KI-IK-KUL, or Chehalis Creek, as the whites call it, is surely one of the most beautiful streams in the whole Cascade Range. Its size may be stated, approximately, as two feet in depth by fifty feet in width, at or near the mouth, but its course is so crooked, so tortuous, and its bed so broken and uneven that the explorer will seldom find a reach of it sufficiently quiet and undisturbed to afford a measurement of this character. At one point it is choked into a narrow gorge ten feet wide and twice as deep, with a fall of ten feet in a distance of thirty. Through this notch the stream surges and swirls with the wild fury, the fearful power, and the awe-inspiring grandeur of a tornado. At another place it runs more placidly for a few yards, as if to gather strength and courage for a wild leap over a sheer wall of frowning rock into a foaming pool thirty, forty, or fifty feet below. At still another place it seems to carve its way, by the sheer power of madness, through piles and walls of broken and disordered quartz, granite, or basalt, even as Cortes and his handful of Spanish cavaliers hewed their way through the massed legions of Aztecs at Tlascala.
Farther up, or down, it is split into various channels by great masses of upheaved rock, and these miniature streams, after winding hither and thither through deep, dark, narrow fissures for perhaps one or two hundred yards, reunite to form this headlong mountain torrent. Viewing these scenes, one is forcibly reminded of the poet's words:
"How the giant element,
From rock to rock, leaps with delirious bound."
Series of cascades, a quarter to half a mile long, are met with at frequent intervals, which rival in their beauty and magnificence those of the Columbia or the Upper Yellowstone. Whirlpools occur at the foot of some of these, in which the clear, bright green water boils, sparkles, and effervesces like vast reservoirs of champagne. The moanings and roarings emitted by this matchless stream in its mad career may be heard in places half a mile. At many points its banks rise almost perpendicularly to heights of 300, 400, or 500 feet. You may stand so nearly over the water that you can easily toss a large rock into it, and yet you are far above the tops of the massive firs and cedars that grow at the water's edge. Looking down from these heights you may see in the crystal fluid whole schools of the lordly salmon plowing their way up against the almost resistless fury of the current, leaping through the foam, striking with stunning force against hidden rocks, falling back half dead, and, drifting into some clear pool below, recovering strength to renew the hopeless assault.
The time will come when an easy roadway, and possibly an iron one, will be built up this grand cañon, and thousands of tourists will annually stand within its walls to gaze upon these magic pictures, absorbed in their grandeur and romantic beauty. Nor does the main stream afford the only objects of beauty and interest here. It is a diamond set in a cluster of diamonds, for many of the little brooks, already mentioned as coming down the mountain on either side, are only less attractive because smaller. Many of them tumble from the tops of rocky walls, and dance down among the branches of evergreen trees, sparkling like ribbons of silver in the rays of the noonday sun.
Theodore Roosevelt, in his excellent work, "Hunting Trips of a Ranchman;" says: "Thirst is largely a matter of habit." So it may be, but I am sadly addicted to the habit, and I found it one from which, on this trip, I was able to extract a great deal of comfort, for we crossed one or more of these little brooks every hour, and I rarely passed one without taking a copious draught of its icy fluid. The days, were moderately warm, and the hard labor we performed, walking and climbing, made these frequent opportunities to quench thirst one of the most pleasant features of the journey. I was frequently reminded of Cole's beautiful tribute to the mountain brook:
"Sleeping in crystal wells,
Leaping in shady dells,
Or issuing clear from the womb of the mountain,
Sky-mated, related, earth's holiest daughter;
Not the hot kiss of wine,
Is half so divine as the sip of thy lip, inspiring cold water."
We arrived at our destination, the foot of Ski-ik-kul Lake (and the source of the creek up which we had been traveling), at four o'clock in the afternoon of the second day out. We made camp on the bank of the creek, and John and I engaged in gathering a supply of wood. After we had been thus occupied for ten or fifteen minutes, I noticed that Seymour was nowhere in sight, and asked John where he was.