S. F. Ledyard arrived last evening from the Salmon River mines, and from him it is learned that some six hundred miners would winter there; that some two hundred had gone to the south side of the river, where two streams head that empty into the Salmon, some thirty miles south-east of the present mining camp. Coarse gold is found, and as high as one hundred dollars per day to the man has been taken out. The big mining claim of the old locality belongs to Mr. Weiser of Oregon, from which two thousand six hundred and eighty dollars were taken out on the 20th, with two rockers. On the 21st, three thousand three hundred and sixty dollars were taken out with the same machines.
S. F. Ledyard arrived last evening from the Salmon River mines, and from him it is learned that some six hundred miners would winter there; that some two hundred had gone to the south side of the river, where two streams head that empty into the Salmon, some thirty miles south-east of the present mining camp. Coarse gold is found, and as high as one hundred dollars per day to the man has been taken out. The big mining claim of the old locality belongs to Mr. Weiser of Oregon, from which two thousand six hundred and eighty dollars were taken out on the 20th, with two rockers. On the 21st, three thousand three hundred and sixty dollars were taken out with the same machines.
TheStatesmanfor December 13, 1861, contains the following:
During the week past not less than two hundred and twenty-five pack animals, heavily laden with provisions, have left this city for the mines. A report in relation to a rich strike by Mr. Bridges of Oregon City seems to come well authenticated. The first day he worked on his claim (near Baboon Gulch) he took out fifty-seven ounces; the second day he took out one hundred and fifty-seven ounces; the third day, two hundred and fourteen ounces; and the fourth day, two hundred ounces in two hours.
During the week past not less than two hundred and twenty-five pack animals, heavily laden with provisions, have left this city for the mines. A report in relation to a rich strike by Mr. Bridges of Oregon City seems to come well authenticated. The first day he worked on his claim (near Baboon Gulch) he took out fifty-seven ounces; the second day he took out one hundred and fifty-seven ounces; the third day, two hundred and fourteen ounces; and the fourth day, two hundred ounces in two hours.
As an ounce of gold was worth sixteen dollars, it will be seen that Mr. Bridges of Oregon City had truly “struck it rich.”
Within a year, a million and a half dollars in gold-dust had been taken from those mines. Anticipated demands led cattlemen to rush still larger numbers of stock into the upper Columbia Basin, and traders brought in yet larger supplies of goods into Walla Walla and Lewiston, as well as the mining camps themselves. A considerable part of these goods, we regret to narrate, consisted of material for spirituous refreshments. That the said refreshments were of a stalwart character may be inferred from a reminiscence of a traveller to Walla Walla, who relates that upon going into one of the numerous saloons, he found the floor covered with sawdust, and upon asking for whiskey, he received with it a whisk-broom. Feeling puzzled as to the intent of the latter, and not wishing to reveal his ignorance, he waited till another man came in. Waiting for developments, he found that the object of the broom was to sweep off a place on the floor to have a fit on, for the whiskey was sureto produce one. After having got through his fit, the happy (?) purchaser would return the broom and go on his way.
An Oregon Pioneer in his Cabin.Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse.
Just as miners, cowboys, and traders were plunging eagerly into every form of enterprise, the famous “hard winter” of ’61 descended upon the country. It was almost a Minnesota winter. There was snow on the ground from December 1st to March 22d, something never known before or since in the Columbia Basin. Cattle could find no food and perished by the thousands. Miners were found frozen into the stiff crust. In the rude cabins, with wide cracks into which the snow drifted, the few women and children in the Inland Empire fought a distressing and frequently losing fight. Even in the Willamette Valley where houses were more comfortable, supplies more plentiful, and the weather less severe, the conditions were hard enough. At Portland the price of hay was eighty dollars a ton. In Eastern Oregon it could not be obtained for any price, and the maintenance of life by cattle depended entirely on their endurance.
But with the coming on of tardy spring, the rush up the River was resumed, and the game went on. Seven millions in gold was reported in 1862, besides almost as much, as was estimated, taken out in ways of which no record was reported.
At Florence in February, 1862, flour was a dollar a pound; butter, three dollars; sugar, a dollar and a quarter; coffee, two dollars; boots, thirty dollars a pair.
The enormous profits, as well as enormous expense, of developing those mines hastened the coming of thefarmer. Among the throng that passed madly into the mountains for gold, and among the throng that drove the wide-horned cattle over the bunch-grass hills, there were a few keen-eyed observers who asked themselves if wheat and corn and potatoes and barley and fruit-trees might not grow on those broad prairies, and especially along the numerous watercourses descending from the Blue Mountains.
A farm here and there at some favourable point beside some favouring stream, followed in two or three years by a flour-mill, then a few apples whose bright red cheeks and fragrant smell showed that the upper Columbia lands could match those of the Willamette, then an experimental wheat-field or barley-field on the high bunch-grass prairies,—and, almost before people realised it, the farmer was standing up beside the miner and the stockman, as tall and broad and important as either. The plough and the hoe and the mowing-machine took their places beside the pick and gold-pan and quirt and schapps and spurs as symbols of Columbia River nobility.
The “boomer” was the logical result of the development of mine and range and farm and garden and orchard. If people were going to eat and travel and raise wheat and cattle, they must inevitably buy and sell. And if they were going to buy and sell, they must needs “boom.” The decade of the eighties was the great age of the boom in real estate along the Columbia and its tributaries. Then, as also upon Puget Sound, cities were founded with most extravagant size and expectations—on paper. Farm lands changed hands rapidly. If a man could raise nothing else on his land, he could at least raise the price.That was the time when the boomer boomed, the promoter promoted, and the sucker sucked. It was a great age, but alas, it was followed by an awakening, similar to that which follows a night of carousal, when the next day brings a dark-brown taste in the mouth and a very heavy head. The decade of the nineties was dolorous along the River and in the mines and forests and farms and town-lots and additions and suburbs adjoining.
Old Portage Railroad at Cascades in 1860.
A Log-boom Down the River for San Francisco.Photo. by Woodfield.
Interlocked with the days of miner, cowboy, rancher, and boomer, was another age of equal importance and one that was both result and cause of the others. This was the age of the railroad builder.
Transportation by the River was a great feature of traffic in the fifties and sixties. But, during the second of those decades, the people of Portland began to realise that the time had arrived for rails as well as sails. The first great transcontinental railroad, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific, was in active process of building between California and Omaha. A fever of railroad building spread to the Columbia River people. Railroads were projected from Portland on both sides of the Willamette, up the valley, with the view of ultimate connection with California. Surveys were made by S. G. Elliott from Marysville, California, to Portland in 1863. It was October, 1870, when the first train reached Salem, the capital of the State. The road was known as the Oregon Central Railroad, and its manager and ultimately its chief owner was Ben Holladay, the most famous railroad man of that period in Oregon. In 1871 and 1872, railroad building was extended on the west side of the Willamette. The lines on both sideswere reorganised under Mr. Holladay’s control as the Oregon and California Railroad.
Meanwhile the air was full of discussion of a transcontinental line to the Pacific Northwest. The conception of a Northern Pacific railroad was nothing new. Away back in 1853, Governor I. I. Stevens and Captain George B. McClellan had made a reconnaissance across the Rocky and Cascade Mountains and over the great plains of the Columbia, for the purpose of ascertaining a route for a northern line. They pronounced the route feasible, but the time had not yet come for such an undertaking. In a letter to McClellan of April 5, 1853, Governor Stevens states the route to be from St. Paul to Puget Sound by the great bend of the Missouri River. It is interesting to note that this is nearly the course afterwards followed.
Work on the Northern Pacific was begun in the vicinity of Kalama on the Columbia in 1870. The financial panic of 1873 resulted in the failure of Jay Cooke & Company, the backers of the enterprise, and for several years railroad work was at a standstill.
In 1879 there came to Oregon the greatest railroad builder of that era, Henry Villard. He was a true financial genius, daring, far-seeing, persistent, and self-reliant. With the quick grasp of a statesman, Mr. Villard perceived that the Columbia River was the key to a boundless opportunity. He saw that a central line up the Columbia with branches north, east, and south-east, might be thrust like a wedge between the Northern Pacific and the Union Pacific and control both. In pursuance of this conception he made three rapid moves. The first was theincorporation of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. The second was the formation of the “blind pool” and the Oregon and Transcontinental Company. The third was the acquisition of a controlling interest in the Northern Pacific Railroad. The three years up to and including 1883 were years of almost feverish activity along the River. The line of the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company between Wallula and Portland was pushed on with tireless energy. Rock bluffs were split off by enormous charges of dynamite, or were tunnelled through. The road was indeed built so hastily and the curves were in some cases so extreme that much work had to be done over at later times.
Lumber Mill and Steamboat Landing at Golden, B. C.Photo. by C. F. Yates.
A part of Villard’s plan in pushing the work so hastily was to divert the Northern Pacific system to the River, and make Portland rather than Puget Sound the western terminus. The undertaking seemed to be crowned with success. The connection was made. A gorgeous celebration, the greatest ever held in the Columbia River country, commemorated, in October, 1883, the completion of the transcontinental railroad to tide-water on the Columbia River. But in the very hour of victory, the sceptre fell from Villard’s hands. His downfall was as sudden and dramatic as his rise. By clever jobbing of the market, the Wright interests regained possession of the majority of the Northern Pacific stock, the transcontinental pool broke, and at the very time that Mr. Villard was being worshipped at Portland as the financial god of the North-west, he learned that his gigantic enterprise had fallen into the hands of the enemy. But in spite of defeat the work of Villard wasassured, and his name and fame as the champion railroad builder of the Columbia River was established.
After the Wright interests had regained possession of the Northern Pacific, that great system was pushed to Puget Sound. The Oregon Short Line was carried to a connection with the Union Pacific system. Thus two independent transcontinental lines reached the River. Yet later the Southern Pacific system acquired control of the Oregon and California Railroad, and, by joining the sections, connected the Columbia River with the Golden Gate. Through connecting lines the Canadian Pacific Railroad gained access to the Columbia River. There are, therefore, four distinct transcontinental railroad systems into the valley of our River. Two more are rapidly approaching completion. As a logical result, too, many local and connecting lines have been built. The Astoria and Columbia River Railroad, on the Oregon side of the River, joins Portland to Astoria and Seaside and the other resorts of the ocean beach. The Oregon Railway and Navigation Company has continuous connection on the south side of the Columbia and Snake rivers to Riparia on the latter stream, and thence by a road on the north side, owned jointly with the Northern Pacific, to Lewiston, Idaho. The most remarkable of all these connecting and joint roads is the Portland, Seattle, and Spokane Railroad, commonly called the “North Bank Road.” This is supposed to be the joint property of the Northern Pacific and Great Northern railroads. It is one of the many monuments in the West to the financial genius and tireless energy of James J. Hill. It was completed in 1908, between Pasco and Portland, andat the first of the year following, from Pasco to Spokane. It is said to be the most expensively and scientifically built road in the United States, having curves and grades reduced to a minimum, being, in fact, a continuous descent from near Spokane to tide-water. Its builders evidently expect stupendous traffic, and every feature of the line is adjusted to such expectation.
A Typical Lumber Camp.Photo. by Trueman.
Any account of the great railroads joining the Inland Empire to the River and thence to the seaboard would be incomplete without reference to the pioneer of them all, the “Strap-iron” narrow-gauge from Walla Walla to Wallula. This line was forced by the exigencies of the times, but it commemorates the rare commercial foresight and ability of a man, who, in native business genius, ranks with the foremost in the history of the Columbia Valley. This man was Dr. D. S. Baker, a native of Illinois, an immigrant to the Columbia in 1848, and a settler in Walla Walla in 1860. Perceiving the vast latent resources of the Inland Empire, he invested in land, founded a bank, became a partner in a store, and during much of the time was also actively engaged in his profession of medicine.
In 1863, the Oregon Steam Navigation Company was running boats from Portland to Lewiston, over four hundred miles, having short railroad portages at the Cascades and The Dalles. That was the most active era of the mines in Idaho. Rates from Portland to up-river points were as follows: freight from Portland to Wallula, $50.00 per ton; to Lewiston, $90.00; fare from Portland to Wallula, $18.00; to Lewiston, $28.00. (The rates had been muchhigher a year or two earlier.) From Wallula to Walla Walla, freight was hauled by prairie-schooners at from $10.00 to $12.00 a ton, thirty miles. Needless to say, the company piled up a fortune.
Dr. Baker saw the possibilities of the region and, almost unaided, with every difficulty and discouragement, constructed a narrow gauge, with wooden rails, on which strap-iron was fastened. An astonishing amount of business was soon developed, steel rails were substituted, and the business made a fortune for its builder. It was absorbed by the Oregon Steam Navigation Company. But Dr. Baker’s strap-iron road may be considered the true progenitor of the railroads of the upper Columbia.
During these first years of the twentieth century, the shores of the River have echoed with the sound of whistles on many a new road, but the distinguishing mark has been the construction of electric roads. The lower Willamette Valley, centring at Portland, has become fairly swarming with electric roads. Spokane has become almost an equal centre of electric lines, while Walla Walla is following close behind her larger sisters in the procession. When lines already constructed from Spokane southward are joined to a system projected from Walla Walla northward and westward, there will be a complete system of independent electric lines from all parts of Eastern Washington and North-eastern Oregon to steamboat connections on the River, and thence to tide-water. The significance of this as a commercial fact cannot be realised as yet.
A Logging Railroad, near Astoria.Photo. by Woodfield.
The Present Age of Expansion and World Commerce
Population and Productions of the Region on the River and its Tributaries—Extent of its Navigability—Improvements Needed—Kinds of Traffic—Local Traffic—Transcontinental Traffic—World Traffic—Advantages of the River Route for these Kinds of Traffic—The Bar—The Competition of Puget Sound—The Combination of River Route and Sound Route.
Population and Productions of the Region on the River and its Tributaries—Extent of its Navigability—Improvements Needed—Kinds of Traffic—Local Traffic—Transcontinental Traffic—World Traffic—Advantages of the River Route for these Kinds of Traffic—The Bar—The Competition of Puget Sound—The Combination of River Route and Sound Route.
Wehave traced the successive eras which have brought the land of the Oregon from a wilderness to a group of powerful young American States, abounding in resources and filled to the brim with hope and enthusiasm. We have followed the River through its eras of canoe, bateau, flatboat, sail-ship, and steamboat, and we have seen railroads built along its banks. It remains only to cast a brief final glance at the River in its present age, and to forecast something of what seems its sure future.
It may be said that the population of those parts of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, which are embraced in the watershed of the Columbia, is probably nearly a million and a quarter. The population of the area in British Columbia is scanty, but rapidly increasing.
The productive capacity is very great. A roughestimate of production in the valley of the Columbia for the year 1908 would probably give a grain production of seventy million bushels, a lumber output of three billion feet, a mineral output worth sixty million dollars, and a combined output of pastoral, horticultural, fishing, and miscellaneous industries of fifty millions of dollars.
Such figures indicate that the Columbia River is already a factor in world commerce. Yet its development is but begun. What is to be its part in the world commerce of the future?
Inspection of a map will show that the Columbia possesses the only water-level route from the vast productive regions of the Inland Empire to the seaboard. As has been shown in the course of this volume, the River is navigable throughout the larger part of its course from Revelstoke in British Columbia to the ocean. In that distance there is one canal, with locks. That is at the Cascades, sixty-five miles from Portland. Before the River can be continuously navigable it will be necessary that a canal be constructed to overcome the obstructions at the Dalles, a few miles above the city of that name, another at Priest Rapids, seventy miles above Pasco, and still another at Kettle Falls. The Government is already engaged in the first of these works. The second seems comparatively near of accomplishment by reason of work done and projected by a powerful irrigation company. Nothing has yet been done at Kettle Falls, but it would be comparatively a light task to provide canal and locks at that point. Besides these larger obstructions there are several rapids at points between Kettle Falls and the Dalles which impede navigation at certain stagesof water. The Government has made surveys of these sections of the River, and has announced that with comparatively small outlay the rocks and reefs may be removed, the channels deepened and straightened, and the River made navigable. One thing may be emphasised in this connection, and this is that the Columbia River has mainly a rocky bed, and hence work on the channels is permanent. It will not cut and fill, nor pile up islands and bars as does the Missouri.
In view of the capability of the River to carry great water traffic, and in view of the fact that railroad traffic is seeking and will still more seek the down-hill grade to the sea, it becomes a question of great interest what the future commerce of the River will be.
It is evident that there will be three kinds of traffic: local, transcontinental, world-wide. Each is bound to be vast beyond the calculations or even the imagination of the present. The local traffic is sure to be immense, for it is estimated that there is a million acres of land immediately contiguous to the River, irrigable and adapted to intensive farming. Present experience shows that five or ten acres of such land are sufficient to support a family. Many cities and towns are sure to grow upon the banks of the River. Its banks will sometime become populated like those of ancient Nile. Besides the immediate region of the River, there are millions upon millions of acres of land more remote, the great wheat fields and stock ranges and valley lands of tributary streams, and these broad areas will seek the river route. Much of this immense local traffic of the future will be conveyed by steamboats and barges.
The second class of traffic will be the transcontinental. All the railroads across the continent, except those down the Columbia, are obliged to climb the Cascade Mountains, four thousand feet or more in height. With difficulty two powerful locomotives pull a freight train of forty cars up the grades, and at some points even a third is needed. But a single locomotive will pull eighty cars on the level grades of the River roads. In the even keener competition bound to come, this advantage of grades and curves will be a factor of immense importance.
The third class of future commerce is the world-wide. No western American can contemplate the future of the world without being persuaded that the Pacific Ocean and its shores will be the scene of the greatest problems of the twentieth century. If this prove true, that world commerce of the Pacific will seek that point of the American continent which most swiftly and cheaply communicates with the eastern side of the continent and with Europe. Granting that a large part of world commerce will pass through the Panama Canal, there will still be, without question, an immense trade between the Orient and such points in our own country as are so far from the Atlantic seaboard that a transcontinental route is a necessity. Moreover, even for our Atlantic seaboard and for Europe, there will be large amounts of products, for the transit of which time will be a great object. Hence we may be sure that there will be extensive world commerce across the American continent. If so, where will it cross? Inspection of a globe demonstrates that the Columbia River route is shortest, and, for reasons already given, it is cheapest of all.
Puget Sound is its only present competitor. But the water-grade through the Cascade Mountains, along the banks of the Columbia, constitutes an advantage beyond the reach of permanent competition. Here, however, the critic comes in and claims that the Bar at the mouth of the River forbids entrance of the largest ships. This in a measure is true, though the difficulties of the Columbia Bar have been grossly exaggerated. There are over twenty-five feet of water on the Bar at the lowest tide. The flood-tide adds from six to twelve feet. In any ordinary weather, forty feet of water is safe enough for any vessel. But if marine architecture is going to keep pace with growing commerce, we may soon have ships drawing forty or fifty feet of water. If so, the Bar may indeed seriously block the heaviest commerce. Some observers have, therefore, believed that the big freights of the future will enter the Straits of Fuca, go to some one of the Puget Sound ports, thence pass by rail across the low tract of country between the Sound and the Columbia River, and proceed thence by the River route to the interior and eastward. This would combine the advantages of the two great routes of the Pacific North-west, abundant depth of water, low altitudes, and easy grades. This would, in truth, come nearest to realising the dream of the old navigators, the Strait of Anian. In any event, the future world will look to our River as the goal of markets as well as of vision, and as a highway of nations both for freights and for tourists.
In the Heart of the Canadian Rockies
Extent of Navigation on the River—Attractions of a Canoe Journey—The Canadian Pacific Railroad—Banff and Lake Louise—Summit of the Rockies—The Continental Divide and its Western Descent—Field and the Wapta River—Golden and the Upper Columbia—Peculiar Interlocking of the Columbia and the Kootenai, and Professor Dawson’s Explanation of this—Views of the Selkirks and the Rockies—Some Steamboat Men and their Tales—Captain Armstrong’s Adventures on the Kootenai—The Picture Rocks—Lake Windermere—The Location of the Old Thompson Fort—Baptiste Morigeau and his Stories of Pioneer Days—The War between the Shuswaps and the Okanogans—Down the River from Golden—Rapids and Navigation—By the Canadian Pacific through the Selkirks—Glacier and the Illecillewaet—Revelstoke and the River again—Wise Management of the Canadian Government and the Railroad.
Extent of Navigation on the River—Attractions of a Canoe Journey—The Canadian Pacific Railroad—Banff and Lake Louise—Summit of the Rockies—The Continental Divide and its Western Descent—Field and the Wapta River—Golden and the Upper Columbia—Peculiar Interlocking of the Columbia and the Kootenai, and Professor Dawson’s Explanation of this—Views of the Selkirks and the Rockies—Some Steamboat Men and their Tales—Captain Armstrong’s Adventures on the Kootenai—The Picture Rocks—Lake Windermere—The Location of the Old Thompson Fort—Baptiste Morigeau and his Stories of Pioneer Days—The War between the Shuswaps and the Okanogans—Down the River from Golden—Rapids and Navigation—By the Canadian Pacific through the Selkirks—Glacier and the Illecillewaet—Revelstoke and the River again—Wise Management of the Canadian Government and the Railroad.
A journeyupon the River may best begin with its source and end with the ocean. It is about fourteen hundred miles by the windings of the stream from its origin in the upper Columbia Lake to the Pacific. It descends twenty-five hundred feet in that distance. It is therefore swift in many places. Yet it would be possible to descend almost the entire length of the River in a small boat. Nor can one imagine a more fascinating journey, especially if he could conjure back the shades of the greatvoyageursof seventy years ago, as Monique and Charlefoux, famous in Dr. McLoughlin’s time,and listen to their gay song, mingling with the plash of oars:
Rouli, roulant, ma boule roulant,En roulant, ma boule roulant.
The way of approach for the Eastern tourist to a journey down the Columbia is by the Canadian Pacific Railway, a magnificent road in a gallery of masterpieces. Wonders begin before he reaches the western watershed. He will see Banff, with its hot springs, its immense hotel, its Bow River and Falls and Valley. He will see the gem of the Canadian Rockies, one of the gems of the earth, Lake Louise. Imagine a glistening wall of purest white, Mts. Lefroy and Victoria, with a vast glacier descending from them, great bastions of variously tinted rock closing on either side as a frame of the snowy picture, and in front a lake, small indeed, but of perfect form, a mirror in which the snowy wall, the glacier, the rocky ramparts, find a duplication as distinct as themselves.
A few miles farther west, and the traveller will find himself at one of the most significant of all places, the Continental Divide. Eastward the water flows into the Bow, thence into the Saskatchewan, and ultimately into the Atlantic. Westward the springs find their way to the branches of the Wapta, thence to the Columbia and the Pacific. The long westward ascent which we have followed all the way from Winnipeg ends at last. The track becomes level. We are at the summit. Looking southward we can see descending the steep slope, a clear mountain stream, which is parted into two branches by a little wall of stone. One branch goes east to the Atlantic, the other west to the Pacific.
It must have been of some such place, though farther north, that Holmes was imagining when he wrote:
Yon stream, whose sources runTurned by a pebble’s edge,Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun,Through the cleft mountain-ledge.The slender rill had strayedBut for the slanting stone,To evening’s ocean, with the tangled braidOf foam-flecked Oregon.
At the parting of the streams, a pretty rustic framework has been erected, bearing the words, “The Continental Divide.”
We are now on the Columbia’s waters. We are also in the heart of the Canadian Rockies, and in the midst of a perfect sea of mountains. It has been said that British Columbia is “fifty or sixty Switzerlands rolled into one.” Here are five distinct ridges, up and down, and through and around which, the Columbia and its affluents chase each other in a dizzy dance.
The descent of the west side of the Divide is appallingly steep. From Stephen to Field is a drop of one thousand two hundred and fifty-seven feet in ten miles. In that distance are several places which reach two hundred and thirty-six feet to the mile. Most explicit directions are given to engineers in respect to handling trains on this grade. A speed of only six miles an hour is allowed, and frequent stops and tests of air-brakes and signals are required. By reason of the exceeding care, no serious accident has ever occurred. In ascending three locomotives are required for an ordinary train.
There are several splendid resorts on the line of the Canadian railroad. Banff and Lake Louise are the resorts on the east side of the Divide. The first one west of that point is Field. There, as at all the other resorts, the hotels are managed by the Canadian Pacific Railroad Company. They are conducted with great skill and elegance, and may well be regarded as a tribute to the business ability and artistic taste of the managers.
As we descend the steep grade from Stephen to Field, we catch glimpses of peak after peak, range after range, valley after valley, glacier after glacier, purple, saffron, red, dazzling white, glistening greens and blues. Mt. Stephen lifts its great wall over a mile of almost perpendicular height, and nearly opposite is the spire of Mt. Burgess. Mountain wonders and attractions of every sort lie in all directions from Field. Perhaps the finest is Yoho Valley. There are the Takkakaw Falls, twelve hundred feet high. There is the Wapta Glacier, itself a part of a prodigious ice-field, known as Wahputekh, lying between the towering heights of Mts. Gordon, Balfour, and Tralltinderne.
Leaving Field, the road runs between two chains of mountains, the Ottertail on the north and the Van Horne on the south. The former is bold and spire-like in outline, with the snow-fields and ice pinnacles of Mt. Goodwin closing the vista. The latter is less bold in contour, but has a colouring of yellow rock-slopes in beautiful contrast with the rich purple of the lower forests.
Passing between those sublime mountain chains, we soon plunge into the Wapta cañon, with itsperpendicular walls of rock rising hundreds of feet on either side. The Wapta is more commonly known as the Kicking Horse. It received that name in this wise. The Palliser exploring expedition of 1858 had been seeking unsuccessfully a feasible route through the Rockies. In the progress of the search, Sir James Hector, then in charge of the party, pitched camp on the Wapta. While there a vicious horse kicked him with such effect that he was left on the ground apparently dead. The three Indians with him had, in fact, dug his grave. But while they were conveying him to it, he suddenly came to himself. Having recovered, he became curious to follow the stream where he had met with the disaster. As a result he discovered the cañon and a short route through the main chain. Upon the pass he bestowed the name of “Kicking Horse,” and this has latterly been bestowed upon the river itself. The river is one of the most remarkable of the tributaries of the upper Columbia. It drains a cordon of glaciated peaks, from which it bears a vast volume of water, foaming and frothing with frequent cataracts down the steep descent, from fifty to a hundred feet to the mile.
Natural Bridge Kicking Horse or Wapta River, and Mt. Stephen, B. C.Photo. by C. F. Yates.
Sunrise on Columbia River, near Washougal.(Copyright, 1902, by Kiser Photograph Co.)
Forty-five miles west of the Divide we reach Golden on the Columbia. It is indeed a thrilling moment to the traveller when he first sets eyes upon these head-waters of the River of the West. Golden is a pleasant little town, a hundred and fifty miles below the upper Columbia Lake and twelve hundred and fifty by the windings of the River from its destination in the Pacific.
At Golden we must pause and make ready for our first journey on the River. The greater part of thetourist travel passes by Golden, not realising that between that pretty town and the lakes lie some of the most charming scenes in all the vast play-ground of British Columbia.
We find at Golden several steamboats in command of captains who are very princes of good fellows, as Captain Armstrong of thePtarmiganand Captain Blakeney of theIsabel, with whom we may journey from Golden to Lake Windermere. Over the hundred miles between these two points the Columbia is a slack-water stream, having a descent of but fifty feet in the distance from the extreme head waters to Golden. Over considerable part of this distance the River runs in bayous. These bayous or channels wind their serpentine courses through low flats, flooded at high water, and exposing fair expanses of vivid green at the subsidence of the waters.
Professor Dawson, the eminent Canadian geologist, made a study of this section of the River some years before his death, and as a result expressed the opinion that the section of the Columbia above the mouth of Blue River, some thirty miles below Golden, formerly united with the Kootenai. But owing to some convulsion of nature, the surface was tilted just sufficiently to turn the section of the stream from Columbia Lake toward the north instead of the south, with the result that we have this slack-water system of lagoons and lakes constituting this marvellously picturesque division of the River. Now in confirmation of this theory of Professor Dawson we have in the relations of the Columbia and Kootenai the singular geographical phenomenon already referred to in an earlier chapter. The Kootenai runs through “CanalFlats,” in which the upper Columbia Lake is situated, and comes within a mile of that lake. It is nine feet higher than the lake, but there is no high land there, and at one time a canal joined the Kootenai with the lake. This canal was wrecked in the great flood of 1894, but steamboats had run through it from the Kootenai to the Columbia, and it would be entirely feasible to reconstruct it. After having thus passed within a mile of each other and evidently having once been actually connected, the two rivers part company. The Columbia flows north and the Kootenai south. Each makes a vast bend. Again they reverse directions, the Columbia flowing south and the Kootenai north, and then come together many miles from their point of separation.
Aside from the unique beauty of the lagoons and the grassy shores, the eye of the traveller is delighted with the two mountain chains which confront each other across those glassy channels throughout the entire stretch from Golden to Windermere. On the east side is the main chain of the Rockies, and on the west are the Selkirks.
As we proceed on the deep, still stream, gliding from channel to channel, we may find ourselves mightily entertained by the conversation of such a navigator as Captain Armstrong or Captain Blakeney. For each can command a fund of historical and descriptive matter of rare interest.
Captain Armstrong was one of the earliest pilots on the Kootenai. In 1894 he built theNorth Starat Jennings, Montana, ran her up the wild stream to Canal Flats, thence through the canal to the Columbia lakes, and into the River itself. A more exquisitestretch of river navigation than that through Columbia Lake, Lake Adela, and Lake Windermere, and from them into the lagoons of the River, can scarcely be found or even imagined, and it was the lot of theNorth Starto ply upon that route until her unhappy destruction by fire in 1900.
There is little danger of accident on the placid water of the uppermost Columbia, but it is far different on the Kootenai. We heard many a tale of steamboating adventure from these pilots.
One of these so well illustrates those old-time conditions that we repeat here its chief points. Captain Armstrong owned two steamers, theRuthand theGwendoline. Both were engaged in transporting freight by way of Jennings to Fort Steele and the various mining camps in that district. The business was enormously profitable, for the boats received two and one half cents a pound. At that particular time there were twenty-six cars on the Great Northern Railway awaiting shipments.
From his two steamers Captain Armstrong sometimes made two thousand dollars a day in gross receipts. But though profitable, the business was also correspondingly risky. The Jennings Cañon, above Bonner’s Ferry, is, perhaps, the worst piece of water that has ever been navigated on the Columbia or its tributaries. A strip of water, foaming-white, down-hill almost as on a steep roof, hardly wider than the steamboat, savage-looking rocks waiting to catch hold of any unwary craft that might venture through,—so forbidding in fact was that route that Captain Armstrong found no insurance agent that felt disposed to insure his boats and cargo. At last he induced a SanFrancisco agent to make the trip with him and to offer a rate. After sitting in silence on the deck while the steamer whirled down the Jennings Cañon, the agent stated that his rate would be twenty-five per cent. of the cargo. The daring captain decided to take the risk himself. He had made a number of trips with entire success and immense profit. But just at the height of the season, when the twenty-six cars were on the track and a sack full of gold was waiting for him, the captain got into too much of a hurry. He was running theGwendoline; one of his best pilots, theRuth. TheRuthwas ahead. Both were making their best possible time down the cañon to get a cargo. Captain Armstrong, at the wheel of theGwendoline, was whizzing down the cañon at a rate which made stopping impossible, when to his dismay he saw theRuthright ahead of him in a narrow turn, lying across the channel, wedged in the rocks. To stop was impossible. To select any comfortable landing-place was equally so. TheGwendolinepiled right on top of theRuth. Both were total wrecks, without a dollar of insurance. A two-thousand-dollar cargo gone in five minutes, to say nothing of boats and business that could not be replaced and a fortune within grasp that would never be so near again.
Lake Windermere, Upper Columbia, where David Thompson’s Fort was Built in 1810.Photo. by W. D. Lyman.
But such were the risks of steamboating on the Kootenai.
There are two historical notes of special interest to be made in connection with the journey to Windermere. One of these is a prehistoric drawing in some kind of red pigment on the smooth surface of a rock on the upper Columbia Lake. It seems to represent a battle scene, and, though rude, denotes some conception ofpicture art. The Indians think that it was made prior to Indian times. Apparently it belongs to the same order of pictures as the drawings on the rocks of Lake Chelan and other places in the north-west, furnishing a worthy theme for the antiquarian.
The other object of historical interest is the remains of the temporary fort built by David Thompson of the North-west Fur Company in 1810. Thompson crossed the Rockies in that year in order to descend the Columbia and gain possession of its territory for his fur company. He was a brave, intelligent, and enterprising man with considerable knowledge of astronomy. But he waited one season too long. For, finding it late in the year 1810 when he had reached the sources of the Columbia, he decided to winter there and descend the River in the spring. He selected a beautiful spot capable of defence on all sides on Lake Windermere and there built a rude fort, the trench and mound of which still remain. In the spring of 1811 he went down the river (and this was the first party to traverse the entire course of the Columbia) full of hope that he might take possession for Great Britain and the North-westers, only to find that the Astor party of Americans had preceded them by three months in effecting what might be called permanent occupation.
This was one of the important links in the history of the control of the North-west. Doubt has been raised as to the authenticity of this Windermere location, but there are certainly the remains of mound and trench, and the tradition has it that here was the place of the Thompson party of 1810, the first place located by white men on the upper Columbia.
Mt. Burgess and Emerald Lake, One of the Sources of the Wapta River. B. C.Photo. by C. F. Yates.
An interesting character lives on the shore of Lake Windermere in the person of Baptiste Morigeau. He is a man of sixty-six, the son of a French father and Indian mother. The father, Francis Morigeau, was born at Quebec in 1797, and came to the upper Columbia region as a free trapper in 1820. He trapped up and down the Columbia for many years, selling his catches to the Hudson’s Bay Company, usually at Fort Colville. Baptiste was born at Windermere in 1842. Three years after that the father with his numerous family went to Colville. He had a number of horses and cattle, a large supply of valuable furs, ammunition, and traps. He located at Colville at just the right time. For, having taken up a large body of the rich land in that valley, he began raising hay and grain. His stock increased. He was surrounded with every species of rude plenty, and just at the most profitable time for him the gold discoveries began in 1854, followed the next year by the great Indian war. The fat cattle, the horses, the grain, hay, and vegetables of the Morigeaus were in great and immediate demand. Money came in to them by the handful. Baptiste states that they took in one hundred and fifty thousand dollars during the five years of Indian wars and settlement. Their lives were often in peril, but with good fortune, aided by their own connection with the natives, they escaped any serious harm.
On one occasion Indians were about to plunder them of their valuables and take possession of the barn where several of the family were thrashing grain with flails, when the oldest son, Aleck, suddenly turned his flail upon the marauders. So vigorouslydid he lay about him and so astonished were the Indians at the novel assault that they gave way and retreated.
Morigeau told us the interesting fact that there were practically no Indians living in the Windermere district until about a century ago. At that time some branches of the Shuswaps and of the Kootenais came in. Their relations were usually very amicable, but between the Shuswaps and the Okanogans was deadly and long-continued enmity. This was ended in a curious and interesting manner by the following event. The Shuswaps had captured the only daughter of the Okanogan chief. She was led with other captives into the Shuswap camp. The boasting warriors were gloating over the poor victim, and the squaws were discussing the greatest possible indignities and tortures for her, when an aged, white-haired chief got the attention of the crowd. He declared that his heart had been opened, and that he now saw that torture and death ought to end. He proposed that instead of shame and torture they should confer honour on the chieftain’s child. He said: “I can hear the old chief and his squaw weeping all the night for their lost daughter.” He then proposed that they adorn the captive with flowers, put her in a procession, with all the chiefs loaded with presents, and restore her to her father.
The girl meanwhile, who did not understand a word of the language, was awaiting torture or death. What was her astonishment to find herself decorated with honour, and sent with the gift-laden chiefs toward her father’s camp. On the next day the mourning chief of the Okanogans and his wife, lookingfrom their desolate lodge, saw a large procession approaching, and they said: “They are coming to demand a ransom.”