Not without reason, the defile of the Deschutes has been called the "Grand Canyon of the Northwest." For a full one hundred miles the river races at the bottom of a steep-walled canyon, its sides here and there pinching in to the water's very edge, and often enough with sheer cliffs towering mightily, their bases lapped by the white foam of rapids. Great rounded hills, green in spring, brown in summer, and white under the snows of winter, climb into the sky a thousand feet and more on either hand. Their sides are ribbed with countless cattle trails, like the even ripples of the wind and tide on a sandy beach. Strange contorted rock formations thrust forth from the lofty slopes, and occasional clutters of talus slides spill down into the water. Rich hues of red and brown warm the somber walls, where prehistoric fires burned the clay or rock, or minerals painted it. White-watered, crystal springs are born miraculously in the midst of apparent drought, offering arctic cold nectar the year around. The river winds sinuously, doubling back upon itself interminably, seeking first one, and then another, point of the compass, a veritable despair for railroad builders whose companion word for "results" must be "economy." Despite the stifling oppressiveness of that canyon bake-oven in July, with breezes few and far between and rattlesnakes omnipresent, the ever-changing grandeur was enough to repay for near-sunstroke and foot weariness.
However, enjoyment of the scenery was not my mission. I was supposed to discover, authentically, who was backing that other road—where the millions were coming from. If it was Hill, it meant much to Oregon, for as yet the "Empire Builder" had never truly invaded the state, and if now he planned a great new line to California the railroad map of the West would indeed be disrupted. But at the end of ten days I knew no more than on the first.
At the farmhouse where they took me in to dinner mine host was highly elated, for the survey crossed the corner of his southern "forty" and he saw visions of a fat right-of-way payment and of a railway station. Later—his optimism was characteristic—surely a city would spring up, with corner lots priced fabulously. "Then," said he to Mandy, "we'll go to Yerrup." It was, of course, long before Yerrup became a shambles.
The old man was reminding me of the growth of Spokane—that universal example of the West!—which expanded from nothing to more than one hundred thousand in thirty years, when Mandy interrupted the universal pastime of counting your lots before they are sold by producing a soiled printed form.
Along the Canyon of the Deschutes
Copyright 1911 by Kiser Photo Co., Portland. Ore.
"Can you tell me if this has any value now?" she asked.
It was a voucher of the Great Northern Railroad.
"Where did you get it?"
She narrated how a crew had laid out the preliminary survey, now followed by the mysterious workers, coming through there secretly the previous autumn.