Los Angeles-Pasadena
school-days. His name was Walter Rees, of a family prominent among early
Southern California pioneers. With the rain pattering on the tent roof,
we talked each other to sleep lamenting the good old days of the "flying
wedge" and massed play in football.
It was clear again the following morning, but with a mistiness to the
west masking Mount Hood and the Cascades, to which I was now coming very
near. The cliffs had been rearing up higher and higher at every mile,
great walls of red-brown and black rock strongly suggestive, in their
rugged barrenness, of the buttressed, turreted and columned formation
through which the river runs below the mouth of the Spokane. Owyhee,
Blalock and Four O'clock rapids were easy running, but the sustained
roar which the slight up-river breeze brought to my ears as the black,
right-angling gorge of Rock Creek came in sight was fair warning that
there was really rough water ahead. Although I had been able to gather
very little information along the way, the fact that I had so far
descended but a small part of the two hundred feet of drop between
Umatilla and Celilo Falls meant that the several rapids immediately
ahead would have to make up for the loafing the Columbia had been guilty
of for the last sixty miles.
Taking advantage of the quiet stretch of water below Four O'clock
Rapids, I went all over the skiff as she drifted in the easy current,
tuning her up for the slap-banging she could not fail to receive in the
long succession of sharp riffles which began at Rock Creek. In
tightening up the brass screws along the gunwale, I removed and threw
into the bottom of the boat both of my oar-locks. When I started to
restore them to place as the roar of the nearing rapid grew louder, I
found that one of them--the left--had been kicked out of reach under the
bottom-boards. Rather than go to the trouble of tearing up the latter
just then, I replaced the missing lock with one from my duffle-bag, a
roughly-smithed piece of iron that I had carried away as a mascot from
an old _batteau_ at Boat Encampment. It proved quite a bit too snug for
its socket, besides being a deal wider than it should have been for the
shaft of my light oar. There was a spoon oar, with a ring lock, under
the thwarts, but I was somewhat chary of using it since its mate had
snapped with me below Rock Island Rapids.
The river narrowed sharply above Rock Creek, and, standing on a thwart
as the skiff drifted down, I saw that the rapid dropped away in a solid
stretch of white foam tumbling between black basaltic walls. There was a
good, stiff fall, but it was reassuring that I could see right away to
the end of the white water, which did not appear to continue around the
ninety-degree bend at the foot. It was just the sort of water
_Imshallah_ was at her best in running, so I decided it was simply a
matter of choosing the clearest channel and letting her go. A white
cross-barred post on the mountainside at the angle of the bend gave me
the bearing for the channel a minute or two before I made out the dip of
the "intake." Stowing everything well aft, as I had done at Umatilla, I
took up my oars and put her straight over the jade-green tip of the "V."
That was rough-and-rowdy water, and no mistake. Every roller meant a
slam, and every slam meant a shower-bath; but withal, it was mostly
spray that came over her bows--nothing really to bother about. And so
_Imshallah_ would have run it right through--had not a sharp dig I gave
with my left oar jerked the latter out of that "open-faced" Boat
Encampment mascot lock and sent me keeling over backwards. The next
moment she was wallowing, beam-on, into the troughs and over the crests
of the combers, dipping green water at every roll.
Recovering my seat as quickly as possible, I tried to bring her head up
again by backing with the right oar. She swung obediently enough, but I
could not hold her bow down-stream once she was headed right.
Rather than chance that "mascot" oar-lock again, I tumbled aft and did
what I could with the paddle. Down as she was by the stern, that brought
her head right out of the water and made it rather hopeless getting any
way on her. She tumbled on through to the foot of the rapid without
putting a gunwale under again, however, a circumstance for which I was
highly thankful. She already had five or six inches of water in her, as
I found as soon as I began to bail. It is just as well the trouble
didn't occur at the head of the rapid. We were half way down when I
ceased to function, and _Imshallah_ had about all she wanted to navigate
the remainder. I was also duly thankful that there was nothing more than
a few bad swirls at the foot of the rapid. Standing on her tail as she
was after I plumped down in the stern with the paddle, a good strong
whirlpool, such as must form at that sharp bend at high-water, would
have made not more than one comfortable mouthful of her.
From the foot of Rock Creek Rapids to the head of Squally Hook Rapids is
something less than four miles of not very swift water. It took me about
all the time the boat was drifting that distance to get her bailed out
enough to retrieve my lost oar-lock from under the bottom-boards.
Squally Hook, I could see, was much the same sort of a short, sharp,
savage rapid as Rock Creek. There was the same restricted "intake," and
the same abrupt bend just beyond the foot; only below Squally Hook the
river turned to the left, where at Rock Creek it had turned to the
right.
The sheer two-thousand-foot cliff on the inside of the bend that gives
its name to the rapid is well called Squally Hook. What had been a
gentle ten-miles-an-hour breeze on the river above began resolving
itself into a succession of fitful gusts of twenty or thirty as I
approached the rock-walled bend. Even a steady head-wind makes steering
awkward in going into a rapid; a gusty one is a distinct nuisance. To
avoid the necessity of any sharp change of course after I was once among
the white-caps, I resolved to use every care in heading into the rapid
at exactly the right place. That was why, when I became aware that two
girls from a farm-house on a bench above the right bank were motioning
me imperiously in that direction, I swerved sharply from the course I
had decided upon in an endeavour to locate the channel into which I was
sure they were trying to tell me to head. Just what those confounded
half-breed Loreli were _really_ driving at I never did learn. Perhaps
they had apples to sell, or some sweet cider; or perhaps they thought I
had some cider that was not sweet. Perhaps it was pure sociability--the
desire of a bit of a "talky-talk" with the green-boated _voyageur_. At
any rate, they were certainly _not_ trying to pilot me into a clear
channel. That fact walloped me right between the eyes the instant I
discovered that I had pulled beyond the entrance of a perfectly straight
channel and that there was a barely submerged barrier of rock blocking
the river all the way on to the right bank.
That, of course, left me no alternative but to pull back for all that
was in me to wait the "intake." It was a very similar predicament to the
one in which the mist had tricked me at the head of Umatilla; only
there I had room to make the channel and here I didn't. The current,
running now like a mill-race, carried me onto the reef sixty feet to the
right of the smooth green chute of the "fairway."
If it had taken half an hour instead of half a second to shoot out
across the shoaling shelf of that froth-hidden reef there might have
been time for a goodly bit of worrying anent the outcome. As it was,
there was just the sudden thrill of seeing the bottom of the river
leaping up to hit the bottom of the boat, the instant of suspense as she
touched and dragged at the brink, and then the dizzy nose-dive of two or
three feet down into deeper water. It was done so quickly that a stroke
checked by the rock of the reef was finished in the up-boil below the
little cascade. With an inch or two less of water she might have hung at
the brink and swung beam-on to the current, which, of course, would have
meant an instant capsize. The way it was, she made a straight clean jump
of it, and only buried her nose in the souse-hole for the briefest part
of a second when she struck. The rest was merely the matter of three
hundred yards of rough running down a rock-clear channel.
The authors of my near-mess-up came capering down the bank in pursuit as
I swung out into the smoothening swirls, but I only shook my fist at
them and resumed my oars. Darn women, anyway!--when a man's running
rapids, I mean.
Now one would have thought that those two performances were enough for
one afternoon, especially as both were very largely due to my own
carelessness; but I suppose the "trilogy of trouble" had to be rounded
out complete. From the foot of Squally Hook Rapids to the head of Indian
Rapids is about three miles. The water became ominously slack as I
neared what appeared to be a number of great rock islands almost
completely barring the river. It was not until I was almost even with
the first of them that a channel, very narrow and very straight, opened
up along the left bank. Various other channels led off among the
islands, but with nothing to indicate how or where they emerged. That
flume-like chute down the left bank was plainly the way the steamers
went, and certainly the quickest and most direct course on down the
river. Peering through the rocky vista, I could see a rain storm racing
up the Columbia, with the grey face of it just blotting out a
wedge-shaped gorge through the southern cliffs which I knew must be the
mouth of the John Day. That storm was another reason why I should choose
the shortest and swiftest channel. There ought to be some kind of
shelter where this important southern tributary met the Columbia.
Of course, I knew all about still water running deep (which was of no
concern to me) and "twisty" (which was of considerable concern). I
should certainly have given more thought to the matter of trimming for
what was sure to be waiting to snap up _Imshallah_ at the foot of that
speeding chute of green-black water had not an old friend of mine
breezed along just then. He was the engineer of the way freight on the
"South-bank" line. We had been exchanging signals in passing for three
days now--twice on his down run and once on his up. This was the first
opportunity I had had to show him how a rapid should be run, and I noted
with gratification that he appeared to be slowing down so as to miss
none of the fine points. On my part, dispensing with my wonted
preliminary "look-see," I swung hard on the oars in an effort to get
into the swiftest water before the spectators were out of sight.
As the engine drew up even with me, I balanced my oars with my right
hand for a moment and waved the engineer greetings with my left; he, in
turn, ran the locomotive with his left hand and waved with his right.
Then I saw that the fireman was also waving, and, farther back, the
brakeman, from the top of a car, and the conductor from the "lookout" of
the caboose. The occupants of the "dirigible grandstand" at the
Poughkeepsie regattas had nothing on the crew of that way freight. And
the latter, moreover, were treated to a burst of speed such as no
man-propelled boat in still water ever came close to. I was not pulling
over four or five miles an hour myself, but that smooth, steep,
unobstructed chute must have been spilling through its current at close
to twenty. In a couple of hundred yards I pulled up three or four
car-lengths on the comparatively slow-moving train, and I was still
gaining when a sudden "_toot-a-too-toot!_" made me stop rowing and look
around. I had recognized instantly the familiar danger signal, and was
rather expecting to see a cow grazing with true bovine nonchalance on
the weeds between the ties. Instead, it was the engineer's wildly
gesticulating arm that caught my back-cast eye. He was pointing just
ahead of me, and down--evidently at something in the water.
Then I saw it too--a big black funnel-shaped hole down which a wide
ribbon of river seemed to be taking a sort of a spiral tumble. It was
that entirely well-meant _toot-a-toot_, which was intended to prod me,
not a cow, into activity, that was primarily responsible for what
followed. Had I not ceased rowing on hearing it, it is probable that the
skiff would have had enough way when she did strike that whirlpool to
carry her right on through. As it was _Imshallah_ simply did an undulant
glide into the watery tentacles of the lurking octopus, snuggled into
his breast and prepared to spend the night reeling in a dervish dance
with him. I must do the jade the justice of admitting that she had no
intention of outraging the proprieties by going any further than a
nocturnal terpsichorean revel. Going home for the night with him never
entered her mind; so that when he tried to pull the "Cave-Man stuff" and
drag her down to his under-water grottoes, she put up the most virtuous
kind of resistance. The trouble was that I didn't want to go even as far
as she did. Dancing was the last thing I cared for, with that rain-storm
and night coming on. Yet--at least as far as my friends on the way
freight ever knew--an all-night _Danse d'Apache_ looked very much like
what we were up against; for I recall distinctly that when the train was
disappearing round the next bend _Imshallah_, her head thrown
ecstatically skyward, was still spinning in circles, while I continued
to fan the air with my oars like an animated Dutch windmill.
It was a mighty sizeable whirlpool, that black-mouthed maelstrom into
which _Imshallah's_ susceptibility had betrayed both of us. I should say
that it was twice the diameter of the one which had given us such a
severe shaking just above the Canadian Boundary, and with a "suck" in
proportion. What helped the situation now, however, was the fact that
the skiff carried rather less than half the weight she did then. At the
rate she was taking water over the stern during that first attack, she
could not have survived for more than half a minute; now she was riding
so much more buoyantly that she was only dipping half a bucket or so
once in every two or three rounds. When I saw that she could probably go
on dancing for an hour or two without taking in enough water to put her
under, something of the ludicrousness of the situation began to dawn on
me. Missing the water completely with half of my strokes, and only
dealing it futile slaps with the rest, I was making no more linear
progress than if I had been riding a merry-go-round. I didn't dare to
put the stern any lower by sliding down there and trying to paddle where
there was water to be reached. Crowding her head down by working my
weight forward finally struck me as the only thing to do.
With the forward thwart almost above my head this was not an easy
consummation to effect, especially with an oar in either hand. Luckily,
I was now using the "ring" oar-locks, so that they came along on the
oars when I unshipped the latter. Standing up was, of course, out of
the question. I simply slid off backwards on to the bottom and wriggled
forward in a sitting position until I felt my spine against the thwart.
That brought her nose out of the clouds, and she settled down still
farther when, after getting my elbows over the seat behind me, I worked
up into a rowing position.
The whirlpool was spinning from right to left, and one quick stroke with
my left oar--against the current of the "spin," that is--was enough to
shoot her clear. Bad swirls and two or three smaller "twisters" made her
course a devious one for the next hundred yards, but she never swung in
a complete revolution again. I pulled into smooth water just as the
first drops of the storm began to patter on the back of my neck.
The first riffle of John Day Rapids sent its warning growl on the
up-river wind before I was a quarter of a mile below the whirlpool, and
ahead loomed a barrier of rock islands, rising out of the white foam
churned up as the Columbia raced between them. I had to run the first
riffle--an easy one--to make the mouth of the John Day, but that was as
far as I went. I reckoned there had been quite enough excitement for one
afternoon without poking into any more rough water against a rain and
head wind. Dropping below the gravel bar off the mouth of the Day, I
pulled fifty yards up-stream in a quiet current and moored _Imshallah_
under the railway bridge. I camped for the night with a couple of motor
tourists in a shack near the upper end of the bridge. My hosts were two
genial souls, father and son, enjoying an indefinite spell of fishing,
hunting and trapping on a stake the former had made in the sale of one
of his "prospects" in southern Oregon. They were bluff, big-hearted,
genuine chaps, both of them, and we had a highly delightful evening of
yarning.
It was clear again the next morning, but with the barometer of my
confidence jolted down several notches by what had occurred the previous
afternoon. I pulled across the river and sought a quieter way through
the second riffle of John Day Rapids than that promised by the
boisterous steamer channel. By devious ways and sinuous, I wound this
way and that among the black rock islands, until a shallow channel along
the right bank let me out of the maze at the lower end. This waste of
time and effort was largely due to funkiness on my part, and there was
no necessity for it. The steamer channel is white and rough, with
something of a whirlpool on the left side at the lower end, but nothing
that there is any real excuse for avoiding. The third riffle was nothing
to bother about; nor did Schofield's Rapids, two miles below, offer any
difficulties. As a matter of fact, Adventure, having had its innings,
was taking a day off, leaving me to follow the Golden Trail of Romance.
To-day was "Ladies' Day" on the Columbia.
Romance first showed her bright eyes at a little farm on the right bank,
three miles below Schofield's Rapids. Landing here to ask about the
channel through a rather noisy rapid beginning to boom ahead, I found a
delectable apple-cheeked miss of about twelve in charge, her father and
mother having gone across to Biggs for the day. She was in sore trouble
at the moment of my advent because her newly-born brindle bull calf--her
really-truly very own--wouldn't take nourishment properly. Now as luck
would have it, teaching a calf table-manners chanced to be one of the
few things I knew about stock-farming. So I showed her how to start in
by letting _Cultus_ (that was merely a temporary name, she said, because
he was so bad) munch her own finger for a spell, from which, by slow
degrees, the lacteal liaison with "Old Mooley" was established. It took
us half an hour to get _Cultus_ functioning on all fours, and rather
longer than that to teach her collie, tabby cat, and the latter's three
kittens to sit in a row and have their mouths milked into. It didn't
take us long to exhaust "Old Mooley's" milk supply at that game, and
when I finally climbed over the barnyard fence on the way down to my
boat, poor _Cultus_ was left butting captiously at an empty udder.
"Apple Cheek" rather wanted me to stay until her father came back,
saying that he had gone to Biggs to get a 'breed for a hired man, and
that, if he didn't get the 'breed, maybe I would do. She almost burst
into tears with shame when I told her I was a moving picture actor
seeking rest and local colour on the Columbia. "You a actor, and I made
you milk 'Old Mooley!'" she sobbed; and it took all my lunch ration of
milk chocolate to bring back her smile. Then, like the Scotch bride at
Windermere, she asked me if I was Bill Hart. Somehow, I wasn't quite
base enough to tell her a concrete lie like that; so I compromised with
a comparative abstraction. I was a rising star in the movie firmament, I
said; an eclectic, taking the best of all the risen stars, of whom much
would be heard later. She was still pondering "_eclectic_" when I pushed
off into the current. Bless your heart, little "Apple Cheek," I hope you
didn't get a spanking for wasting all of _Cultus'_ dinner on the dogs
and cats and the side of the barn! You were about the first person I met
on the Columbia who didn't accuse me of being a boot-legger, and the
only one who believed me hot off the bat when I said I was a movie star.
The rapid ahead became noisier as I drew nearer, and when I saw it came
from a reef which reached four-fifths of the way across the river from
the left bank, I pulled in and landed at Biggs to inquire about the
channel. The first man I spoke to called a second, and the latter a
third, and so on _ad infinitum_. Pretty near to half the town must have
been gathered at the railway station giving me advice at the end of a
quarter of an hour. Each of them had a different suggestion to make,
ranging from dragging through a half-empty back channel just below the
town to taking the boat out and running it down the track on a
push-cart. As they all were agreed that the steamers used to go down the
opposite side, I finally decided that would be the best way through. Not
to run too much risk of being carried down onto the reef in pulling
across, I lined and poled a half mile up-stream before pushing off. Once
over near the right bank, I found a channel broad and deep enough to
have run at night.
A couple of miles below Biggs the Columbia is divided by a long narrow
rocky island. The deep, direct channel is that to the right, and is
called Hell Gate--the third gorge of that hackneyed name I had
encountered since pushing off from Beavermouth. Possibly it was because
I was fed-up with the name and all it connoted that I avoided this
channel; more likely it was because Romance was at the tow-line. At any
rate, I headed into the broad shallow channel that flows by the mouth of
the River Des Chutes. It was up this tumultuous stream that Fremont,
after camping at the Dalles and making a short boat voyage below,
started south over the mountains in search of the mythical river that
was supposed to drain from the Utah basin to the Pacific in the vicinity
of San Francisco--one of the indomitable "Pathfinder's" hardest
journeys.
Just beyond where the River of the Falls, true to name to the last, came
cascading into the Columbia, Romance again raised her golden head--this
time out of the steam rising above an Indian "Turkish-bath." The first
time I had found her in the guise of a twelve-year-old; this time it was
more like a hundred and twelve. One can't make certain within a year or
two about a lady in a Turkish-bath; it wouldn't be seemly even to _try_
to do so. Pulling in close to the left bank to look at some queer
mud-plastered Indian wickiups, a rush of steam suddenly burst from the
side of the nearest one, and out of that spreading white cloud, rising
like Aphrodite from the sea-foam, emerged the head and shoulders of an
ancient squaw. She was horribly old--literally at the sans eyes, sans
hair, sans teeth, sans everything (including clothes) stage. Cackling
and gesticulating in the rolling steam, she was the _belle ideal_ of
the witch of one's fancy, muttering incantations above her boiling
cauldron.
Fremont, in somewhat humorous vein, tells of visiting an Indian camp in
this vicinity on the Columbia, and of how one of the squaws who had
rushed forth in complete _deshabille_ on hearing the voices of
strangers, "properized" herself at the last moment by using her
papoose--as far as it would go--as a shield. But this old "Aphrodite" I
had flushed from cover was so old that, if her youngest child had been
ready to hand, and that latter had had one of her own children within
reach, and this third one had had a child available, I am certain that
still another generation or two would have had to be descended before a
papoose sufficiently young enough to make "properization" proper would
have been found. I trust I make that clear. And when you _have_
visualized it, isn't it a funny pyramid?
With two or three more "Aphrodites" beginning to bubble up through the
steam, it is just possible that some such an ocular barrage actually was
in process of formation; but I think not. My hard-plied oars had hardly
lengthened my interval to much over fifty yards, when the whole lot of
them trooped down to the river--steaming amazingly they were at the
touch of the sharp early winter air--and plunged into the icy water. I
learned later that this "sweat-bath" treatment is the favourite cure-all
with the Indians of that part of the Columbia Basin.
Where the left-hand channel returned to the main Columbia a mile or more
below the mouth of the River Des Chutes I encountered an extensive
series of rock-reefs which, until I drew near them, seemed to block the
way completely. It was a sinuous course I wound in threading my way
through the ugly basaltic outcroppings, but the comparatively slow
water robbed it of any menace. Once clear of the rocks, I found myself
at the head of the long, lake-like stretch of water backed up above
Celilo Falls. The low rumble of the greatest cataract of the lower
Columbia was already pulsing in the air, while a floating cloud of
"water-smoke," white against the encroaching cliffs, marked its
approximate location. I was at last approaching the famous "long
portage" of the old _voyageurs_, a place noted (in those days) for the
worst water and the most treacherous Indians on the river. Now, however,
the Indians no longer blocked the way and exacted toll, while the
portage had been bridged by a Government canal. I caught the loom of the
head-gate of the latter about the same time that the bridge of the
"North-Bank" branch line, which spans the gorge below the falls, began
rearing its blurred fret-work above the mists. Then, once again,
Romance. "Ladies' Day" was not yet over. As I pulled in toward the
entrance to the canal, at the left of the head of the falls, I observed
a very gaily-blanketed dame dancing up and down on the bank and
gesticulating toward the opposite side of the river. As I landed and
started to pull the skiff up on the gravelly beach, she came trotting
down to entreat, in her best "Anglo-Chinook," that I ferry her to the
opposite bank, where her home was, and, where, apparently, she was long
overdue. She wasn't a beggar, she assured me, but--jingling her beaded
bag under my nose--was quite willing to pay me "_hiyu chickamon_" for
my services. Nor was she unduly persistent. No sooner had I told her
that I was in a "_hiyu rush_" and hadn't the time just then to be a
squire of dames, than she bowed her head in stoical acquiescence and
went back to her waving and croaking. It was that futile old croak (with
not enough power behind it to send it a hundred yards across a mile-wide
river) that caved my resolution. Shoving _Imshallah_ back into the
water, I told her to pile in.
And so Romance drew near to me again, this time perched up in the
long-empty stern-sheets of my boat. This one was neither an infant nor a
centurienne, but rather a fair compromise between the two. Nor was she
especially fair nor especially compromising (one couldn't expect that of
a sixty-year-old squaw); but she was the most trusting soul I ever met,
and that's something. The falls were thundering not fifty yards
below--near enough to wet us with their up-blown spray,--and yet not one
word of warning did she utter about giving the brink a wide birth in
pulling across. Not that I needed such a warning, for the first thing I
did was to start pulling up-stream in the slack water; but, all the
same, it was a distinct compliment to have it omitted. As it turned out,
there was nothing to bother about, for the current was scarcely swifter
in mid-stream than along the banks. It was an easy pull. Romance beamed
on me all the way, and once, when one of her stubby old toes came afoul
of my hob-nailed boot, she bent over and gave a few propitiary rubs
to--the boot ... as if _that_ had lost any cuticle. And at parting,
when I waved her money-bag aside and told her to keep her _chickamon_ to
spend on the movies, she came and patted me affectionately on the
shoulder, repeating over and over "_Close tum-tum mika!_" And that, in
Chinook, means: "You're very much all right!" As far as I can remember,
that is the only unqualified praise I ever had from a lady--one of that
age, I mean. Squiring squaws--especially dear old souls like that
one--is a lot better fun than a man would think.
[Illustration: LIFTED DRAWBRIDGE ON CELILO CANAL (_above_)]
[Illustration: TUMWATER GORGE OF THE GRAND DALLES (_below_)]
[Illustration: "IMSHALLAH" IN THE LOCK AT FIVE-MILE]
[Illustration: "IMSHALLAH" HALF WAY THROUGH THE CELILO CANAL]
It was four o'clock when I turned up at the lock-master's house at
Celilo, and then to find that that worthy had just taken his gun and
gone off up on the cliffs to try and bag a goose. As it would probably
be dark before he returned, his wife reckoned I had better put up with
them for the night and make an early start through the Canal the
following morning. The lock-master, a genial Texan, came down with his
goose too late it get it ready for supper, but not to get it picked that
night. Indeed, we made rather a gala occasion of it. "Mistah" Sides got
out his fiddle and played "The Arkansaw Traveller" and "Turkey in the
Straw," the while his very comely young wife accompanied on the piano
and their two children, the village school-marm and myself collaborated
on the goose. It was a large bird, but many hands make light work; that
is, as far as getting the feathers off the goose was concerned. Cleaning
up the kitchen was another matter. As it was the giddy young
school-teacher who _started_ the trouble by putting feathers down my
neck, I hope "Missus" Sides made that demure-eyed minx swab down decks
in the morning before she went to teach the young idea how to shoot.
There is no lock at the head of the Celilo Canal, but a gate is
maintained for the purpose of regulating flow and keeping out drift.
Sides, silhouetted against the early morning clouds, worked the gates
and let me through into the narrow, concrete-walled canal, down which I
pulled with the thunder of the falls on one side and on the other the
roar of a passing freight. The earth-shaking rumbles died down
presently, and beyond the bend below the railway bridge I found myself
rowing quietly through the shadow of the great wall of red-black cliffs
that dominate the Dalles from the south.
Celilo Falls is a replica on a reduced scale of the Horse-shoe cataract
at Niagara. At middle and low-water there is a drop of twenty feet here,
but at the flood-stage of early summer the fall is almost wiped out in
the lake backed up from the head of the Tumwater gorge of the Dalles.
The Dalles then form one practically continuous rapid, eight or nine
miles in length, with many terrific swirls and whirlpools, but with all
rocks so deeply submerged that it is _possible_ for a well-handled
steamer to run through in safety--provided she is lucky. With the
completion of the Canal this wildest of all steamer runs was no longer
necessary, but in the old days it was attempted a number of times when
it was desired to take some craft that had been constructed on the upper
river down to Portland. The first steamer was run through successfully
in May, 1866, by Captain T. J. Stump, but the man who became famous for
his success in getting away with this dare-devil stunt was Captain
James Troup, perhaps the greatest of all Columbia skippers. Professor W.
D. Lyman gives the following graphic account of a run through the Dalles
with Captain Troup, on the _D. S. Baker_, in 1888.
"At that strange point in the river, the whole vast volume is
compressed into a channel but one hundred and sixty feet wide at
low water and much deeper than wide. Like a huge mill-race the
current continues nearly straight for two miles, when it is
hurled with frightful force against a massive bluff. Deflected
from the bluff, it turns at a sharp angle to be split asunder by
a low reef of rock. When the _Baker_ was drawn into the suck of
the current at the head of the 'chute' she swept down the
channel, which was almost black, with streaks of foam, to the
bluff, two miles in four minutes. There feeling the tremendous
refluent wave, she went careening over toward the sunken reef.
The skilled captain had her perfectly in hand, and precisely at
the right moment rang the signal bell, 'Ahead, full speed,' and
ahead she went, just barely scratching her side on the rock. Thus
close was it necessary to calculate distance. If the steamer had
struck the tooth-like point of the reef broadside on, she would
have been broken in two and carried in fragments on either side.
Having passed this danger point, she glided into the beautiful
calm bay below and the feat was accomplished."
There is a fall of eighty-one feet in the twelve miles from the head of
Celilo Falls to the foot of the Dalles. This is the most considerable
rate of descent in the whole course of the Columbia in the United
States, though hardly more than a third of that over stretches of the
Big Bend in Canada. It appeared to be customary for the old _voyageurs_
to make an eight or ten miles portage here, whether going up or down
stream, though there were doubtless times when their big _batteaux_ were
equal to running the Dalles below Celilo. I climbed out and took hurried
surveys of both Tumwater and Five-Mile (sometimes called "The Big
Chute") in passing, and while they appeared to be such that I would
never have considered taking a chance with a skiff in either of them, it
did look as though a big double-ender, with an experienced crew of
oarsmen and paddlers, would have been able to make the run. That was a
snap judgment, formed after the briefest kind of a "look-see," and it
may well be that I was over optimistic.
The Celilo Canal, which was completed by the Government about five years
ago, is eight and a half miles long, has a bottom width of sixty-five
feet, and a depth of eight feet. It has a total lift of eighty feet, of
which seventy are taken by two locks in flight at the lower end. That
this canal has failed of its object--that of opening up through
navigation between tide-water and the upper Columbia--is due to no
defect of its own from an engineering standpoint, but rather to the fact
that, first the railway, and now the truck, have made it impossible for
river steamers to pay adequate returns in the face of costly operation
and the almost prohibitive risks of running day after day through
rock-beset rapids. There is not a steamer running regularly on the
Columbia above the Dalles to-day. The best service, perhaps, which the
Celilo Canal rendered was the indirect one of forcing a very
considerable reduction of railway freight rates. That alone is said to
have saved the shippers of eastern Oregon and Washington many times the
cost of this highly expensive undertaking.
I pulled at a leisurely gait down the Canal, stopping, as I have said,
at Tumwater and Five-Mile, and at the latter giving the lock-master a
hand in dropping _Imshallah_ down a step to the next level. Rowing past
a weird "fleet" of laid-up salmon-wheels in the Big Eddy Basin, I
sheered over to the left bank in response to a jovial hail, and found
myself shaking hands with Captain Stewart Winslow, in command of the
Government dredge, _Umatilla_, and one of the most experienced skippers
on the upper river. He said that he had been following the progress of
my voyage by the papers with a good deal of interest, and had been on
the lookout to hold me over for a yarn. As I was anxious to make the
Dalles that night, so as to get away for an early start on the following
morning, he readily agreed to join me for the run and dinner at the
hotel.
While Captain Winslow was making a hurried shift of togs for the river,
I had a brief but highly interesting visit with Captain and Mrs.
Saunders. Captain Saunders, who is of the engineering branch of the
army, has been in charge of the Celilo Canal for a number of years. Mrs.
Saunders has a very large and valuable collection of Indian relics and
curios, and at the moment of my arrival was following with great
interest the progress of a State Highway cut immediately in front of her
door, which was uncovering, evidently in an old graveyard, some stone
mortars of unusual size and considerable antiquity. When Captain Winslow
was ready, we went down to the skiff, and pulled along to the first
lock. With Captain Saunders and a single helper working the machinery,
passing us down to the second lock and on out into the river was but the
matter of a few minutes.
Big Eddy must be rather a fearsome hole at high water, but below middle
stage there is not enough power behind its slow-heaving swirls to make
them troublesome. It was a great relief to have a competent river-man at
the paddle again, and my rather over-craned neck was not the least
beneficiary by the change. The narrows at Two-Mile were interesting
rather for what they might be than what they were. Beyond a lively
snaking about in the conflicting currents, it was an easy passage
through to the smooth water of the broadening river below. One or two
late salmon-wheels plashed eerily in the twilight as we ran past the
black cliffs, but fishing for the season was practically over weeks
before. We landed just above the steamer dock well before dark, beached
the skiff, stowed my outfit in the warehouse, and reached the hotel in
time to avoid an early evening shower. Captain Winslow had to dine early
in order to catch his train back to Big Eddy, but we had a mighty good
yarn withal.