“Now I know da-da-da-da-da—Now I know the reason why—Da-da-da-da——da-da-da-daah—Now I know, yes, now I know!Da-da-da, my heart....”
Blackmore frowned more deeply as the treble wail floated back to him, and then broke into the next “da-da” with a sudden growl. “I say, young feller,” he roared, slapping sharply into the quieting water with his paddle blade; “if you know sogeeslymuch, I’m wondering if you’d mind loosening up on one or two things that have gotmebuffaloed. First place, do I look like a man that had took a shot of hop?” “Not at all, sir,” quavered Roos, who seemed rather fearful of an impending call-down. “I don’t, huh?” went on the growl. “Then please tell me why what I knows is a ten-mile-an-hour current looks to me like slack water, and why I think I hear a roar coming round the next bend.” “But the waterisslack,” protested Roos, “and I’ve heard that roar for five minutesmyself. Just another rapid, isn’t it? The water always....”
“Rot!” roared the veteran. “There ain’t no fall with a rip-raring thunder like that ’tween Yellow Creek and Death Rapids. Rot, I tell you! I must ha’ been doped after all.”
Nevertheless, when that ground-shaking rumble assailed us in a raw, rough wave of savage sound as we pulled round the bend, Blackmore was not sufficiently confident of his “dope theory” to care to get any nearer to it without a preliminary reconnaissance. Landing a hundred yards above where a white “eyelash” of up-flipped water showed above a line of big rocks, we clambered down along the right bank on foot. Presently all that had occurred was written clear for one who knew the way of a slide with a river, and the way of a river with a slide, to read as on the page of a book.
“A new rapid, and a whale at that!” gasped Blackmore in astonishment; “the first one that’s ever formed on the Columbia in my time!”
The amazing thing that had happened was this: Sometime in the spring, a landslide of enormous size, doubtless started by an avalanche of snow far up in the Selkirks, had ripped the whole side of a mountain out and come down all the way across the river. As the pines were hurledbackwardfor a couple of hundred feet above the river on the right or Rocky Mountain bank, it seemed reasonable to believe that the dam formed had averaged considerably more than that in height. As this would have backed up the river forat least ten or twelve miles, it is probable that the lake formed must have been rising for a number of days before it flowed over the top of the barrier and began to sluice it away. On an incalculably larger scale, it was just the sort of thing we had heard and seen happening on Trident Creek, opposite our Kinbasket Lake camp. Not the least remarkable thing in connection with the stupendous convulsion was the fact that a large creek was flowing directly down the great gash torn out by the slide and emptying right into the rapid which was left when the dam had been washed away. Blackmore was quite positive that there had been no creek at this point the last time he was there. It seemed reasonable to suppose, therefore, that the slide, in removing a considerable section of mountain wall, had opened a new line of drainage for some little valley in the high Selkirks.
It was the great, rough fragments of cliff and native rock left after the earth had been sluiced out of the dam that remained to form the unexpected rapid which now confronted us. They had not yet been worn smooth like the rest of the river boulders, and it was this fact, doubtless, that gave the cascade tumbling through and over them such a raw, raucous roar.
The solution of the mystery of the appearance of the rapid was only an incident compared with the problem of how to pass it. There was a comparatively straight channel, but there was no possibility that the boat could live in the huge rollers that billowed down the middle of it. Just to the right of the middle there was a smoother chute which looked better—provided the boat could be kept to it. Blackmore said that it looked like too much of a risk, and decided to try to line down the right bank—the one on which we had landed. As the river walls were too steep and broken to allow any of the outfit to be portaged, the boat would have to go through loaded.
A big uprooted pine tree, extending out fifty feet over the river and with its under limbs swept by the water, seemed likely to prove our worst difficulty, and I am inclined to believe it would have held us up in the end, even after we reached it. As things turned out, however, it troubled us not a whit, for the boat never got down that far. Right at the head of the rapid her bows jammed between two submerged boulders about ten feet from the bank, and there she stuck. As it was quickly evident that it was out of the question to lift her on through, it now became a problem of working her back up-stream out of the jaws that held her. But with the full force of the current driving her tighter between the rocks, she now refused to budge even in the direction from which she had come.
As I look back on it now, the fifteen minutes Andy and I, mid-waist deep in the icy water, spent trying to work that hulking red boat loose so that Blackmore could haul her back into quiet water for a fresh start takes pride of place as the most miserable interval of the whole trip. After Andy’s experience in Surprise Rapids, neither of us was inclined to throw his whole weight into a lift that might leave him overbalanced when the boat was swept out of his reach. And so we pulled and hauled and cursed (I should hate to haveto record all we said about the ancestry of the river, the boat, and the two rocks that held the boat), while the tentacles of the cold clutched deeper with every passing minute. Roos, sitting on a pine stump and whittling, furnished no help but some slight diversion. When he started singing “Old Green River” just after I had slipped and soused my head in the current, I stopped tugging at the boat for long enough to wade out and shy a stone at him. “Green River”[1]was all right in its place, but its place was swirling against theinsideof the ribs, not theoutside. Roos had the cheek to pick the rock up out of his lap and heave it back at me—but with an aim less certain than my own. A few minutes later he called out to Blackmore to ask if this new rapid had a name, adding that if it had not, he would like to do his employer, Mr. Chester, the honour of naming it after him. Blackmore relaxed his strain on the line for a moment to roar back that no rapid was ever named after a man unless he had been “drownded” in it. “We’ll name this one after you if you’ll do the needful,” he growled as an afterthought, throwing his weight again onto his line. That tickled Andy and me so mightily that we gave a prodigious heave in all recklessness of consequences, and off she came. Gaining the bank with little trouble, we joined Blackmore and helped him haul her up by line into slower water.
[1]For the benefit of those who have forgotten, or may never have known, I will state that “Green River” was the name of a brand of whisky consumed by ancient Americans with considerable gusto. L. R. F.
[1]For the benefit of those who have forgotten, or may never have known, I will state that “Green River” was the name of a brand of whisky consumed by ancient Americans with considerable gusto. L. R. F.
“No good lining,” the “Skipper” announced decidedly, as we sat down to rest for a spell; “I’m going to drive her straight through.” Chilled, weary and dead-beat generally, I was in a state of mind that would have welcomed jumping into the rapid with a stone tied to my neck rather than go back to the half-submerged wading and lifting. Roos said he hated to risk his camera, and so would try to crawl with it over the cliff and rejoin us below the rapid. Andy said he was quite game to pull his oar for a run if we had to, but that he would first like to try lining down the opposite bank. He thought we could make itthere, and he had just a bit of a doubt about what might happen in mid-river. That was reasonable enough, and Blackmore readily consented to try the other side.
OUR WETTEST CAMP AT KINBASKET LAKE (above)THE OLD FERRY TOWER ABOVE CANOE RIVER (below)
WHERE WE TIED UP AT KINBASKET LAKE (above)THE BRIDGE WHICH THE COLUMBIA CARRIED A HUNDRED MILES AND PLACED ACROSS ANOTHER STREAM (center)LINING DOWN TO THE HEAD OF DEATH RAPIDS (below)
Almost at once it appeared that we had landed in the same trouble as on the right bank. Directly off the mouth of the stream that came down from the slide the bow of the boat was caught and held between two submerged rocks, defying our every attempt to lift it over. Blackmore was becoming impatient again, and was just ready to give up and run, when Andy, with the aid of a young tree-trunk used as a lever, rolled one of the boulders aside and cleared the way. Five minutes later we had completed lining down and were pushing off for the final run to the Ferry. No more “mystery rapids” cropped up to disturb our voyage, and, pulling in deep, swift water, we made the next five miles in twenty-five minutes. A part of the distance was through the rocky-walled Red Canyon, one of the grandest scenic bits of the Bend. At one point Blackmore showed us a sheer-sided rock island, on which he said he had once found the graves of two white men, with an inscription so worn as to be indecipherable. He thought they were probably those of miners lost during the Cariboo gold-field excitement of the middle of the last century, or perhaps even those of Hudson Bayvoyageursof a century or more back. There were many unidentified graves all the way round the Bend, he said.
The river walls fell back a bit on both sides as we neared our destination, and the low-hanging western sun had found a gap in the Selkirks through which it was pouring its level rays to flood with a rich amber light the low wooded benches at the abandoned crossing. The old Ferry-tower reared itself upward like the Statue of Liberty, bathing its head in the golden light of the expiring day. Steering for it as to a beacon, Blackmore beached the boat on a gravel bar flanking an eddy almost directly under the rusting cable. We would cross later to spend the night in a trapper’s cabin on the opposite bank, he said; as there was sure to be a shovel or two in the old ferry shacks, he had come there at once so as to get down to business without delay.
Right then and there, before we left the boat, I did a thing which I have been greatly gratified that I did do—right then and there. I drew my companions close to me and assured them that I had made up my mind to divide the spoils with them. Blackmore and Andy should have a gallon apiece, and Roos a quart. (I scaled down the latter’s share sharply, partly because he had thrown that stone back at me, and the nerve of it rankled, and partly—I must confess—outof “professional jealousy.” “Stars” and “Directors” never do hit off.) The rest I would retain and divide with Captain Armstrong as agreed. I did not tell them that I had high hopes that Armstrong would soften in the end and let me keep it all to take home. After all of them (including Roos) had wrung my hand with gratitude, we set to work, each in his own way.
The spot was readily located the moment we took the compass bearing. Pacing off was quite unnecessary. It was in the angle of a V-shaped outcrop of bedrock, where a man who knew about what was there could feel his way and claw up the treasure in the dark. It was an “inevitable” hiding place, just as Gibraltar is an inevitable fortress and Manhattan an inevitable metropolis. Yes, we each went to work in our own way. Blackmore and Andy found a couple of rusty shovels and went to digging; Roos climbed up into the old ferry basket to take a picture of them digging; I climbed up on the old shack to take a picture of Roos taking a picture of them digging. Nothing was omitted calculated to preserve historical accuracy. I had been in Baalbek just before the war when a German archæological mission had inaugurated excavation for Phœnician antiquities, and so was sapient in all that an occasion of the kind required.
The picture cycle complete, I strolled over to where Andy and Blackmore were making the dirt fly like a pair of Airedales digging out a badger. The ground was soft, they said, leaning on their shovels; it ought to be only the matter of minutes now. The “showings” were good. They had already unearthed aglove, a tin cup and a fragment of barrel iron. “Gorgeous stroke of luck for us that chap, K——, hit the stuff so hard up at Kinbasket,” I murmured ecstatically. Blackmore started and straightened up like a man hit with a steel bullet. “What was that name again?” he gasped. “K——,” I replied wonderingly; “some kind of a Swede, I believe Armstrong said. But what difference does his name make as long as....”
Blackmore tossed his shovel out of the hole and climbed stiffly up after it before he replied. When he spoke it was in a voice thin and trailing, as though draggled by the Weariness of the Ages. “Difference, boy! All the difference between hell and happiness. About two years ago K—— dropped out of sight from Revelstoke, and it was only known he had gone somewhere on the Bend. A week after he returned he died in the hospital of the ‘D. T’s.’”
Roos (perhaps because he had the least to lose by the disaster) was the only one who had the strength to speak. It seemed that he had studied Latin in the high school. “Sic transit gloria spiritum frumenti,” was what he said. Never in all the voyage did he speak so much to the point.
Blackmore frowned at him gloomily as the mystic words were solemnly pronounced. “Young feller,” he growled, “I don’t savvy what the last part of that drug-store lingo you’re spitting means; but you’re dead right about the first part.Sickis sure the word.”
We spent the night in an empty trapper’s cabin across the river. Charity forbids that I lift the curtain of the house of mourning.
Boat Encampment to Revelstoke
We were now close to the historic Boat Encampment, where at last our course would join with that followed by the earlyvoyageursand explorers. No point in the whole length of the Columbia, not even Astoria, has associations more calculated to stir the imagination than this tiny patch of silt-covered overflow flat which has been formed by the erosive action of three torrential rivers tearing at the hearts of three great mountain ranges. Sand and soil of the Rockies, Selkirks and the Gold Range, carried by the Columbia, Canoe and Wood rivers, meet and mingle to form the remarkable halting place, where the east and westbound pioneering traffic of a century stopped to gather breath for the next stage of its journey.
Before pushing off from the Ferry on the morning of October seventh I dug out from my luggage a copy of a report written in 1881 by Lieutenant Thomas W. Symons, U. S. A., on the navigation of the Upper Columbia. This was chiefly concerned with that part of the river between the International Boundary and the mouth of the Snake, but Lieutenant Symons had made a long and exhaustive study of the whole Columbia Basin, and his geographical description of the three rivers which unite at Boat Encampment is sosuccinct and yet so comprehensive that I am impelled to make a liberal quotation from it here. Of the great assistance I had from Lieutenant Symons’ invaluable report when I came to the passage of that part of the river covered by his remarkable voyage of forty years ago I shall write later.
“Amid the universal gloom and midnight silence of the north, a little above the fifty-second parallel of latitude, seemingly surrounded on all sides by cloud-piercing snow-clad mountains, and nestled down among the lower and nearer cedar-mantled hills, there lies a narrow valley where three streams meet and blend their waters, one coming from the southeast, one from the northwest, and one from the east. The principal one of these streams is the one from the southeast ... and is the headwater stream, and bears the name of the Columbia.“The northwestern stream is the extreme northern branch of the Columbia, rising beyond the fifty-third parallel of latitude, and is known among the traders andvoyageursas Canoe River, from the excellence of the barks obtained on its banks for canoe building. This is a small river, forty yards wide at its mouth, flowing through a densely timbered valley in which the trees overhang the stream to such an extent as almost to shut it out from the light of heaven....“Portage River, the third of the trio of streams, the smallest and the most remarkable of them, is the one which enters from the east. It has its source in the very heart of the Rocky Mountains and flows through a tremendous cleft in the main range between two of its loftiest peaks, Mounts Brown and Hooker. Just underneath these giant mountains, on the divide known as ‘The Height of Land,’ lie two small lakes, each about thirty yards in diameter, and which are only a few yards from each other. One has its outlet to thewest, Portage River, flowing to the Columbia; the other has its outlet to the east, Whirlpool River, a branch of the Athabaska, which joins the Mackenzie and flows to the Arctic Ocean.“The elevated valley in which these lakes are situated is called ‘The Committee’s Punchbowl,’ and the nabobs of the fur trade always treated their companions to a bucket of punch when this point was reached, if they had the ingredients from which to make it, and they usually had.“The pass across the mountains by the Portage River, ‘The Committee’s Punchbowl’ and Whirlpool River, known as the Athabaska Pass, was for many years the route of the British fur traders in going from one side of the Rocky Mountains to the other. This route is far from being an easy one, and a description of the difficulties, dangers and discomforts of a trip over it will certainly deter any one from making the journey for pleasure. A great part of the way the traveller has to wade up to his middle in the icy waters of Portage River. The journey had to be made in the spring before the summer thaws and rains set in, or in the autumn after severe cold weather had locked up the mountain drainage. During the summer the stream becomes an impetuous impassable mountain torrent.”
“Amid the universal gloom and midnight silence of the north, a little above the fifty-second parallel of latitude, seemingly surrounded on all sides by cloud-piercing snow-clad mountains, and nestled down among the lower and nearer cedar-mantled hills, there lies a narrow valley where three streams meet and blend their waters, one coming from the southeast, one from the northwest, and one from the east. The principal one of these streams is the one from the southeast ... and is the headwater stream, and bears the name of the Columbia.
“The northwestern stream is the extreme northern branch of the Columbia, rising beyond the fifty-third parallel of latitude, and is known among the traders andvoyageursas Canoe River, from the excellence of the barks obtained on its banks for canoe building. This is a small river, forty yards wide at its mouth, flowing through a densely timbered valley in which the trees overhang the stream to such an extent as almost to shut it out from the light of heaven....
“Portage River, the third of the trio of streams, the smallest and the most remarkable of them, is the one which enters from the east. It has its source in the very heart of the Rocky Mountains and flows through a tremendous cleft in the main range between two of its loftiest peaks, Mounts Brown and Hooker. Just underneath these giant mountains, on the divide known as ‘The Height of Land,’ lie two small lakes, each about thirty yards in diameter, and which are only a few yards from each other. One has its outlet to thewest, Portage River, flowing to the Columbia; the other has its outlet to the east, Whirlpool River, a branch of the Athabaska, which joins the Mackenzie and flows to the Arctic Ocean.
“The elevated valley in which these lakes are situated is called ‘The Committee’s Punchbowl,’ and the nabobs of the fur trade always treated their companions to a bucket of punch when this point was reached, if they had the ingredients from which to make it, and they usually had.
“The pass across the mountains by the Portage River, ‘The Committee’s Punchbowl’ and Whirlpool River, known as the Athabaska Pass, was for many years the route of the British fur traders in going from one side of the Rocky Mountains to the other. This route is far from being an easy one, and a description of the difficulties, dangers and discomforts of a trip over it will certainly deter any one from making the journey for pleasure. A great part of the way the traveller has to wade up to his middle in the icy waters of Portage River. The journey had to be made in the spring before the summer thaws and rains set in, or in the autumn after severe cold weather had locked up the mountain drainage. During the summer the stream becomes an impetuous impassable mountain torrent.”
Considering that Lieutenant Symons had never traversed the Big Bend nor the Athabaska Pass, this description (which must have been written from his careful readings of the diaries of the oldvoyageurs) is a remarkable one. It is not only accurate topographically and geographically, but it has an “atmosphere” which one whodoesknow this region at first hand will be quick to appreciate. How and when the stream which he and the men before him called Portage River came to have its name changed to Wood, I have not been able to learn.
A mile below the Ferry Blackmore called my attention to a sharp wedge of brown-black mountain which appeared to form the left wall of the river a short way ahead. That lofty out-thrust of rock, he said, was the extreme northern end of the Selkirk Range. The Columbia, after receiving the waters of Wood and Canoe rivers, looped right round this cape and started flowing south, but with themassifof the Selkirks still forming its left bank. But the Rockies, which had formed its right bank all the way from its source, were now left behind, and their place was taken by the almost equally lofty Gold Range, which drained east to the Columbia and west to the Thompson.
The Columbia doubles back from north to south at an astonishingly sharp angle,—as river bends go, that is. Picture mentally Madison Square, New York. Now suppose the Columbia to flow north on Broadway, bend round the Flatiron Building (which represents the Selkirks), and then flow south down Fifth Avenue. Then East Twenty-Third Street would represent Wood River, and North Broadway, Canoe River. Now forget all the other streets and imagine the buildings of Madison Square as ten to twelve thousand-feet-high mountains. And there you have a model of the apex of the Big Bend of the Columbia.
A milky grey-green flood—straight glacier water if there ever was such—staining the clear stream of the Columbia marked the mouth of Wood River, and we pulled in for a brief glimpse in passing of what had once been Boat Encampment. I had broken my thermometer at Kinbasket Lake, so I could not take the temperatures here; but Wood River was beyond all doubt the coldest stream I had ever dabbled a finger-tip in. What the ascent to Athabaska Pass must have been may be judged from this description by Alexander Ross—one of the original Astoria party—written over a hundred years ago.
“Picture in the mind a dark, narrow defile, skirted on one side by a chain of inaccessible mountains rising to a great height, covered with snow, and slippery with ice from their tops down to the water’s edge; and on the other a beach comparatively low, but studded in an irregular manner with standing and fallen trees, rocks and ice, and full of driftwood, over which the torrent everywhere rushes with such irresistible impetuosity that very few would dare to adventure themselves in the stream. Let him again imagine a rapid river descending from some great height, filling up the whole channel between the rocky precipices on the south, and the no less dangerous barrier on the north; and, lastly, let him suppose that we were obliged to make our way on foot against such a torrent, by crossing and recrossing it in all its turns and windings, from morning till night, up to the middle in water, and he will understand the difficulties to be overcome in crossing the Rocky Mountains.”
“Picture in the mind a dark, narrow defile, skirted on one side by a chain of inaccessible mountains rising to a great height, covered with snow, and slippery with ice from their tops down to the water’s edge; and on the other a beach comparatively low, but studded in an irregular manner with standing and fallen trees, rocks and ice, and full of driftwood, over which the torrent everywhere rushes with such irresistible impetuosity that very few would dare to adventure themselves in the stream. Let him again imagine a rapid river descending from some great height, filling up the whole channel between the rocky precipices on the south, and the no less dangerous barrier on the north; and, lastly, let him suppose that we were obliged to make our way on foot against such a torrent, by crossing and recrossing it in all its turns and windings, from morning till night, up to the middle in water, and he will understand the difficulties to be overcome in crossing the Rocky Mountains.”
I have been able to learn nothing of records which would indicate that any of the early explorers orvoyageurstraversed that portion of the Columbia down which we had just come. David Thompson, who is credited with being the first man to travel the Columbia to the sea, although he spent one winter at the foot of Lake Windermere, appears to have made his down-river push-off from Boat Encampment. Mr. Basil G. Hamilton, of Invermere, sends me an authoritative note on this point, based on Thompson’s own journal. From this it appears that the great astronomer-explorer crossed the Rockies by Athabaska Pass and came down to what has since been known by the name of Boat Encampment in March, 1811. Having built himself a hut, he made preparation for a trip down the Columbia, by which he hoped to reach the mouth in advance of either of the Astor parties, and thus be able to lay claim to the whole region traversed in the name of the Northwest Company. He writes: “We first tried to get birch rind wherewith to make our trip to the Pacific Ocean, but without finding any even thick enough to make a dish. So we split out thin boards of cedar wood, about six inches in breadth, and built a canoe twenty-five feet in length and fifty inches in breadth, of the same form as a common canoe. As we had no nails we sewed the boards to each other round the timbers, making use of the fine roots of the pine which we split.”
This ingeniously constructed but precarious craft was finished on the sixteenth of April, and Thompson’s party embarked in it on the seventeenth. Mr. Hamilton doubts if this was the same craft in which they finally reached Astoria. From my own knowledge of what lies between I am very much inclined to agree with him. Certainly no boat of the construction described could have lasted even to the Arrow Lakes without much patching, and if a boat seeming on the lines of the original really reached the Pacific, it must have been many times renewed in the course ofthe voyage. I shall hardly need to add that Thompson’s remarkable journey, so far as its original object was concerned, was a failure. He reached the mouth of the Columbia well in advance of Astor’s land party, but only to find the New Yorker fur-trader’s expedition by way of Cape Horn and Hawaii already in occupation.
Boat Encampment of to-day is neither picturesque nor interesting; indeed, there are several camp-sites at the Bend that one would choose in preference to that rather damp patch of brush-covered, treeless clearing. All that I found in the way of relics of the past were some huge cedar stumps, almost covered with silt, and the remains of a demolishedbatteau. I salved a crude oar-lock from the latter to carry as a mascot for my down-river trip. As a mascot it served me very well, everything considered; though itdidget me in rather bad once when I tried to use it for an oar-lock.
Before the sparkling jade-green stream of the Columbia had entirely quenched the milky flow of Wood River, the chocolate-brown torrent of Canoe River came pouring in to mess things up anew. The swift northern affluent, greatly swelled by the recent rains, was in flood, and at the moment appeared to be discharging a flow almost if not quite equal to that of the main river. For a considerable distance the waters of the right side of the augmented river retained their rich cinnamon tint, and it was not until a brisk stretch of rapid a mile below the Bend got in its cocktail-shaker action that the two streams became thoroughly blended. Then the former crystalline clearness of the Columbia was a thing of the past. It was still far from being a muddy river. There was still more of green than of brown in its waters, but they were dully translucent where they had been brilliantly transparent. Not until the hundred-mile-long settling-basin of the Arrow Lakes allowed the sediment to deposit did the old emerald-bright sparkle come back again.
A couple of quick rifle shots from the left bank set the echoes ringing just after we had passed Canoe River, and Blackmore turned in to where a man and dog were standing in front of an extremely picturesquely located log cabin. It proved to be a French-Canadian half-breed trapper called Alphonse Edmunds. His interest in us was purely social, and after a five minutes’ yarn we pulled on. Blackmore said the chap lived in Golden, and that to avoid the dreaded run down through Surprise and Kinbasket rapids, he was in the habit of going a couple of hundred miles by the C. P. R. to Kamloops, thence north for a hundred miles or more by the Canadian Northern, thence by packtrain a considerable distance over the divide to the head of Canoe River, and finally down the latter by boat to the Bend, where he did his winter trapping. This was about four times the distance as by the direct route down the Columbia, and probably at least quadrupled time and expense. It threw an illuminative side-light on the way some of the natives regarded the upper half of the Big Bend.
The river was deeper now, but still plugged along at near to the ten-miles-an-hour it had averaged from the foot of Kinbasket Rapids. As the western slopesof the Selkirks were considerably more extensive than the eastern, the drainage to the Columbia from that side was proportionately greater. Cascades and cataracts came tumbling in every few hundred yards, and every mile or two, from one side or the other, a considerable creek would pour down over its spreading boulder “fan.” We landed at twelve-thirty and cooked our lunch on the stove of a perfect beauty of a trapper’s cabin near the mouth of Mica Creek. The trapper had already begun getting in his winter grub, but was away at the moment. The whole place was as clean as a Dutch kitchen. A recent shift of channel by the fickle-minded Mica Creek had undermined almost to the door of this snug little home, and Andy reckoned it would go down river on the next spring rise.
TRAPPER’S CABIN BEING UNDERMINED BY STREAM (left)THE CAMP ABOVE TWELVE-MILE (right)
LANDING AT SUNSET ABOVE CANOE RIVER (above)ANDY AND BLACKMORE SWINGING THE BOAT INTO THE HEAD OF ROCK SLIDE RAPIDS (centre)THE BIG ROLLERS, FROM 15 TO 20 FEET FROM HOLLOW TO CREST, AT HEAD OF DEATH RAPIDS (below)
We ran the next eighteen miles in less than two hours, tying up for the night at a well-built Government cabin three miles below Big Mouth Creek. It was occupied for the winter by a Swede trapper named Johnston. He was out running his trap-lines when we arrived, but came back in time to be our guest for dinner. He made one rather important contribution to the menu—a “mulligan,” thepièce de résistanceof which, so he claimed, was a mud-hen he had winged with his revolver that morning. There were six or seven ingredients in that confounded Irish stew already, and—much to the disgust of Roos and myself, who didn’t fancy eating mud-hen—Andy dumped into it just about everything he had been cooking except the prunes. That’s the proper caper with “mulligans,” and they are very good, too, unlesssome one of the makings chances to be out of your line. And such most decidedly was mud-hen—fish-eating mud-hen! As we were sort of company, Roos and I put on the best faces we could and filled up on prunes and marmalade. It was only after the other three had cleaned out the “mulligan” can that Andy chanced to mention that “mud-hen” was the popularly accepted euphemism for grouse shot out of season!
Andy and Blackmore and Johnston talked “trapper stuff” all evening—tricks for tempting marten, how to prevent the pesky wolverine from robbing traps, “stink-baits,” prices, and the prospects for beaver when it again became lawful to take them. Johnston was a typical Swede, with little apparent regard for his physical strength if money could be made by drawing upon it. The previous season he had had to sleep out in his blankets many nights while covering his lines, and he counted himself lucky that this year he had two or three rough cabins for shelter. He was a terrific worker and ate sparingly of the grub that cost him twenty cents a pound to bring in. He was already looking a bit drawn, and Blackmore said the next morning that he would be more or less of a physical wreck by spring, just as he had been the previous season. The hardships these trappers endure is something quite beyond the comprehension of any one who has not been with them. A city man, a farmer, even a sailor, knows nothing to compare with it.
We were a mile down stream the next morning before Blackmore discovered that his rifle had been left in Johnston’s cabin, and it took him an hour ofhard breaking through the wet underbrush to recover it. The river was still rising from the rains, and the current swift with occasional rapids. Blackmore approached the head of Gordon Rapids (named, of course, from a man of that name who had lost his life there) with considerable caution. He intended to run them, he said, but the convergence of currents threw a nasty cross-riffle that was not to be taken liberties with. He appeared considerably relieved when he found that the high water made it possible to avoid the main rapid by a swift but comparatively clear back-channel. We had a good view of the riffle from below when we swung back into the main channel. It was certainly a vicious tumble of wild white water, and even with our considerable freeboard it would have been a sloppy run. I should have been very reluctant to go into it all with a smaller boat.
Still deeply canyoned between lofty mountains, the scenery in this part of the Bend was quite equal to the finest through which we had passed above Canoe River. The steady drizzle which had now set in, however, made pictures out of the question. This did not deter Roos from looking for “location.” He was under special instructions to make some effective camp shots, and had been on the lookout for a suitable place ever since we started. This day he found what he wanted. Shooting down a swift, rough rapid shortly after noon, we rounded a sharp bend and shot past the mouth of a deep black gorge with the white shimmer of a big waterfall just discernible in its dusky depths. Almost immediately opposite a rockypoint jutted out into the eddy. It was thickly carpeted with moss and grass, and bright with the reds and yellows of patches of late flowers. At its base was an almost perfect circle of towering cedars and sugar pines, their dark green foliage standing out in fret-work against the pale purple mists filling the depths of a wedge-shaped bit of mountain valley behind. There were glaciers and peaks hanging giddily above, but these were obscured by the rain clouds.
In response to Roos’ glad “Eureka!” Blackmore threw the boat’s head sharply toward the left bank, and hard pulling just won us the edge of the eddy. Missing that, we would have run on into the rough-and-tumble of Twelve-Mile Rapids, where (as we found the next day) there was no landing for another half mile. The place looked even lovelier at close range than from the river, and Roos announced decisively that we were not going to stir from there until the sun came to give him light for his camp shots. Fortunately, this befell the next morning. After that, to the best of my recollection, we did not see the sun again until we crossed over to the U. S. A. many days later.
Roos took a lot of trouble with his camp picture, and I have since heard that it was most favourably reported upon from the studio. Setting up on the end of the point, he made his opening shot as the boat ran down the rapid (we had had to line back above for this, of course) and floundered through the swirls and whirlpools past the mouth of the gloomy gorge and its half-guessed waterfall. After landing and packing our outfit up the bank, trees were felled,boughs cut and spread and the tent set up. Finally, we fried bacon, tossed flapjacks and baked bannocks. I could tell by his expression that Roos dearly wanted to lend a Mack Sennett “custard-pie” touch by having some one smear some one else in the face with a mushy half-baked bannock, but discretion prevailed. Qualified “smearers” there were in plenty—Andy and Blackmore were wood-choppers and I was an ex-pitcher and shot-putter,—but the designation of a “smear-ee” was quite another matter. Roos did well to stop where he did.
Pushing off about noon, we dropped down to near the head of “Twelve-Mile,” and put Roos ashore on the right bank for a shot as we ran through. We had expected to land to pick him up at the foot of the rapid, but Blackmore, in order to make the picture as spectacular as possible, threw the boat right into the midst of the white stuff. There was a good deal of soft fluff flying in the air, but nothing with much weight in it. We ran through easily, but got so far over toward the left bank that it was impossible to pull into the eddy we had hoped to make. Andy and I pulled our heads off for five minutes before we could reach slack water near the left bank, and by then we were a quarter of a mile below the foot of the rapid. Andy had to go back to help Roos down over the boulders with his machine and tripod. Another mile in fast water brought us to the head of Rock Slide Rapids, and we landed on the right bank for our last stretch of lining on the Big Bend.
The Rock Slide is the narrowest point on the whole Columbia between Lake Windermere and the Pacific.An almost perpendicular mountainside has been encroaching on the river here for many years, possibly damming it all the way across at times. From the Slide to the precipitous left bank there is an average channel seventy feet in width, through which the river rushes with tremendous velocity over and between enormous sharp-edged boulders. This pours into a cauldron-like eddy at a right-angled bend, and over the lower end of that swirling maelstrom the river spills into another narrow chute to form theDalles des Mortsof accursed memory. I know of no place on the upper half of the Bend where the river is less than a hundred feet wide. The Little Dalles, just below the American line, are about a hundred and forty feet across in their narrowest part, and the Great Dalles below Celilo Falls are slightly wider. Kettle Falls, Hell-Gate and Rock Island Rapids have side channels of less than a hundred feet, but the main channels are much broader. Save only theDalles des Morts(which are really its continuation) the Rock Slide has no near rival anywhere on the river.
It has struck me as quite probable that the Rock Slide, and the consequent constriction of the river at that point, are of comparatively recent occurrence, almost certainly of the last hundred years. In the diaries of Ross, Cox and Franchiere, on which most of the earlier Columbian history is based, I can find no mention of anything of the kind at this point, a location readily identifiable because of its proximity to theDalles des Morts, which they all mention. But in Ross’ record Idofind this significant passage:
“A little after starting (from the Dalles des Morts) we backed our paddles and stood still for some minutes admiring a striking curiosity. The water of a cataract creek, after shooting over the brink of a bold precipice, falls in a white sheet onto a broad, flat rock, smooth as glass, which forms the first step; then upon a second, some ten feet lower down, and lastly, on a third, somewhat lower. It then enters a subterranean vault, formed at the mouth like a funnel, and after passing through this funnel it again issues forth with a noise like distant thunder. After falling over another step it meets the front of a bold rock, which repulses back the water with such violence as to keep it whirling around in a large basin. Opposite to this rises the wing of a shelving cliff, which overhangs the basin and forces back the rising spray, refracting in the sunshine all the colours of the rainbow. The creek then enters the Columbia.”
“A little after starting (from the Dalles des Morts) we backed our paddles and stood still for some minutes admiring a striking curiosity. The water of a cataract creek, after shooting over the brink of a bold precipice, falls in a white sheet onto a broad, flat rock, smooth as glass, which forms the first step; then upon a second, some ten feet lower down, and lastly, on a third, somewhat lower. It then enters a subterranean vault, formed at the mouth like a funnel, and after passing through this funnel it again issues forth with a noise like distant thunder. After falling over another step it meets the front of a bold rock, which repulses back the water with such violence as to keep it whirling around in a large basin. Opposite to this rises the wing of a shelving cliff, which overhangs the basin and forces back the rising spray, refracting in the sunshine all the colours of the rainbow. The creek then enters the Columbia.”
On the left bank, immediately above theDalles des Morts, an extremely beautiful little waterfall leaps into the river from the cliffs, but neither this (as will readily be seen from my photograph of it) nor any other similar fall I saw in the whole length of the Columbia, bears the least suggestion of a resemblance to the remarkable cataract Ross so strikingly describes. But Ididsee a very sizable stream of water cascading right down the middle of the great rock slide, and at a point which might very well coincide with that at which Ross saw his “stairway-and-tunnel” phenomenon. Does it not seem quite possible that the latter should have undermined the cliff over and through which it was tumbling, precipitating it into the river and forming the Rock Slide of the present day?
The middle of the channel at Rock Slide was a rough, smashing cascade that looked quite capable of grinding a boat to kindling wood in a hundred feet; but to the right of it the water was considerably better. Blackmore said the chances would be all in favour of running it safely,but, if anything at all went wrong (such as the unshipping of an oar, for instance), it might make it hard to get into the eddy at the bend; and if we missed the eddy—Death Rapids! He didn’t seem to think any further elucidation was necessary. It would be best to line the whole way down, he said.
On account of the considerable depth of water right up to the banks, the boat struck on the rocks rather less than usual; but the clamber over the jagged, fresh-fallen granite was the worst thing of the kind we encountered. Ididget a bit of a duck here, though, but it was not near to being anything serious, and the sequel was rather amusing. Losing my footing for a moment on the only occasion I had to give Andy a lift with the boat, I floundered for a few strokes, kicked into an eddy and climbed out.
Ever since Andy had his souse and came out with empty pockets, I had taken the precaution of buttoning mine securely down before starting in to line. The buttons had resisted the best efforts of the kleptomaniacal river current, and I came out with the contents of my pocket wet but intact. But there was a trifling casualty even thus. A leg of my riding breeches was missing from the knee down. It was an ancient pair of East IndianjodpursI was wearing (without leggings, of course), and age and roughusage had opened a slit at the knee. Possibly I caught this somewhere on the boat without noting it in my excitement; or it is even possible the currentdidtear it off. There was nothing especially remarkable about it in any case. All the same, Blackmore and Andy always solemnly declared that thegeeslyriver, baulked by my buttons of its designs on the contents of my pockets, had tried to get away with my whole pair of pants! If that was so, it had its way in the end. Before I set out on the second leg of my voyage from the foot of the Arrow Lakes, I threw the river god all that was left of that bedraggled pair ofjodpursas a propitiatory offering.
The deeper rumble of Death Rapids became audible above the higher-keyed grind of Rock Slide as we worked down toward the head of the intervening eddy. Of all the cataracts and cascades with sinister records on the Columbia this Dalles of the Dead has undoubtedly been the one to draw to itself the greatest share of execration. The terrific toll of lives they have claimed is unquestionably traceable to the fact that this swift, narrow chute of round-topped rollers is many times worse than it looks, especially to a comparatively inexperienced river man, and there have been many such numbered among its victims. There are two or three places in Surprise Rapids, and one or two even in Kinbasket, that the veriest greenhorn would know better than to try to run; Death Rapids it is conceivable that a novice might try, just as many of them have, and to their cost. However, it is probable that the greatest number that have died here were comparatively experienced men who weresucked into the death-chute in spite of themselves. Of such was made up the party whose tragic fate gave the rapid its sinister name. Ross Cox, of the original Astorians, tells the story, and the account of it I am setting down here is slightly abridged from his original narrative.
On the sixteenth of April, 1817, Ross Cox’s party of twenty-three left Fort George (originally and subsequently Astoria) to ascend the Columbia and cross the Rockies by the Athabaska Pass, en route Montreal. On the twenty-seventh of May they arrived at Boat Encampment after the most severe labours in dragging their boats up the rapids and making their way along the rocky shores. Seven men of the party were so weak, sick and worn out that they were unable to proceed across the mountains, so they were given the best of the canoes and provisions, and were to attempt to return down river to Spokane House, a Hudson Bay post near the mouth of the river of that name. They reached the place which has since borne the name ofDalles des Mortswithout trouble. There, in passing their canoe down over the rapids with a light cod line, it was caught in a whirlpool. The line snapped, and the canoe, with all the provisions and blankets, was lost.The men found themselves utterly destitute, and at a time of year when it was impossible to procure any wild fruit or roots. The continual rising of the water completely inundated the beach, which compelled them to force their way through a dense forest, rendered almost impervious by a thick growth of prickly underbrush. Their only nourishment was water. On the third day a man named Macon died, and his surviving comrades, though unconscious of how soon they might be called on to follow him, divided his remains into equal parts, on which they subsisted for several days. From thesore and swollen state of their feet, their daily progress did not exceed two or three miles. A tailor named Holmes was the next to die, and the others subsisted for some days on his emaciated remains. In a little while, of the seven men, only two remained alive—Dubois and La Pierre. La Pierre was subsequently found on the upper Arrow Lake by two Indians who were coasting it in a canoe. They took him to Kettle Falls, from where he was carried to Spokane House.He stated that after the death of the fifth man of the party, Dubois and he remained for some days at the spot, living on the remains. When they felt strong enough to continue, they loaded themselves with as much of the flesh as they could carry; that with this they succeeded in reaching the Upper Lake, around the shores of which they wandered for some time in search of Indians; that their food at length became exhausted, and they were again reduced to the prospects of starvation. On the second night after their last meal La Pierre observed something suspicious in the conduct of Dubois, which induced him to be on his guard; and that shortly after they had lain down for the night, and while he feigned sleep, he observed Dubois cautiously opening his clasp-knife, with which he sprang at La Pierre, inflicting on the hand the blow evidently intended for the neck. A silent and desperate conflict followed, in which, after severe struggling, La Pierre succeeded in wresting the knife from his antagonist, and, having no other resource left, was finally obliged to cut Dubois’ throat. It was several days after this that he was discovered by the Indians.
On the sixteenth of April, 1817, Ross Cox’s party of twenty-three left Fort George (originally and subsequently Astoria) to ascend the Columbia and cross the Rockies by the Athabaska Pass, en route Montreal. On the twenty-seventh of May they arrived at Boat Encampment after the most severe labours in dragging their boats up the rapids and making their way along the rocky shores. Seven men of the party were so weak, sick and worn out that they were unable to proceed across the mountains, so they were given the best of the canoes and provisions, and were to attempt to return down river to Spokane House, a Hudson Bay post near the mouth of the river of that name. They reached the place which has since borne the name ofDalles des Mortswithout trouble. There, in passing their canoe down over the rapids with a light cod line, it was caught in a whirlpool. The line snapped, and the canoe, with all the provisions and blankets, was lost.
The men found themselves utterly destitute, and at a time of year when it was impossible to procure any wild fruit or roots. The continual rising of the water completely inundated the beach, which compelled them to force their way through a dense forest, rendered almost impervious by a thick growth of prickly underbrush. Their only nourishment was water. On the third day a man named Macon died, and his surviving comrades, though unconscious of how soon they might be called on to follow him, divided his remains into equal parts, on which they subsisted for several days. From thesore and swollen state of their feet, their daily progress did not exceed two or three miles. A tailor named Holmes was the next to die, and the others subsisted for some days on his emaciated remains. In a little while, of the seven men, only two remained alive—Dubois and La Pierre. La Pierre was subsequently found on the upper Arrow Lake by two Indians who were coasting it in a canoe. They took him to Kettle Falls, from where he was carried to Spokane House.
He stated that after the death of the fifth man of the party, Dubois and he remained for some days at the spot, living on the remains. When they felt strong enough to continue, they loaded themselves with as much of the flesh as they could carry; that with this they succeeded in reaching the Upper Lake, around the shores of which they wandered for some time in search of Indians; that their food at length became exhausted, and they were again reduced to the prospects of starvation. On the second night after their last meal La Pierre observed something suspicious in the conduct of Dubois, which induced him to be on his guard; and that shortly after they had lain down for the night, and while he feigned sleep, he observed Dubois cautiously opening his clasp-knife, with which he sprang at La Pierre, inflicting on the hand the blow evidently intended for the neck. A silent and desperate conflict followed, in which, after severe struggling, La Pierre succeeded in wresting the knife from his antagonist, and, having no other resource left, was finally obliged to cut Dubois’ throat. It was several days after this that he was discovered by the Indians.
This was one of the earliest, and certainly the most terrible, of all the tragedies originating at theDalles des Morts. There are a number of graves in the vicinity, but more numerous still are the inscriptionson the cliffs in memory of the victims whose bodies were never recovered for burial.
Compared to what we had been having, lining down Death Rapids was comparatively simple. It was only when one got right down beside them that the terrible power of the great rolling waves became evident. From crest to trough they must have been from twelve to fifteen feet high, with the water—on account of the steep declivity and the lack of resistance from rocks—running at race-horse speed. We had become so used to expecting big boulders to underlie heavy waves that it was difficult to realize that there was all of a hundred feet of green water between these giant rollers and the great reefs of bedrock which were responsible for them.
For a quarter of a mile below where the rolling waves ceased to comb there was a green-white chaos of whirlpools and the great geyser-like up-boils where the sucked-down water was ejected again to the surface. This was another of the places where the river was said to “eat up” whole pine trees at high water, and it was not hard to believe. Even now the voracious vortices were wolfing very considerable pieces of driftwood, and one had to keep a very sharp lookout to see the spewed-forth fragments reappear at all. This was no water for a small boat or canoe. It would, for instance, have engulfed the sixteen-foot skiff which I used on the lower river as an elephant gulps a tossed peanut. But our big double-ended thirty-footer was more of a mouthful. Blackmore pushed off without hesitation as soon as we hadlined below the rollers, butnotwithout reiterating the old warning about not dipping too deep, and being quick about throwing the oar free from its oar-lock if a whirlpool started to drag down the blade. We had a lively five minutes of it, what with the whirlpools trying to suck her stern under and the geysers trying to toss her bow on high; but they never had us in serious trouble. They did spin her all the way round, though, in spite of all the three of us could do to hold her, and as for our course—a chart of it would make the track of an earthquake on a seismograph look as if drawn with a straight-edge!
Another mile took us to the head of Priest Rapids, so named because two French-Canadian priests had been drowned there. This was to be our great rapid-running picture. Bad light had prevented our getting anything of the kind in Surprise and Kinbasket rapids, and “Twelve-Mile,” though white and fast, was hardly the real thing. But Priest Rapids was reputed the fastest on the whole river—certainly over twenty miles an hour, Blackmore reckoned. It had almost as much of a pitch as the upper part of the first drop of Surprise Rapids down to the abrupt fall. But, being straight as a city street and with plenty of water over the rocks, running it was simply a matter of having a large enough boat and being willing to take the soaking. Blackmore had the boat, and, for the sake of a real rip-snorting picture, he said he was willing to take the soaking. So were Andy and I.