CAPTAIN MCCLELLAN’s EXPLORATIONS.
It took Captain McClellan a month to fit out his train after he reached Vancouver, on the lower Columbia, so that he did not start on his survey until the last of July. Crossing the Cascade Range by a pass south of Mount Adams, he proceeded northward over the plains on the eastern side of the range to the Yakima valley, moving one hundred and eighty miles in thirty days, and remained there a month longer, during which Mr. Gibbs examined the lower and Lieutenant Duncan the upper valley. Captain McClellan himself, leaving his party in camp, made a hasty examination of the Snoqualmie Pass, at the head of the main Yakima. Then he crossed over a dividing ridge to the Columbia River, and continued up its right or western bank to the Okinakane (Okanogan) River, a distance of ninety miles, spent several days in exploring that and neighboring streams, then ascended the Okinakane (Okanogan) River some fifty miles to Lake Osoyoos, and moved eastward from this point eighty-two miles to the Columbia, opposite Colville, and crossed on the 18th, the very day of Governor Stevens’s arrival at the same point.
McClellan, as appears from his report, took a decidedly unfavorable view of the country, and of a railroad route across the Cascades. He declared in substance that the Columbia River Pass was the only one worth considering, that there was no pass whatever north of it except the Snoqualmie Pass, and gave it as his firm and settled opinion that the snow in winter was from twenty to twenty-five feet deep in that pass.
His examination of the pass was a very hasty and cursory one, with no other instruments than a compass and a barometer, and extended only three miles across the summit. His only information as to the depth of winter snow was the reports of Indians, and the marks of snow on the trees, or what he took to be such. Thus the most important point, the real problem of the field of exploration intrusted to him, namely, the existence and character of the Cascade passes, he failed to determine. He failed utterly to respond to Governor Stevens’s earnest and manly exhortation, “We must not be frightened with long tunnels, or enormous snows, but set ourselves to work to overcome them.” He manifested the same dilatoriness in preparation and moving, the same timidity in action, the same magnifying of difficulties, that later marked and ruined his career as an army commander.
Two railroads now cross the range which he examined,—the Northern Pacific, by a pass just south of the Snoqualmie and north of the Nahchess, the very place of which McClellan reported that “there certainly is none between this (the Snoqualmie) and the Nahchess Pass;” and the Great Northern, by a pass at the head of the Wenachee or Pisquouse River, of which stream he declared, “It appears certain that there can be no pass at its head for a road.” The snows he so much exaggerated have proved no obstacle, and in fact have actually caused less trouble and obstruction in these passes than in the Columbia Pass itself.[6]
CHAPTER XXI
UPPER COLUMBIA TO PUGET SOUND
Upon learning the results of McClellan’s explorations, Governor Stevens proposed to send him up the Yakima again to carry the survey clear across the Cascades to Puget Sound, and at first that officer seemed willing to undertake the duty. After spending two days at Colville the governor, accompanied by McClellan and his party, moved south in three marches to a camp six miles south of the Spokane River, named Camp Washington, where on October 28 arrived Lieutenant Donelson with the main party. During these days there was a fall of snow covering the ground, which, however, soon melted and disappeared. But it was enough to dismay McClellan. He now demurred to crossing the Cascades, claiming it to be impracticable so late in the fall. It was indeed late; snow had already fallen on the plains, and presumably would be deeper in the mountains; and the Cascades were McClellan’s own particular field, of which he ought to be the best judge. The governor therefore reluctantly, and rather against his better judgment, relinquished the plan of crossing the Snoqualmie Pass that fall, and gave orders for both parties to move by way of Walla Walla and the Dalles to Vancouver, and thence to Olympia, at the head of Puget Sound.
“Had I possessed at Camp Washington,” says the governor, “information which I gained in six days afterwards at Walla Walla, I should have pushed the party over the Cascades in the present condition of the animals; but Captain McClellan was entitled to weight in his judgment of the route, it being upon the special field of his examination.”
The incidents of the march to Camp Washington are thus narrated:—