him up to avenge the killing of his kinsmen. So the son grew very
strong, until he could pull up great fir trees as if they were weeds.
Then Walla Walla brothers challenged Young Chinook to wrestle. Speelyei
should judge the contest. He should cut off the heads of those who fell.
Secretly Speelyei advised Young Chinook's grandparents to throw oil on
the ground last. This they did. So Walla Walla brothers were thrown one
after another by Young Chinook, until four of them had fallen. Only the
youngest of them was left. His heart failed him, and he refused to
wrestle. Speelyei pronounced this sentence upon him: "You shall live,
but you shall no longer have power to freeze people." To Young Chinook,
he said: "You must blow only lightly, and you must blow first upon the
mountains, to warn people of your coming."
[Illustration: The Zigzag river in winter, south side of Mount Hood.]
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT G. M. WEISTER
The Dalles. This name, meaning literally flat stones, was given by the
early French-Canadian voyageurs to the twelve-mile section below Celilo,
where, the Columbia has cut through the level lava strata, forming a
channel in some places less than 200 feet wide and nearly 200 feet deep
at low water. At higher stages the river fills many lateral channels and
roars past many islands of its own carving.]
The last dawn of all opens upon the white man's era. On the Columbia,
recorded history is recent, but already epic. Its story is outside the
purpose of this volume. But it is worth while, in closing our brief
glance at the field, to note that this story has been true to its
setting. Rich in heroism and romance, it is perhaps the most typical, as
it is the latest, chapter in the development of the West. For this land
of the river, its quarter-million square miles stretching far northward
to Canada, and far eastward to the Yellowstone, built about with
colossal mountains, laced with splendid waterways, jeweled with
beautiful lakes, where upheaval and eruption, earthquake and glacier
have prepared a home for a great and happy population, has already been
the scene of a drama of curious political contradictions and remarkable
popular achievement.
[Illustration: The "Witch's Head," an Indian picture rock at the old
native village of Wishram, north side of the Columbia near Celilo Falls.
The Indians believe that if an unfaithful wife passes this rock, its
eyes follow her with mute accusation.]
[Illustration: Village of Indian Tepees, Umatilla Reservation, near
Pendleton, Oregon. Many of these Indians are rich landowners, but they
prefer tents to houses.]
The Columbia River basin, alone of all the territories which the United
States has added to its original area, was neither bought with money nor
annexed by war. Its acquisition was a triumph of the American pioneer.
Many nations looked with longing to this Northwest, but it fell a prize
to the nation that neglected it. Spain and Russia wished to own it.
Great Britain claimed and practically held it. The United States
ignored it. For nearly half a century after the discovery of the river
by a Yankee ship captain, Robert Gray, in 1792, and its exploration by
Jefferson's expedition under Lewis and Clark, in 1805, its ownership was
in question. For several decades after an American merchant, John Jacob
Astor, had established the first unsuccessful trading post, in 1811, the
country was actually ruled by the British through a private corporation.
The magic circle drawn about it by the Hudson's Bay Company seemed
impenetrable. Held nominally by the American and British governments in
joint occupancy, it was in fact left to the halfbreed servants of a
foreign monopoly that sought to hold an empire for its fur trade, and to
exclude settlers because their farms would interfere with its beaver
traps. Congress deemed the region worthless.
[Illustration: Mount Adams, seen from Eagle Peak in the Rainier National
Park. View shows some of the largest earth-folds in the Cascade Range,
with the great canyon of the Cowlitz, one of the tributaries of the
Columbia River. Elevation of camera 6,000 feet.]
[Illustration: A clearing in the forest. Mount Hood from Sandy,
twenty-five miles west of the peak.]
But while sleepy diplomacy played its game of chess between Washington
and London, the issue was joined, the title cleared and possession taken
by a breed of men to whom the United States owes more than it can ever
pay. From far east came the thin vanguard of civilization which, for a
century after the old French and Indian war, pushed our boundaries
resistlessly westward. It had seized the "dark and bloody ground" of
Kentucky. It had held the Ohio valley for the young republic during the
Revolution. It had built states from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi.
And now, dragging its wagons across the plains and mountains, it burst,
sun-browned and half-starved, into Oregon. Missionaries and traders,
farmers, politicians and speculators, it was part of that army of
restless spirits who, always seeing visions of more fertile lands and
rising cities beyond, stayed and long in no place, until at last they
found their way barred by the Pacific, and therefore stayed to build the
commonwealths of Oregon, Washington and Idaho.
[Illustration: An Indian Madonna and Child. Umatilla Reservation.]
[Illustration: Finished portion of Canal at Celilo, which the Government
is building around Tumwater Falls and The Dalles.]
The arena of their peaceful contest was worthy of their daring. "'A land
of old upheaven from the abyss,' a land of deepest deeps and highest
heights, of richest verdure here, and barest desolation there, of dense
forest on one side, and wide extended prairies on the other; a land of
contrasts, contrasts in contour, hues, productions, and history,"--thus
Professor Lyman describes the stage which the pioneers found set for
them.
The tremendous problems of its development, due to its topography, its
remoteness, its magnificent distances, and its lack of transportation,
demanded men of sturdiest fiber and intrepid leading. No pages of our
history tell a finer story of action and initiative than those which
enroll the names of McLoughlin, the great Company's autocratic governor,
not unfitly called "the father of Oregon," and Whitman, the martyr, with
the frontier leaders who fashioned the first ship of state launched in
the Northwest, and their contemporaries, the men who built the first
towns, roads, schools, mills, steamboats and railways.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT G. M. WEISTER
The grim sentinels of "the Wallula Gateway," huge basaltic pillars that
rise on the south bank of the river, where it crosses the
Washington-Oregon line. View looking south.]
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, KISER PHOTO CO.
Tumwater, the falls of the Columbia at Celilo; total drop, twenty feet
at low water. In Summer, when the snow on the Bitter Root and Rocky
Mountains is melting, the river rises often more than sixty feet.
Steamboats have then passed safely down. Wishram, an ancient Indian
fishing village, was on the north bank below the falls, and Indians may
often still be seen spearing salmon from the shores and islands here.]
Macaulay tells us that a people who are not proud of their forebears
will never deserve the pride of their descendants. The makers of Old
Oregon included as fair a proportion of patriots and heroes as the
immigrants of the Mayflower. We who journey up or down the Columbia in a
luxurious steamer, or ride in a train _de luxe_ along its banks, are the
heirs of their achievement. Honor to the dirt-tanned ox-drivers who
seized for themselves and us this empire of the river and its guardian
snow-peaks!
A lordly river, broad and deep,
With mountains for its neighbors, and in view
Of distant mountains and their snowy tops.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT. G. M. WEISTER
Summit of Mount Hood, viewed from western end of the ridge, showing
north side of the peak in July.]
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, KISER PHOTO CO.
Columbia River and Mt. Hood, seen from White Salmon, Washington.
"Beloved mountain, I
Thy worshiper, as thou the sun's, each morn
My dawn, before the dawn, receive from thee;
And think, as thy rose-tinted peak I see,
That thou wert great when Homer was not born,
And ere thou change all human song shall die."--Helen Hunt Jackson.]
[Illustration: North side of Mount Hood, from ridge several miles west
of Cloud Cap Inn. View shows gorges cut by the glacier-fed streams.
Cooper Spur is on left sky line. Barret Spur is the great ridge on
right, with Ladd glacier canyon beyond. Coe glacier is in center.]
II.
THE MOUNTAINS.
Silent and calm, have you e'er scaled the height
Of some lone mountain peak, in heaven's sight?
--_Victor Hugo._
There stood Mount Hood in all the glory of the alpen
glow, looming immensely high, beaming with
intelligence. It seemed neither near nor far.... The
whole mountain appeared as one glorious manifestation
of divine power, enthusiastic and benevolent, glowing
like a countenance with ineffable repose and beauty,
before which we could only gaze with devout and lowly
admiration.--_John Muir._
[Illustration: Winter on Mount Hood. The roof of the club house of the
Portland Snow-shoe Club is seen over the ridge.]
FROM the heights which back the city of Portland on the west, one may
have a view that is justly famous among the fairest prospects in
America. Below him lies the restless city, busy with its commerce.
Winding up from the south comes the Willamette, its fine valley narrowed
here by the hills, where the river forms Portland's harbor, and is lined
on either side with mills and shipping. Ten miles beyond, the Columbia
flows down from its canyon on the east, and turns northward, an
expanding waterway for great vessels, to its broad pass through the
Coast Range. In every direction, city and country, farm and forest,
valley and mountain, stretches a noble perspective. From the wide rivers
and their shining borders, almost at sea level, the scene arises,
terrace upon terrace, to the encircling hills, and spreads across range
after range to the summits of the great Cascades.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT G. M. WEISTER
Watching the climbers from the plaza at Cloud Cap Inn, northeast side of
Mount Hood. Immediately in front, Eliot glacier is seen, dropping into
its canyon on the right. On the left is Cooper Spur, from which a sharp
ascent leads to the summit of the peak.]
Dominating all are the snow-peaks, august sentinels upon the horizon. On
a clear day, the long line of them begins far down in central Oregon,
and numbers six snowy domes. But any average day includes in its glory
the three nearest, Hood, Adams, and St. Helens. Spirit-like, they loom
above the soft Oregon haze, their glaciers signaling from peak to peak,
and their shining summits bidding the sordid world below to look upward.
[Illustration: Mount Hood, elevation 11,225 feet]
Nature has painted canvases more colorful, but none more perfect in its
strength and rest. Here is no flare of the desert, none of the
flamboyant, terrible beauty of the Grand Canyon. It is a land of warm
ocean winds and cherishing sunshine, where the emeralds and jades of the
valleys quickly give place to the bluer greens of evergreen forests that
cover the hill country; and these, in turn, as distance grows, shade
into the lavenders and grays of the successive ranges. The white peaks
complete the picture with its most characteristic note. They give it
distinction.
[Illustration: Lower end of Eliot glacier, seen from Cooper Spur, and
showing the lateral moraines which this receding glacier has built in
recent years.]
[Illustration: Snout of Eliot glacier, its V-shaped ice front heavily
covered with morainal debris.]
Such a panorama justifies Ruskin's bold assertion: "Mountains are the
beginning and end of all natural scenery." Without its mountains, the
view from Council Crest would be as uninteresting as that from any tower
in any prairie city. But all mountains are not alike. In beginning our
journey to the three great snow-peaks which we have viewed from Portland
heights, it is well to define, if we may, the special character of our
Northwestern scene. We sometimes hear the Cascade district praised as
"the American Switzerland." Such a comparison does injustice alike to
our mountains and to the Alps. As a wild, magnificent sea of ice-covered
mountain tops, the Alps have no parallel in America. As a far-reaching
system of splendid lofty ranges clothed in the green of dense forests
and surmounted by towering, isolated summits of snowy volcanoes, the
Cascades are wholly without their equal in Europe. This is the testimony
of famous travelers and alpinists, among them Ambassador Bryce, who has
written of our Northwestern mountain scenery:
We have nothing more beautiful in Switzerland or
Tyrol, in Norway or in the Pyrenees. The combination
of ice scenery with woodland scenery of the grandest
type is to be found nowhere in the Old World, unless
it be in the Himalayas, and, so far as we know,
nowhere else on the American continent.
[Illustration: Cone of Mount Hood, seen from Cooper Spur on northwest
side. A popular route to the summit leads along this ridge of volcanic
scoriæ and up the steep snow slope above.]
[Illustration: Cloud Cap Inn, north side of Mount Hood. Elevation 5,900
feet.]
In his celebrated chapter of the "Modern Painters" which describes the
sculpture of the mountains, Ruskin draws a picture of the Alps that at
once sets them apart from the Cascades:
The longer I stayed among the Alps, the more I was
struck by their being a vast plateau, upon which
nearly all the highest peaks stood like children set
upon a table, removed far back from the edge, as if
for fear of their falling. The most majestic scenes
are produced by one of the great peaks having
apparently walked to the edge of the table to look
over, and thus showing itself suddenly above the
valley in its full height. But the raised table is
always intelligibly in existence, even in these
exceptional cases; and for the most part, the great
peaks are not allowed to come to the edge of it, but
remain far withdrawn, surrounded by comparatively
level fields of mountain, over which the lapping
sheets of glacier writhe and flow. The result is the
division of Switzerland into an upper and lower
mountain world; the lower world consisting of rich
valleys, the upper world, reached after the first
steep banks of 3,000 to 4,000 feet have been
surmounted, consisting of comparatively level but most
desolate tracts, half covered by glacier, and
stretching to the feet of the true pinnacles of the
chain.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, G. M. WEISTER
Portland's White Sentinel, Mount Hood. Telephoto view from City Park,
showing a portion of the city, with modern buildings and smoke of
factories.]
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, G. M. WEISTER
Ice cascade on Eliot glacier, Mount Hood.]
Nothing of this in the Cascades! Instead, we have fold upon fold of the
earth-crust, separated by valleys of great depth. The ranges rise from
levels but little above the sea. For example, between Portland and
Umatilla, although they are separated by the mountains of greatest
actual elevation in the United States, there is a difference of less
than two hundred and fifty feet, Umatilla, east of the Cascades, being
only two hundred and ninety-four feet above tide. Trout Lake, lying
below Mount Adams, at the head of one of the great intermountain
valleys, has an elevation of less than two thousand feet.
[Illustration: Portland Snow-shoe Club members on Eliot glacier in
winter.]
Thus, instead of the Northwestern snow-peaks being set far back upon a
general upland and hidden away behind lesser mountains, to be seen only
after one has reached the plateau, thousands of feet above sea level,
they actually rise either from comparatively low peneplanes on one side
of the Cascades, as in the case of St. Helens, or from the summit of one
of the narrow, lofty ridges, as do Hood and Adams. But in either case,
the full elevation is seen near at hand and from many directions--an
elevation, therefore, greater and more impressive than that of most of
the celebrated Alpine summits.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, G. M. WEISTER
Snow-bridge over great crevasse, near head of Eliot glacier.]
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, G. M. WEISTER
Coasting down east side of Mount Hood, above Cooper Spur. Mount Adams in
distance.]
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, G. M. WEISTER
Mount Hood from the hills south of The Dalles, showing the comparatively
timberless country east of the Cascades. Compare this treeless region,
as well as the profile of Mount Hood here shown, with the view from
Larch Mountain.]
Famous as is the valley of Chamonix, and noteworthy as are the glaciers
to which it gives close access, its views of Mont Blanc are
disappointing. Not until the visitor has scaled one of the neighboring
_aiguilles_, can he command a satisfactory outlook toward the Monarch of
the Alps. And nowhere in Switzerland do I recall a picture of such
memorable splendor as greets the traveler from the Columbia, journeying
either southward, up the Hood River Valley toward Mount Hood, or
northward, up the White Salmon Valley toward Trout Lake and Mount Adams.
Here is unrolled a wealth of fertile lowlands, surrounded by lofty
ranges made beautiful by their deep forests and rising to grandeur in
their snow-peaks.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, L. J. HICKS
Mount Hood, seen from Larch Mountain, on the Columbia River. View
looking southeast across the heavily forested ranges of the Cascades to
the deep canyons below Ladd and Sandy glaciers.]
[Illustration: Butterfly on the summit of Mount Hood.]
Leaving the canyon of the Columbia, in either direction the road follows
swift torrents of white glacial water that tell of a source far above.
It crosses a famous valley, among its orchards and hayfields, but always
in view of the dark blue mountains and of the snow-covered volcanoes
that rise before and behind, their glaciers shining like polished steel
in the sunlight. So the visitor reaches the foot of his mountain. Losing
sight of it for a time, he follows long avenues of stately trees as he
climbs the benches. In a few hours he stands upon a barren shoulder of
the peak, at timber line. A new world confronts him. The glaciers reach
their icy arms to him from the summit, and he breathes the winds that
sweep down from their fields of perennial snow.
[Illustration: Members of Portland Snow-shoe Club on way to Mount Hood
in winter, and at their club house, near Cloud Cap Inn.]
[Illustration: Fumarole, or gas vent, near Crater Rock.]
It is all very different from Switzerland, this quick ascent from
bending orchards and forested hills to a mighty peak standing white and
beautiful in its loneliness. But it is so wonderful that Americans who
love the heights can no longer neglect it, and each year increasing
numbers are discovering that here in the Northwest is mountain scenery
worth traveling far to see, with very noble mountains to climb, true
glaciers to explore, and the widest views of grandeur and interest to
enjoy. Such sport combines recreation and inspiration.
[Illustration: Looking across the head of Eliot glacier from near the
summit of Mount Hood.]
The traveler from Portland to either Mount Hood or Mount Adams may go by
rail or steamer to Hood River, Oregon, or White Salmon, Washington.
These towns are on opposite banks of the Columbia at its point of
greatest beauty. Thence he will journey by automobile or stage up the
corresponding valley to the snow-peak at its head. If he is bound for
Mount Hood his thirty-mile ride will bring him to a charming mountain
hotel, Cloud Cap Inn, placed six thousand feet above the sea, on a ridge
overlooking Eliot glacier, Hood's finest ice stream.
[Illustration: Mount Hood at night, seen from Cloud Cap Inn. This view
is from a negative exposed from nine o'clock until midnight.]
If Mount Adams be his destination, a ride of similar length from White
Salmon will bring him merely to the foot of the mountain. The stages
run only to Guler, on Trout Lake, and to Glenwood. Each of these
villages has a comfortable country hotel which may be made the base for
fishing and hunting in the neighborhood. Each is about twelve miles from
the snow-line. At either place, guides, horses and supplies may be had
for the trip to the mountain. Glenwood is nearer to the famous
Hellroaring Canyon and the glaciers of the southeast side. Guler is a
favorite point of departure for the south slope and for the usual route
to the summit.
Another popular starting point for Mount Adams is Goldendale, reached by
a branch of the North Bank railway from Lyle on the Columbia. This route
also leads to the fine park district on the southeastern slope, and it
has a special attraction, as it skirts the remarkable canyon of the
Klickitat River. Many parties also journey to the mountain from North
Yakima and other towns on the Northern Pacific railway. Hitherto, all
such travel from either north or south has meant a trip on foot or
horseback over interesting mountain trails, and has involved the
necessity of packing in camp equipment and supplies. During the present
summer, a hotel is to be erected a short distance from the end of Mazama
glacier, at an altitude of about sixty-five hundred feet, overlooking
Hellroaring Canyon on one side, and on the other a delightful region of
mountain tarns, waterfalls and alpine flower meadows. Its verandas will
command the Mazama and Klickitat glaciers, and an easy route will lead
to the summit. With practicable roads from Goldendale and Glenwood, it
should draw hosts of lovers of scenery and climbing, and aid in making
this great mountain as well known as it deserves to be.
[Illustration: Climbing Mount Hood, with ropes anchored on the summit
and extending down on east and south faces of the peak.]
[Illustration: North side of Mount Hood, seen from moraine of Coe
glacier. This glacier flows down from the summit, where its snow-field
adjoins that of Eliot glacier (left). West of the Coe, the Ladd glacier
is seen, separated from the former by Pulpit Rock, the big crag in the
middle distance, and Barrett Spur, the high ridge on the right.]
Visitors going to Mount Hood from Portland have choice of a second very
attractive hotel base in Government Camp, on the south slope at an
altitude of thirty-nine hundred feet. This is reached by automobiles
from the city, over a fair road that will soon be a good road, thanks
to the Portland Automobile Club. The mountain portion of this highway is
the historic Barlow road, opened in 1845, the first wagon road
constructed across the Cascades. As the motor climbs out of the Sandy
River valley, and grapples the steep moraines built by ancient
icefields, the traveler gets a very feeling reminder of the pluck of
Captain Barlow and his company of Oregon "immigrants" in forcing a way
across these rugged heights. But the beauty of the trip makes it well
worth while, and Government Camp gives access to a side of the peak that
should be visited by all who would know how the sun can shatter a big
mountain with his mighty tools of ice.
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT, G. M. WEISTER
Looking west on summit of Mount Hood, with Mazama Rock below.]
[Illustration: Summit of Mount Hood, from Mazama Rock, showing the
sun-cupped ice of midsummer.]
[Illustration: Mount Hood, seen from Sandy River canyon, six miles west
of snow line. This important picture begins with Barrett Spur and Ladd
glacier on the north sky line (left). On the northwest face of the peak
is the main Sandy glacier, its end divided by a ridge into two parts.
The forested "plowshare" projecting into the canyon is Yocum Ridge.
South of it the south branch of the Sandy river flows down from a
smaller glacier called the Little Sandy, or Reid. The broad bottom of
this canyon and the scored cliffs on its sides show that it was formerly
occupied by the glacier.]