We walked out to Lake Union, and found an Indian and his wife living in a tree. The most primitive of the Indians, the old gray ones, who look the most interesting, do not commonly speak the Chinook at all, or have any intercourse with the whites. On the way there, we found the peculiar rose that grows only on the borders of the fir-forest, the wild white honeysuckle, and the glossy kinni-kinnick—the Indian tobacco.
We saw a nest built on the edge of the lake, rising and falling with the water, but kept in place by the stalks of shrubs about it. A great brown bird, with spotted breast, rose from it. I recognized it as the dabchick. The Indians say that this bird was once a human being, wife to an Indian with whom she quarrelled. He was transformed to the great blue heron, and stalks about the marshes. With the remnant of her woman's skill, she makes these curious nests, in sheltered nooks, on the edges of lakes. She dived below the water, and we peeped in at her babies. Their floating nest was overhung by white spirea. They had silver breasts, and pale blue bills. I wondered that their little bleating cry did not call her back; but, though below the water, she seemed to know that we were near, and as long as we lingered about she would not return.
We are going on a long journey to the north, part of it over a desert table-land, where for four days there will be no house,—a part of the country frequented by the Snake River Indians and the Nez Perces, who are inclined to be hostile. It is near the territory of the Pend d'Oreilles. I have seen one of them, with a pretty, graceful ornament in her ear.
Fort Colville, Washington Territory,
June 8, 1866.
We travelled by steamer from Seattle to Portland, thence by a succession of steamers as far as Wallulla. We then took the stage for Walla Walla, at which point public accommodation for travel ceases. We stopped there two or three days, seeking a conveyance across the country to this point; and finally secured a wagoner, who agreed to transport us and our luggage for a hundred dollars, the distance being two hundred miles.
The most interesting part of the journey was the passage of the Columbia. The bar at the mouth of the river is a great hinderance to its free navigation; and vessels are often detained for days, and even weeks, waiting for a favorable opportunity to cross. We waited five days outside in the fog, hearing all the time the deep, solemn warning of the breakers, to keep off. Our steadfast captain, as long as he could see nothing, refused to go on, knowing well the risk, though he sent the ship's boats out at times to try to get his bearings. In all that time, the fog never once lifted so that he could get the horizon-line. At the end of the fifth day, he entered in triumph, with a clear view of the river, the grandest sight I have ever seen. The passengers seemed hardly to dare to breathe till we were over the bar. Some of them had witnessed a frightful wreck there a few years before, when, after a similar waiting in the fog for nearly a week, a vessel attempted to enter the river, and struck on the bar. She was seen for two days from Astoria, but the water was so rough that no life-boat could reach her. The passengers embarked on rafts, but were swept off by the sea.
As we passed into the river, I sat on deck, looking about. All at once I felt a heavy thump on my back, and a wave broke over my head,—a pretty rough greeting from the sea. It seems that we slightly grounded, but were off in an instant.
I had long looked forward to the wonderful experience of seeing this immense river, seven miles broad, rolling seaward, and the great line of breakers at the bar; but no one can realize, without actually seeing it, how much its grandeur is enhanced by the surroundings of interminable forest, and the magnificence of its snow-mountains. The character of the river itself is in accordance with every thing about it, especially where it breaks through the Cascade Mountains in four miles of rapids; and still higher up, shut between basaltic walls, rushes with deafening roar through the narrow passage of the Dalles, where it is compressed into one-eighth of its width. For a long time I could not receive any other sensation, nor admit any other thought, but of its terrific strength. The Indians say that in former times the river flowed smoothly where are now the whirling rapids of the Cascades, but that a landslide from the banks dammed up the stream, and produced this great change. How many generations have repeated the account of this wonderful occurrence, from one to another, to bring it down to our times! This is now accepted by scientific men as undoubtedly the fact.
It is hard to conceive the idea of the geologists, that this is only the remnant of a vastly greater Columbia, that formerly occupied not only its present bed, but other channels, now abandoned, including the Grande Coulée, between whose immense walls it poured a current ten miles broad at the mouth; and that the water was at some time one or two thousand feet above the present level of the river, as shown by the terraces along its banks, and fragments of drift caught in fissures of the rock. The Grande Coulée is like an immense roofless ruin, extending north and south for fifty miles. Strange forms of rock are scattered over the great bare plain. To the Indians, it is the home of evil spirits. They say there are rumblings in the earth, and that the rocks are hot, and smoke. Thunder and lightning, so rare elsewhere on the western coast, are here more common. The evidences of volcanic action are everywhere apparent,—in the huge masses and curious columns of basaltic and trap-rock, the lava-beds through which the rivers have found their way, and the powdery alkaline soil. The marks of glaciers are also as distinct in the bowlders, and the scooping-out of the beds of lakes. The gravelly prairies between the Columbia and Puget Sound, and the Snoqualmie, Steilaguamish, and other flats, show that the Sound was formerly of much more extensive proportions than at present.
The Columbia was first discovered on the 15th of August, 1775, by Bruno Heceta, a Spanish explorer, who found an opening in the coast, from which rushed so strong a current as to prevent his entering. He concluded that it was the mouth of some great river, or possibly the Straits of Fuca, which might have been erroneously marked on his chart. As this was the anniversary of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, he named the opening Enseñada de Asuncion (Assumption Inlet); and it was afterwards called, in the charts published in Mexico, Enseñada de Heceta, and Rio de San Roque. He gave to the point on the north side the name of Cape San Roque; and, to that on the south, Cape Frondoso (Leafy Cape).