After much climbing and scrambling over rocks, Roos found a place about half way down the left side of the jagged gorge from which he could command the raft rounding the first leg of the “Z” and running part of the second leg. It would have taken a half dozen machines to cover the whole run through, but the place he had chosen was the one which would show the most one camera could be expected to get. It would miss entirely the main thing—the fight to keep the raft from bumping the rock island and splitting in two like the river did. That could not be helped, however. A set up in a place to catch that would have caught very little else, and we desired to show something of the general character of the gorge and rapid. Roos, solacing himself with the remark to the effect that, if the raftdidbreak up, probably the biggest part of the wreck would come down his side, was cutting himself a “sylvan frame” through the branches of a gnarled old screw pine as we left him to go to the launch.
IKE RIDING A LOG (left)IKE ON THE MOORING LINE OF THE RAFT (right)
RAFT IN TOW OF LAUNCH NEAR MOUTH OF SAN POIL (above)IKE AT THE SWEEP BELOW HELL GATE (below)
Ike was sitting on the bank talking with a couple of men from the farm-house when we got back to the raft. He had completed the sweep, he said, but as he had forgotten to provide any “pin” to hang it on he didn’t quite know what to do. Perhaps we had better go up to the farm-house and have dinner first, and then maybe he would think of something. The thought of keeping Roos—whom I had seen on the verge of apoplexy over a half minute delay oncehe was ready for action—standing with crooked elbow at his crank, waiting an hour or more for the raft to shoot round the bend the next second, struck me as so ludicrous that I had to sit down myself to laugh without risk of rolling into the river. When I finally got my breath and sight back, I found Earl’s ready mind had hit upon the idea of using the hickory adze-handle as a pivot for the sweep and that he and Ike were already rigging it. Ten minutes later the launch had swung the raft out into the current and we were headed for Hell Gate.
The sweep, clumsy as it looked, was most ingeniously constructed. Its handle was a four-inch-in-diameter fir trunk, about twenty feet in length. One end of it had been hewn down to give hand-grip on it, and the other split to receive the blade. The latter was a twelve-foot plank, a foot and a half in width and three inches in thickness, roughly rounded and hewn to the shape of the flat of an oar. It was set at a slight upward tilt from the fir-trunk handle. Ike had contrived to centre the weight of the whole sweep so nicely that you could swing it on its adze-handle pivot with one hand. Swing it in the air, I mean; submerged, five or six men would have been none too few to force that colossal blade through the water. Ike admitted that himself, but reckoned that the two of us ought to be ‘better’n nothin’ ’tall.’
As we swung out into the quickening current, I mentioned to Ike that, as I had never even seen a sweep of that kind in operation, much less worked at it myself, it might now be in order for him to give me some idea of what he hoped to do with it, and how.“Ye’re right,” he assented, after ejecting the inevitable squirt of tobacco and parking the residuary quid out of the way of his tongue as a squirrel stows a nut; “ye’re right; five minutes fer eloosidashun an’ r’h’rsal.” As usual, Ike overestimated the time at his disposal; nevertheless, his intensive method of training was so much to the point that I picked up a “right smart bit o’ sweep dope” before we began to cram into the crooked craw of Hell Gate.
This was the biggest raft he had ever tried to take through, Ike explained, but he’d never had so powerful a motor launch; and Earl was the best man in his line on the Columbia. He reckoned that the launch would be able to swing the head of the raft clear of the rock island where the river split “agin” it; but swingingoutthe head would have the effect of swinging in the stern. We were to man the sweep for the purpose of keeping the raft from striking amidships. We would only have to stroke one way, but we’d sure have to “jump into it billy hell!” “That being so,” I suggested, “perhaps we better try a practice stroke or two to perfect our team-work.” That struck Ike as reasonable, and so we went at it, he on the extreme end of the handle, I one “grip” farther along.
Pressing the handle almost to our feet in order to elevate the blade, we dipped the latter with a swinging upward lift and jumped into the stroke. In order to keep the blade well submerged, it was necessary to exert almost as much force upward as forward. The compression on the spine was rather awful—especially as I was two or three inches taller than Ike, and on top of that, had the “inside” berth,where the handle was somewhat nearer the deck. But the blade moved through the water when we both straightened into it; slowly at first, and more rapidly toward the end of the stroke. Then we lifted the blade out of the water, and Ike swung it back through the air alone. I had only to “crab-step” back along the runway—a couple of planks laid over the cordwood—and be ready for the next stroke. Twice we went through that operation, without—so far as I could see—having any effect whatever upon the raft; but that was only because I was expecting “skiff-action” from a hundred tons of logs. We really must have altered the course considerably, for presently a howl came back from Earl to “do it t’other way,” as we were throwing her out of the channel. By the time we had “corrected” with a couple of strokes in the opposite direction the launch was dipping over the crest of the “intake.” Straightening up but not relinquishing the handle, Ike said to “let ’er ride fer a minnit,” but to stand-by ready.
That swift opening run through the outer portal of Hell Gate offered about the only chance I had for a “look-see.” My recollections of the interval that followed at the sweep are a good deal blurred. I noted that the water of the black-walled chasm down which we were racing was swift and deep, but not—right there at least—too rough for the skiff to ride. I noted how the sharp point of the rock island ahead threw off two unequal back-curving waves, as a battleship will do when turning at full speed. I remember thinking that, if I were in the skiff, I would try to avoid the island by sheering over to the right-handchannel. It looked too hard a pull to make the main one to the left; and the latter would have the worst whirlpools, too. I noted how confoundedly in the way of the river that sharp-nosed island was; and not only of the river, but of anything coming down the river. With that up-stabbing point out of the stream, how easy it would be! But since....
“Stan’-by!” came in a growl from Ike. “’Memba naow—‘billy hell’ when I says ‘jump!’” By the fact that he spat forth the whole of his freshly-bitten quid I had a feeling that the emergency was considerably beyond the ordinary. My last clear recollection was of Earl’s sharply altering his course just before he nosed into the roaring back-curving wave thrown off by the island and beginning to tow to the left with his line at half of a right-angle to the raft. The staccato of his accelerating engine cut like the rattle of a machine-gun through the heavy rumble of the rapid, and I knew that he had thrown it wide open even before the foam-geyser kicked up by the propellers began to tumble over onto the stern of the launch. On a reduced scale, it was the same sort of in-tumbling jet that a destroyer throws up when, at the appearance of an ominous blur in the fog, she goes from quarter-speed-ahead to full-speed-astern. A jet like that means that the spinning screws are meeting almost solid resistance in the water.
Ike’s shoulder cut off my view ahead now, and I knew that the bow was swinging out only from the way the stern was swinging in. At his grunted “Now!” we did our curtsey-and-bow to the sweep-handle, just as we had practised it, then dipped theblade and drove it hard to the right. Four or five times we repeated that stroke, and right smartly, too, it seemed to me. The stern stopped swinging just at the right time, shooting by the foam-whitened fang of the black point by a good ten feet. The back-curving wave crashed down in solid green on the starboard quarter—but harmlessly. There was water enough to have swamped abatteau, but against a raft the comber had knocked its head off for nothing.
Under Ike’s assurance that the battle would all be over but the shouting in half a minute, I had put about everything I had into those half dozen mighty pushes with the sweep. I started to back off leisurely and resume my survey of the scenery as we cleared the point, but Ike’s mumbled “Nother one!” brought me back to the sweep again. Evidently there had been some kind of a slip-up. “Wha’ ’smatter?” I gurgled, as we swayed onto the kicking handle, and “Engin’s on blink,” rumbled the chesty reply. “Gotta keep’er off wi’ sweep.”
It had been the motor-boat’s rôle, after keeping the head of the raft clear of the point of the island by a strong side pull, to tow out straight ahead again as soon as the menace of collision was past. Earl was trying to do this now (I glimpsed as I crab-stepped back), but with two or three cylinders missing was not able to do much more than straighten out the tow-line. As the raft was already angling to the channel, the fact the current was swifter against the side of the island had the tendency to throw her stern in that direction. It was up to the sweep to keep her from striking, just as it had been at the point. What madeit worse now was that the possible points of impact were scattered all the way along for two or three hundred yards, while the launch was giving very little help.
A man ought to be able to lean onto a sweep all day long without getting more than a good comfortable weariness, and so Icouldhave done had I been properly broken in. But I was in the wrong place on the sweep, and, on top of that, had allowed my infantile enthusiasm to lead me into trying to scoop half the Columbia out of its channel at every stroke. And so it was that when we came to a real showdown, I found myself pretty hard put to come through with what was needed. Ike’s relentless “’Nother one!” at the end of each soul-and-body wracking stroke was all that was said, but the ’tween-teethed grimness of its utterance was more potent as a verbal scourge than a steady stream of sulphurous curses. Ike was saving his breath, and I didn’t have any left to pour out my feelings with.
We were close to the ragged black wall all the way, and I have an idea that the back-waves thrown off by the projecting points had about as much to do with keeping us from striking as had the sweep. Such waves will often buffer off a canoe orbatteau, and they must have helped some with the raft. There is no doubt, however, that, if the raft had once been allowed to swing broadside, either she or the rock island would have had to change shape or else hold up the million or so horse-power driving the Columbia. That could have only resulted in a one-two-three climax, with the island, Columbia and raft finishingin the order named. Or, to express it in more accurate race-track vernacular; “Island,” first; “Columbia,” second; “Raft,” nowhere!
My spine was a bar of red-hot iron rasping up and down along the exposed ends of all its connecting nerves, when a throaty “Aw right!” from Ike signalled that the worst was past. Hanging over the end of the trailing sweep-handle, I saw that the raft had swung into a big eddy at the foot of the island, and that the launch, with its engine still spraying scattered pops, was trying to help the back-current carry her in to the right bank. Middle and Lower Rapids of Hell Gate were still below us, but Earl had evidently determined not to run them until his engine was hitting on all fours again. It was characteristic of him that he didn’t offer any explanation as to what had gone wrong, or why; but the trouble must have been a consequence of the terrific strain put on the engine in towing the head of the raft clear of the upper point of the island. At the end of a quarter hour’s tinkering Earl reckoned that the engine would go “purty good” now; leastways, he hoped so, for there was nothing more he could do outside of a machine-shop. To save tying up again below, he ran across and picked up Roos and the camera before casting off.
Middle and Lower Rapids were just straight, fast, white water, and we ran them without trouble. Roos set up on the raft and shot a panorama of the reeling rollers and the flying black curtains of the rocky walls as they slid past. Then he made a close-up of the weird, undulating Chinese-Dragon-wiggle of the“deck” of the raft, and finally, when we had recovered a bit of breath, of Ike and me toiling at the sweep. To save time, we had lunch on the raft, taking Earl’s portion up to him in the skiff.
Ike, announcing that he would need a crew of four or five men to handle the raft in Box Canyon, was scouting for hands all afternoon. Whenever a farm or a ferry appeared in the distance, we would pull ahead in the skiff and he would dash ashore and pursue intensive recruiting until the raft had come up and gone on down river. Then we would push off and chase it, repeating the performance as soon as another apple orchard or ferry tower crept out beyond a bend. For all our zeal, there was not a man to show when we finally pulled the skiff aboard as darkness was falling on the river. Most of the men Ike talked to took one look at the nearing raft and cut him off with a “Good-night” gesture, the significance of which was not lost on me even in the distant skiff. The nearest we came to landing any one was at Plum, where the half-breed ferry-man said he would have gone if it hadn’t been for the fact that his wife was about to become a mother. It wasn’t that he was worried on the woman’s account (she did that sort of thing quite regularly without trouble), but he had bet a horse with the blacksmith that it was going to be a boy, and he kind of wanted to be on hand to be sure they didn’t put anything over on him.
At Clark’s Ferry an old pal of Ike’s, whom he had confidently counted on getting, not only refused to go when he saw the raft, but even took the old river rat aside and talked to him long and earnestly, afterthe manner of a brother. Ike was rather depressed after that, and spent the next hour slouching back and forth across the stern runway, nursing the handle of the gently-swung sweep against his cheek like a pet kitten. He was deeply introspective, and seemed to be brooding over something. It was not until the next morning that he admitted that the raft had not proved quite as handy as he had calculated.
Again we ran well into the dark, but this time in a somewhat opener canyon than the black gorge we had threaded the night before. It was Spring Canyon we were making for, where Ike had left his last raft. No one was living there, he said, but it was a convenient place for the ranchers from up on the plateau to come and get the wood. Earl found the place and made the landing with not even a window-light to guide. We moored to the lower logs of the cedar raft, most of which was now lying high and dry on the rocks, left by the falling river. We cooked supper on the bank and—after Roos had deftly picked the lock with a bent wire—slept on the floor of an abandoned farm-house on the bench above.
Ike had complained a good deal of his gasoline-burned back during the day, and was evidently suffering not a little discomfort from the chafing of his woollen undershirt. He was restless during the night, and when he got up at daybreak I saw him pick up and shake out an old white table-cloth that had been thrown in one corner. When I went down to the raft a little later, I found the old rat stripped to the waist and Earl engaged in swathing the burned back in the folds of the white table-cloth. As the resultant bundlewas rather too bulky to allow a shirt to be drawn over it, Ike went around for a couple of hours just as he was, for all the world like “the noblest Roman of them all”—from neck to the waist, that is. The long, drooping, tobacco-stained moustaches, no less than the sagging overalls, would have had rather a “foreign” look on theForum Romanum.
There was plainly something on Ike’s mind all through breakfast, but what it was didn’t transpire until I asked him what time he would be ready to push off. Then, like a man who blurts out an unpalatable truth, he gave the free end of his “toga” a fling back over his shoulder and announced that he had come to the conclusion that the raft was too big and too loosely constructed to run Box Canyon; in fact, we could count ourselves lucky that we got through Hell Gate without smashing up. What he proposed to do was to take the biggest and straightest logs from both the rafts and make a small, solid one that would stand any amount of banging from the rocks. He never gave a thought to his life when working on the river, he declared, but it would be a shame to run an almost certain risk of losing so big a lot of logs and cordwood. The wreckage would be sure to be salvaged by farmers who would otherwise have to buy wood from him, so he would be a double loser in case the raft went to pieces. I told him that I quite appreciated his feelings (about the wood and logs, I mean), and asked how long he figured it would take to get the logs out of the old rafts and build a new one. He reckoned it could be done in two or three days, if we hustled. As I had already learned that any of Ike’sestimates of time had to be multiplied by at least two to approximate accuracy, I realized at once that our rafting voyage was at an end. We already had some very good raft pictures, and as a few hundred yards of the run through Box Canyon would be all that could be added to these, it did not seem worth anything like the delay building the new raft would impose. As far as the sale of the wood and logs was concerned, Ike said he would rather have the stuff where it was than in Bridgeport.
So, quite unexpectedly but in all good feeling, we prepared to abandon the raft and have the motor-boat take the skiff in tow as far as Chelan. This would make up a part of the time we had lost in waiting for the raft in the first place, and also save the portage round Box Canyon. It was quite out of the question venturing into that gorge in our small boat, Earl said, but he had made it before with his launch, and reckoned he could do it again. We settled with Ike on a basis of twenty dollars a day for his time, out of which he would pay for the launch. As his big raft of logs and firewood was brought to its destination for nothing by this arrangement, he was that much ahead. For the further use of the launch, we were to pay Earl ten dollars a day and buy the gasoline.
We helped Ike get the raft securely moored, had an early lunch on the rocks, and pushed off at a little after noon, the skiff in tow of the launch on a short painter. A few miles along Ike pointed out a depression, high above the river on the left side, which he said was the mouth of the Grand Coulee, the ancient bed of the Columbia. I have already mentioned aproject which contemplates bringing water from the Pend d’Oreille to irrigate nearly two million acres of semi-arid land of the Columbia basin. A project that some engineers consider will bring water to the same land more directly and at a much less cost per acre is to build a dam all the way across the Columbia below the mouth of the Grand Coulee, and use the power thus available to pump sixteen thousand second-feet into the old channel of that river. Mr. James O’Sullivan, a contractor of Port Huron, Michigan, who has made an exhaustive study of this latter project, writes me as follows:
“A dam at this point could be built 300 feet high above low water, and it would form a lake 150 miles long all the way to the Canadian boundary. It is estimated that one million dollars would pay all the flooding damages. A dam 300 feet high would be 4,300 feet long on the crest, and would require about 5,000,000 cubic yards of concrete. It would cost, assuming bedrock not to exceed 100 feet below water, about forty million dollars. It is estimated that the power-house, direct connected pumps, turbines and discharge pipes would cost fifteen million dollars.... From the Columbia River to the arid lands, a distance of less than forty miles, there is a natural channel less than one mile wide, flanked by rock walls on both sides, so that the cost of getting water to the land would be primarily confined to the dam and power. Such a dam would require about five years to build, and it would create out of a worthless desert a national estate of four hundred and fifty million dollars, and the land would produce annually in crops two hundred and seventy-five million.... An irrigation district is now being formed in Central Washington, and it is proposed to proceed at once with the core drilling of the dam-site, todetermine the nature and depth of bedrock, which seems to be the only question left unsettled which affects the feasibility of the project. The Northwestern states are all in a league for securing the reclamation of this vast area, and there is no doubt that, if bedrock conditions prove to be favourable, that in the near future the money will be raised to construct this great project, which will reclaim an area equal to the combined irrigation projects undertaken by the U. S. Government to-day.... It is considered now that where power is free, a pumping lift as high as 300 feet is perfectly feasible.”
“A dam at this point could be built 300 feet high above low water, and it would form a lake 150 miles long all the way to the Canadian boundary. It is estimated that one million dollars would pay all the flooding damages. A dam 300 feet high would be 4,300 feet long on the crest, and would require about 5,000,000 cubic yards of concrete. It would cost, assuming bedrock not to exceed 100 feet below water, about forty million dollars. It is estimated that the power-house, direct connected pumps, turbines and discharge pipes would cost fifteen million dollars.... From the Columbia River to the arid lands, a distance of less than forty miles, there is a natural channel less than one mile wide, flanked by rock walls on both sides, so that the cost of getting water to the land would be primarily confined to the dam and power. Such a dam would require about five years to build, and it would create out of a worthless desert a national estate of four hundred and fifty million dollars, and the land would produce annually in crops two hundred and seventy-five million.... An irrigation district is now being formed in Central Washington, and it is proposed to proceed at once with the core drilling of the dam-site, todetermine the nature and depth of bedrock, which seems to be the only question left unsettled which affects the feasibility of the project. The Northwestern states are all in a league for securing the reclamation of this vast area, and there is no doubt that, if bedrock conditions prove to be favourable, that in the near future the money will be raised to construct this great project, which will reclaim an area equal to the combined irrigation projects undertaken by the U. S. Government to-day.... It is considered now that where power is free, a pumping lift as high as 300 feet is perfectly feasible.”
Which of these two great projects for the reclamation of the desert of the Columbia Basin has the most to recommend is not a question upon which a mere rivervoyageur, who is not an engineer, can offer an intelligent opinion. That the possibilities of such reclamation, if it can be economically effected, are incalculably immense, however, has been amply demonstrated. From source to mouth, the Columbia to-day is almost useless for power, irrigation and even transportation. The experience of those who, lured on by abnormal rainfalls of a decade or more ago, tried dry farming in this region border closely on the tragic. And the tragedy has been all the more poignant from the fact that the disaster of drought has overtaken them year after year with the Columbia running half a million second-feet of water to waste right before their eyes. I subsequently met a rancher in Wenatchee who said the only good the Columbia ever was to a man who tried to farm along it in the dry belt was as a place to drown himself in when he went broke.
THE SUSPENSION BRIDGE AT CHELAN FALLS (above)OLD RIVER VETERANS ON THE LANDING AT POTARIS. (CAPT. McDERMID ON LEFT, IKE EMERSON ON RIGHT) (below)
NIGHT WAS FALLING AS WE HEADED INTO BOX CANYON (above)THE COLUMBIA ABOVE BOX CANYON (below)
The rock-littered channel of Moneghan’s or Buckley’s Rapids was easily threaded by the launch, and Equilibrium or “Jumbo” Rapids, three miles lower down, did not prove a serious obstruction. The official name is the former, and was given the riffle by Symons on account of a round-topped rock which rolled back and forth in the current because of its unstable equilibrium. The local name of “Jumbo” derives from the fact that this same rolling rock has something of the appearance of an elephant, when viewed from a certain angle. Ten miles more of deep, evenly-flowing water brought us to Mah-kin Rapids and the head of Nespilem Canyon. The next twenty-four miles, terminating at the foot of what is officially called Kalichen Falls and Whirlpool (Box Canyon in local nomenclature), is the fastest stretch of equal length on the Columbia except on the Big Bend in Canada. It is one continuous succession of rapids, eddies and whirlpools all the way, and the much feared Box Canyon is a fitting finale. I was distinctly glad to be running through in a motor-boat rather than the skiff. As to the raft, I never have been able to make up my mind as to just how she would have fared.
The roar of the savage half-mile tumble of Mah-kin Rapids was a fitting overture to the main performance. The river narrows down sharply between precipitous banks, and most of the rocks from the surrounding hills seem to have rolled into the middle of the channel. There was an awful mess of churned water even where the river was deepest, and I wouldn’t have been quite comfortable heading into iteven in the launch. Earl seemed rather of the same mind, too, for he kept edging out to the right every time one of the big combers lurched over at him. With the engine running like a top, he kept her in comparatively good water all the way through. It was a striking lesson in the value of power in running a rapid—as long as the power doesn’t fail you.
Rock-peppered rapids followed each other every mile or two from the foot of Mah-kin, but—thanks to Earl’s nose for the best channel—we were not taking more than an occasional shower of spray over the bows where the water was whitest. It was not too rough for reading, and, anxious to prepare Roos for what he was about to experience at Kalichen Falls and Collision Rock, I dug out Symons’ report and ran rapidly through the dramatic description of how his party fared in running the sinister gorge ahead. It seems to me rather a classic of its kind, and I am setting it down in full, just as I read it to Roos and Ike that afternoon in the cockpit of the launch. I only wish I could complete the effect with the diorama of the flying canyon walls, the swirling waters of the river, and the obligato in duet by the roaring rapids and the sharply hitting engine.
“The shores of Nespilem Canyon are strewn with huge masses of black basaltic rock of all sizes and shapes, and this continues for several miles, forming a characteristic picture of Columbia River scenery. The complete ... lifelessness of the scene makes it seem exceedingly wild, almost unearthly. And so we plunge along swiftly through the rolling water, with huge rocks looming up, now on one side and now on the other. Every stroke of the oar is bearingus onward, nearer and nearer, to that portion of our voyage most dreaded, the terrible Kalichen Falls and Whirlpool Rapids. We hear the low rumbling of the water, and see the tops of the huge half-sunken rocks and the white foam of the tumbling waters. For a few moments the rowing ceases, while brave old Pierre gives his orders to the Indians in their own tongue. He knows that everything depends upon his steering and their rowing or backing at the right moment, with all the strength they possess. Years ago he was in a Hudson Bay Companybatteauwhich capsized in these very rapids, and out of a crew of sixteen men eight perished in the water or on the rocks.“The Indians make their preparations for the struggle by stripping off all their superfluous clothing, removing their gloves, and each ties a bright-coloured handkerchief tightly about his head; poles and extra oars are laid ready in convenient places to reach should they become necessary, and then with a shout the Indians seize their oars and commence laying to them with all their strength. We are rushing forward at a fearful rate, owing to the combined exertions of the Indians and the racing current, and we shudder at the thought of striking any of the huge black rocks near which we glide. Now we are fairly in the rapids, and our boat is rushing madly through the foam and billows; the Indians are shouting at every stroke in their wild, savage glee; it is infectious; we shout too, and feel the wild exultation which comes to men in moments of great excitement and danger. Ugly masses of rocks show their heads above the troubled waters on every side, and sunken rocks are discernible by the action of the surf. Great billows strike us fore and aft, some falling squarely over the bows and drenching us to the waist. This is bad enough, but the worst is yet to come as we draw near with great velocity to a huge rock which appears dead ahead.“Has old Pierre seen it? The water looks terribly cold as we think of his failing eyesight. Then an order, a shout, backing on one side and pulling on the other, and a quick stroke of the steering oar, and the rock appears on our right hand. Another command, and answering shout, and the oars bend like willows as the Indians struggle to get the boat out of the strong eddy into which Pierre had thrown her. Finally she shoots ahead and passes the rock like a flash, within less than an oar’s length of it, and we shout for joy and breathe freely again....“For half a mile the river is comparatively good, and our staunch crew rest on their oars preparatory to the next struggle, which soon comes, as some more rocky, foamy rapids are reached. Here the swells are very high and grand, and our boat at one time seems to stand almost perpendicularly.” (“Them’s Eagle Rapids,” Ike interrupted; “sloppier ’n ’ell, but straight.”)“For about nine miles further the river continues studded with rocks and swift, with ripples every mile or so, until we reach Foster Creek Rapids. Here the rocks become thicker ... and the water fierce and wild. For a mile more we plunge and toss through the foaming, roaring water, amid wild yells from our Indian friends, and we emerge from Foster Creek Rapids, which appear to be as rough and dangerous a place as any we have yet encountered. We are now out of Nespilem Canyon and through all the Nespilem Rapids, and we certainly feel greatly relieved....”
“The shores of Nespilem Canyon are strewn with huge masses of black basaltic rock of all sizes and shapes, and this continues for several miles, forming a characteristic picture of Columbia River scenery. The complete ... lifelessness of the scene makes it seem exceedingly wild, almost unearthly. And so we plunge along swiftly through the rolling water, with huge rocks looming up, now on one side and now on the other. Every stroke of the oar is bearingus onward, nearer and nearer, to that portion of our voyage most dreaded, the terrible Kalichen Falls and Whirlpool Rapids. We hear the low rumbling of the water, and see the tops of the huge half-sunken rocks and the white foam of the tumbling waters. For a few moments the rowing ceases, while brave old Pierre gives his orders to the Indians in their own tongue. He knows that everything depends upon his steering and their rowing or backing at the right moment, with all the strength they possess. Years ago he was in a Hudson Bay Companybatteauwhich capsized in these very rapids, and out of a crew of sixteen men eight perished in the water or on the rocks.
“The Indians make their preparations for the struggle by stripping off all their superfluous clothing, removing their gloves, and each ties a bright-coloured handkerchief tightly about his head; poles and extra oars are laid ready in convenient places to reach should they become necessary, and then with a shout the Indians seize their oars and commence laying to them with all their strength. We are rushing forward at a fearful rate, owing to the combined exertions of the Indians and the racing current, and we shudder at the thought of striking any of the huge black rocks near which we glide. Now we are fairly in the rapids, and our boat is rushing madly through the foam and billows; the Indians are shouting at every stroke in their wild, savage glee; it is infectious; we shout too, and feel the wild exultation which comes to men in moments of great excitement and danger. Ugly masses of rocks show their heads above the troubled waters on every side, and sunken rocks are discernible by the action of the surf. Great billows strike us fore and aft, some falling squarely over the bows and drenching us to the waist. This is bad enough, but the worst is yet to come as we draw near with great velocity to a huge rock which appears dead ahead.
“Has old Pierre seen it? The water looks terribly cold as we think of his failing eyesight. Then an order, a shout, backing on one side and pulling on the other, and a quick stroke of the steering oar, and the rock appears on our right hand. Another command, and answering shout, and the oars bend like willows as the Indians struggle to get the boat out of the strong eddy into which Pierre had thrown her. Finally she shoots ahead and passes the rock like a flash, within less than an oar’s length of it, and we shout for joy and breathe freely again....
“For half a mile the river is comparatively good, and our staunch crew rest on their oars preparatory to the next struggle, which soon comes, as some more rocky, foamy rapids are reached. Here the swells are very high and grand, and our boat at one time seems to stand almost perpendicularly.” (“Them’s Eagle Rapids,” Ike interrupted; “sloppier ’n ’ell, but straight.”)
“For about nine miles further the river continues studded with rocks and swift, with ripples every mile or so, until we reach Foster Creek Rapids. Here the rocks become thicker ... and the water fierce and wild. For a mile more we plunge and toss through the foaming, roaring water, amid wild yells from our Indian friends, and we emerge from Foster Creek Rapids, which appear to be as rough and dangerous a place as any we have yet encountered. We are now out of Nespilem Canyon and through all the Nespilem Rapids, and we certainly feel greatly relieved....”
Ike, renewing his quid, observed that they didn’t call it Nespilem Canyon any more, for the reason that that sounded too much like “Let’s spill ’em!” and there was enough chance of that without asking for it. Roos, in bravado, asked Ike if he was going tostrip down like Symons’ Indians did. The old Roman replied by pulling on a heavy mackinaw over his “toga,” saying that he’d rather have warmth than action once he was out in the “Columby.” That led me to ask him—with a touch of bravado on my own account—how long it would take him to “submarine” from Box Canyon to Kettle Falls. He grinned a bit sourly at that, and started slacking the lashings on the sweeps and pike-poles. Roos was just tying a red handkerchief round his head when Earl beckoned him forward to take the wheel while he gave the engine a final hurried tuning. Ike, saying that we would be hitting “White Cap” just round the next bend, gave me brief but pointed instructions in the use of sweep and pike-pole in case the engine went wrong. He had spat forth his quid again, just as at Hell Gate, and his unmuffled voice had a strange and penetratingtimbre.
White Cap Rapids are well named. Two rocky points converge at the head and force all the conflicting currents of the river into a straight, steep channel, heavily littered with boulders and fanged with outcropping bedrock. In that currents from opposite sides of the river are thrown together in one mad tumble of wallowing waters, it is much like Gordon Rapids, on the Big Bend. If anything, it is the rougher of the two, making up in volume what it lacks in drop. It is a rapid that would be particularly mean for a small boat, from the fact that there would be no way of keeping out of the middle of it, and that is a wet place—very. The launch had the power to hold a course just on the outer right edge of the roughwater, and so made a fairly comfortable passage of it.
With the “intake” above Kalichen Falls full in view a half mile distant, Earl went back to his engine as we shot out at the foot of “White Cap” and gave it a few little “jiggering” caresses—much as a rider pats the neck of his hunter as he comes to a jump—before the final test. Then he covered it carefully with a double canvas and went back to the wheel. Roos he kept forward, standing-by to take the wheel or tinker the engine in case of emergency. The lad, though quite without “river sense,” was a first-class mechanic and fairly dependable at the steering wheel providing he was told what to do.
The sounding board of the rocky walls gave a deep pulsating resonance to the heavy roar ahead, but it was not until we dipped over the “intake” that the full volume of it assailed us. Then it came with a rush, a palpable avalanche of sound that impacted on the ear-drums with the raw, grinding roar of a passing freight train. It was not from the huge rollers the launch was skirting so smartly that this tearing, rending roar came, but from an enormous black rock almost dead ahead. It was trying to do the same thing that big island in the middle of Hell Gate had tried to do, and was succeeding rather better. The latter had been able to do no more than split the river down the middle; this one was forcing the whole stream to do a side-step, and pretty nearly a somersault—hence Kalichen Falls and Whirlpool. Collision Rock was distinctly impressive, even from a launch.
The sun was just dipping behind the southern wallof Box Canyon (how funky I became later, when I was alone, about going into a rapid in that slanting, deceptive evening light!) as the launch hit the rough water. There was dancing iridescence in the flung foam-spurts above the combers, and at the right of Collision Bock the beginning of a rainbow which I knew would grow almost to a full circle when we looked back from below the fall. I snapped once with my kodak into the reeling tops of the waves that raced beside us, and then started to wind up to have a fresh film for the rock and the crowning rainbow. That highly artistic exposure was never made.
Earl, instead of shutting off his engine as he did in running Spokane Rapids, opened up all the wider as he neared the barrier and its refluent wave. This was because the danger of striking submerged rocks was less than that of butting into that one outcrop of ragged reef that was coming so near to throwing the river over on its back. If the launch was to avoid telescoping on Collision Rock as the Columbia was doing, it must get enough way on to shoot across the current into the eddy on the left. That was what Earl was preparing for when he opened up the engine. With both boat and current doing well over twenty miles an hour, we were literally rushing down at the rocky barrier with the speed of an express train when Earl spun the wheel hard over and drove her sharply to the left. That was when I stopped kodaking.
In spite of the rough water, the launch had been remarkably dry until her course was altered. Then she made up for lost time. The next ten or fifteen seconds was an unbroken deluge. With a great up-tossof wake, she heeled all of forty-five degrees to starboard at the turn, seeing which, the river forthwith began piling over her port or up-stream side and making an astonishingly single-minded attempt to push her on the rest of the way under. Failing in that (for her draught was too great and her engine set too low to make her easily capsizable), the river tried to accomplish the same end by swamping her. Fore and aft the water came pouring over in a solid green flood, and kept right on pouring until Earl, having driven through to the point he wanted, turned her head down stream again and let her right herself.
The water was swishing about my knees for a few moments in the cockpit, and it must have been worse than that forward. Then it drained down into the bilge without, apparently, greatly affecting her buoyancy. The higher-keyed staccato of the engine cut sharply through the heavier roar of the falls. It was still popping like a machine-gun, without a break. Reassured by that welcome sound, Earl orientated quickly as he shook the water from his eyes, and then put her full at the head of the falls. Just how much of a pitch there was at this stage of water I couldn’t quite make out. Nothing in comparison with the cataract there at high water (when the river rushes right over the top of Collision Rock) certainly; and yet it was a dizzy bit of a drop, with rather too deliberate a recovery to leave one quite comfortable. For a few seconds the launch’s head was deeply buried in the soft stuff of the souse-hole into which she took her header; the next her bows were high in the air as the up-boil caught her. Then her propellers began striking into something solider than air-charged suds, and she shot jerkily away in a current so torn with swirls that it looked like a great length of twisted green-and-white rope. We had missed Collision Rock by thirty feet, and given the dreaded whirlpool behind it an even wider berth.
The next thirteen miles we did at a rate that Ike figured must have been about the fastest travelling ever done on the Columbia. The current runs at from ten to twenty miles an hour all the way from the head of Box Canyon to Bridgeport, and Earl, racing to reach Foster Creek Rapids before it was dark, ran just about wide open nearly the whole distance. It was real train speed at which we sped down the darkening gorge—possibly over forty miles an hour at times. Earl knew the channel like a book, and said there was nothing to bother about in the way of rocks as long as he could see. We were out of the closely-walled part of the canyon at Eagle Rapids, and the sunset glow was bright upon the water ahead. There is a series of short, steep riffles here, extending for a mile and a half, and Earl slammed right down the lot of them on the high. Ike was right about their being sloppy, but the beacon of the afterglow gave the bearing straight through. Two miles further on the river appeared suddenly to be filled with swimming hippos—round-topped black rocks just showing above the water; but each one was silhouetted against a surface that glinted rose and gold, and so was as easy to miss as in broad daylight.
It was all but full night as the roar of Foster Creek Rapids began to drown the rattle of the engine, withonly a luminous lilac mist floating above the south-western mountains to mark where the sun had set; but it was enough—just enough—to throw a glow of pale amethyst on the frothy tops of the white-caps, leaving the untorn water to roll on in fluid anthracite. Earl barely eased her at the head, and then plunged her down a path of polished ebony, with the blank blur of rocks looming close on the right and an apparitional line of half-guessed rollers booming boisterously to the left. For three-quarters of a mile we raced that ghostly Ku-Klux-Klan procession, and Roos, who was timing with his radium-faced watch, announced that we had made the distance in something like seventy seconds. Then there was quieter water, and presently the lights of Bridgeport. Earl put us off opposite the town, and ran down a quarter of a mile farther to get out of the still swiftly-running current and berth the launch in a quiet eddy below the sawmill.
Bridgeport, for a town a score of miles from the railway, proved unexpectedly metropolitan, with electric lights, banks, movie theatres, and a sign at the main crossing prohibiting “Left Hand Turns.” The people, for a country town, showed very diverting evidences of sophistication. At the movies that night (where we went to get the election returns), they continually laughed at the villain and snickered at the heroine’s platitudinous sub-titles; and finally, when word came that it was Harding beyond all doubt, they forgot the picture completely and gave their undivided attention to joshing the town’s only avowed Democrat. The victim bore up fairly well aslong as his baiters stuck to “straight politics,” but when they accused him of wearing an imitation leather coat made of brown oil-cloth, the shaft got under his armour. With a ruddy blush that was the plainest kind of a confession of guilt, he pushed out to the aisle and beat a disorderly retreat.
A prosperous apple farmer sitting next me (he had been telling me what his crop would bring the while the naturally vamp-faced heroine was trying to register pup-innocence and “gold-cannot-buy-me” as the villain was choking her) sniffed contemptuously as the discomfited Democrat disappeared through the swinging doors. “Seems to feel worse about being caught with an imitation coat than about being an imitation politician. Better send him to Congress!” Nowwasn’tthat good for a small town that didn’t even have a railroad? I’ve known men of cities of all of a hundred thousand, with street cars, municipal baths, Carnegie libraries and women’s clubs, who hadn’t the measure of Congress as accurately as that. I wish there had been time to see more of Bridgeport.
It was down to twelve above when we turned out in the morning, with the clear air tingling with frost particles and incipient ice-fringes around the eddies. Fortunately, Earl had bailed both boats the night before and drained his engine. Just below Bridgeport the river, which had been running almost due west from the mouth of the Spokane River, turned off to the north. In a slackening current we approached the small patch of open country at the mouth of the Okinagan. The latter, which heads above the lake of the same name in British Columbia, appears aninsignificant stream as viewed from the Columbia, and one would never suspect that it is navigable for good-sized stern-wheelers for a considerable distance above its mouth. On the right bank of the Columbia, just above the mouth of the Okinagan, is the site of what was perhaps the most important of the original Astor posts of the interior. As a sequel to the war of 1812 it was turned over to the Northwest Company, and ultimately passed under the control of Hudson Bay. I could see nothing but a barren flat at this point where so much history was made, but a splendid apple orchard occupies most of the fertile bench in the loop of the bend on the opposite bank.
The mouth of the Okinagan marks the most northerly point of the Washington Big Bend of the Columbia. From there it flows southwesterly for a few miles to the mouth of the Methow, before turning almost directly south. We passed Brewster without landing, but pulled up alongside a big stern-wheeler moored against the bank at Potaris, just above the swift-running Methow Rapids. It was theBridgeport, and Ike had spoken of her skipper, whom he called “Old Cap,” many times and with the greatest affection. “Old Cap” proved to be the Captain McDermid, who had run theShoshonedown through Grand Rapids, and who was rated as the nerviest steamer skipper left on the Columbia.
Captain McDermid was waiting on the bow of his steamer to give us a hand aboard. He had read of our voyage in the Spokane papers, he said, and had been on the lookout for several days. At first he had watched for a skiff, but later, when he had heard thatwe had pushed off with Ike on a raft, it was logs he had been keeping a weather eye lifting for. When Ike described the raft to him, he wagged his head significantly, and said he reckoned it was just as well we had changed to the launch for Box Canyon. “It isn’t everybody that can navigate under water like this old rat here,” he added, giving Ike a playful prod in the ribs.
As we were planning to go on through to the mouth of the Chelan River, in the hope of getting up to the lake that afternoon, an hour was the most I could stop over on theBridgeportfor a yarn with Captain McDermid, where I would have been glad of a week. He told me, very simply but graphically, of the run down Grand Rapids, and a little of his work with stern or side-wheelers in other parts of the world, which included a year on the upper Amazon and about the same time as skipper of a ferry running from the Battery to Staten Island. Then he spoke, with a shade of sadness, of theBridgeportand his plans for the future. In all the thousand miles of the Columbia between the Dalles and its source, she had been the last steamer to maintain a regular service. (This was not reckoning the Arrow Lakes, of course). But the close of the present apple season had marked the end. Between the increasing competition of railways and trucks, the game was no longer worth the candle. He, and his partners in theBridgeport, had decided to try to take her to Portland and offer her for sale. She was very powerfully engined and would undoubtedly bring a good price—once they got her there. But getting her to Portland was therub. There were locks at the Cascades and the Dalles, but Rock Island, Cabinet, Priest and Umatilla, to say nothing of a number of lesser rapids would have to be run. It was a big gamble, insurance, of course, being out of the question on any terms. TheDouglas, half the size of theBridgeport, had tried it a couple of months ago, and—well, we would see the consequences on the rocks below Cabinet Rapids. Got through Rock Island all right, and then went wrong in Cabinet, which wasn’t half as bad. Overconfidence, probably, “Old Cap” thought. But he felt sure thathewould have better luck, especially if he went down first and made a good study of Rock Island and Priest; and that was one of the things that he had wanted to see me about. If there was room for him in the skiff, he would like to run through with us as far as Pasco, and brush up on the channel as we went along. If things were so he could get away, he would join us at Wenatchee on our return from Chelan. I jumped at the chance without hesitation, for it would give us the benefit of the experience and help of the very best man on that part of the Columbia in getting through the worst of the rapids that remained to be run. I had been a good deal concerned about how the sinister cascade of Rock Island was to be negotiated, to say nothing of the long series of riffles called Priest Rapids, which had even a worse record. I parted with Captain McDermid with the understanding that we would get in touch by phone a day or two later, when I knew definitely when we would return to the river from Chelan, and make the final arrangements.
Leaving Ike on theBridgeportfor a yarn with his old friend, we pushed off in the launch for Chelan. Methow Rapids, just below the river of that name, was the only fast water encountered, and that was a good, straight run in a fairly clear channel. We landed half a mile below the mouth of the Chelan River, where the remains of a road led down through the boulders to the tower of an abandoned ferry. Earl put about at once and headed back up-stream, expecting to pick up Ike at Potaris and push on through to Bridgeport that evening.
We parted from both Earl and Ike in all good feeling and with much regret. Each in his line was one of the best men I have ever had to do with. Ike—in spite of the extent to which his movements were dominated by the maxim that “time is made for slaves,” or, more likely, for that very reason—was a most priceless character. I only hope I shall be able to recruit him for another river voyage in the not-too-distant future.
For two reasons I am writing but briefly of our visit to Lake Chelan: first, because it was entirely incidental to the Columbia voyage, and, second, because one who has only made the run up and down this loveliest of mountain lakes has no call to write of it. Chelan is well named “Beautiful Water.” Sixty miles long and from one to four miles wide, cliff-walled and backed by snowy mountains and glaciers, it has much in common with the Arrow Lakes of the upper Columbia, and, by the same tokens, Kootenay Lake. Among the large mountain lakes of the world it has few peers.
The Chelan River falls three hundred and eighty-five feet in the four miles from the outlet of the lake to where it tumbles into the Columbia. It is a foam-white torrent all the way, with a wonderful “Horse-shoe” gorge near the lower end which has few rivals for savage grandeur. One may reach the lake from the Columbia by roads starting either north or south of the draining river. We went by the latter, as it was the more conveniently reached from the ferry-man’s house where we had left our outfit after landing. The town of Chelan, at the lower end of the lake, is a lovely little village, with clean streets, bright shops, and a very comfortable hotel. I have forgotten the name of the hotel, but not the fact that it serves a big pitcher of thick, yellow cream with everybreakfast. So far as my own experience goes, it is the only hotel in America or Europe which has perpetuated that now all but extinct ante-bellum custom. In case there may be any interested to know—even actually to enjoy—what our forefathers had with their coffee and mush, I will state that three transcontinental railways pass within a hundred miles to the southward of Chelan. It will prove well worth the stop-over; and there is the lake besides.
The lower end of Lake Chelan is surrounded by rolling hills, whose fertile soil is admirably adapted to apples, now an important industry in that region; the upper end is closely walled with mountains and high cliffs—really an extremely deep gorge half filled with water. Indeed, the distinction of being the “deepest furrow Time has wrought on the face of the Western Hemisphere” is claimed for upper Chelan Lake—this because there are cliffs which rise almost vertically for six thousand feet from the water’s edge, and at a point where the sounding lead has needed nearly a third of that length of line to bring it back from a rocky bottom which is indented far below the level of the sea.
The head of Chelan is far back in the heart of the Cascades, in the glaciers of which its feeding streams take their rise. The main tributaries are Railroad Creek, which flows in from the south about two-thirds of the way up, and Stehekin River, which comes in at the head. These two streams are credited with some of the finest waterfalls, gorges and cliff and glacier-begirt mountain valleys to be found in North America, and it is possible to see the best of both inthe course of a single “circular” trip by packtrain. To my great regret, it was not practicable to get an outfit together in the limited time at our disposal. The best we could do so late in the season was a hurried run up to Rainbow Falls, a most striking cataract, three hundred and fifty feet in height, descending over the cliffs of the Stehekin River four miles above the head of the lake. Roos made a number of scenic shots here, but on a roll which—whether in the camera or the laboratory it was impossible to determine—was badly light-struck. Similar misfortune attended a number of other shots he made (through the courtesy of the Captain of the mail launch in running near the cliffs) of waterfalls tumbling directly into the lake. There are many slips between the cup and the lip—the camera and the screen, I should say—in scenic movie work.